The institutions that dominate the lives of humans quite naturally dominate the news. I found this report, concerning how the Internet is having a negative effect on a Mideast institution, an interesting response. From Ahmed Fouad on AL Monitor:
Al-Azhar Fatwa Global Center was established in November 2016 based on a decision from Al-Azhar’s Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayeb to detect extremist fatwas online and to respond to them. The center serves as a platform for communication for those who want to know about fatwas from Al-Azhar online. Around 300 researchers and clerics work there.
These new measures launched in August revived the Egyptian public’s connection with the center and sparked the interest of internet and social media users. There was not much marketing for the trial website that launched in November 2016, so many internet users were unaware of the center.
Youssef Amer, the general supervisor of the center, indicated in a press statement Aug. 28 that the center will play a key role in fighting extremist thought and the credo of the Islamic State (IS). He said, “The most dangerous issues the center is tackling include Islam and citizenship among terrorist groups, mainly IS. The national and religious identities do not conflict, unless the national identity dictates committing acts forbidden by God.”
Al-Azhar refers to a university and a mosque in Cairo, and I believe this reference is to the University. This is not the only activity at the center.
Although Amer revealed the center’s resolve to tackle thorny extremism issues, most fatwas are focusing on matters not related to detecting extremist fatwas and fighting extremist thought, more than 20 days after the launch. For example, the center issued a fatwa on Sept. 9 allowing the earning of a fee for reading and memorizing the Quran, and another fatwa on Sept. 8 approving a man’s right to marry another woman without the knowledge of the first wife.
Back to extremism, this is just one response taken by the Egyptian government:
Yusri al-Azbawy, a political researcher at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, told Al-Monitor, “The center and electronic website are very important, and their significance is yet to be seen. Radical fatwas have taken one of three paths to reach Egyptian minds. The first path is religious channels funded by the Muslim Brotherhood and by Salafist groups. The state resolved the issue by taking a decision to shut down religious channels July 3, 2013. The second path constitutes some mosques that were controlled by extremist currents. The state tightened its grip on them in the past years by forbidding preachers unlicensed by Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry from speaking out in minarets and pushing them to unify the Friday sermon through the Ministry [of Awqaf].”
He added, “The third path is electronic websites. Radical groups have many fatwa websites that cannot be banned because they are numerous. For that reason, an electronic platform … was necessary to give fatwas to those seeking them so that they don’t fall in the trap of extremist fatwas, especially since most youths don’t visit Al-Azhar or Dar al-Ifta to get fatwas and just resort to the internet.”
Others believe Al-Azhar is dancing around the issue of Al-Azhar’s own extremist origins. This may just be a way to make something new seem normal by assuming a voice of authority. I really can’t say from here.
