{"id":11841,"date":"2017-09-21T17:44:59","date_gmt":"2017-09-21T22:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=11841"},"modified":"2017-09-21T17:45:29","modified_gmt":"2017-09-21T22:45:29","slug":"11841","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/09\/21\/11841\/","title":{"rendered":"This Call Center Is Not In Missouri"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0From\u00a0<\/a>Ahmed Fouad on\u00a0AL Monitor<\/b><\/i>:<\/p>\n

Al-Azhar Fatwa Global Center was\u00a0established<\/a>\u00a0in November 2016 based on a decision from Al-Azhar\u2019s Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayeb to detect\u00a0extremist fatwas<\/a>\u00a0online 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\u00a0300 researchers<\/a>\u00a0and clerics work there.<\/p>\n

These new measures launched in August revived the Egyptian public\u2019s connection with the center and sparked the interest of internet and social media users. There was not much marketing for the\u00a0trial website that launched<\/a>\u00a0in November 2016, so many internet users were unaware of the center.<\/p>\n

Youssef Amer, the general supervisor of the center, indicated in a press statement Aug. 28 that the center will play a key role in\u00a0fighting extremist thought<\/a>\u00a0and the credo of the Islamic State (IS). He said, \u201cThe most dangerous issues the center is tackling include Islam and citizenship among terrorist groups,\u00a0mainly IS<\/a>. The national and religious identities do not conflict, unless the national identity dictates committing acts forbidden by God.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Al-Azhar\u00a0<\/b><\/i>refers to a\u00a0university\u00a0<\/a>and a\u00a0mosque\u00a0<\/a>in Cairo, and I believe this reference is to the University. This is not the only activity at the center.<\/p>\n

Although Amer revealed the center\u2019s resolve to tackle thorny\u00a0extremism issues<\/a>, 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\u00a0a\u00a0fatwa<\/a>\u00a0on Sept. 9\u00a0allowing the earning of a fee for reading and memorizing the Quran, and\u00a0another fatwa<\/a>\u00a0on Sept. 8 approving a man\u2019s right to marry another woman without the knowledge of the first wife.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back to extremism, this is just one response taken by the Egyptian government:<\/p>\n

Yusri al-Azbawy, a political researcher at\u00a0Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies<\/a>\u00a0in Cairo, told Al-Monitor, \u201cThe 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\u00a0shut down religious channels<\/a>\u00a0July 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\u00a0forbidding preachers unlicensed<\/a>\u00a0by Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry from speaking out in minarets and pushing them to\u00a0unify the\u00a0Friday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0sermon<\/a>\u00a0through the Ministry [of Awqaf].\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He added, \u201cThe 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 \u2026 was necessary to give fatwas to those seeking them so that they don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Others believe\u00a0Al-Azhar\u00a0<\/b><\/i>is dancing around the issue of\u00a0Al-Azhar’s<\/b><\/i>\u00a0own 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0From\u00a0Ahmed Fouad on\u00a0AL Monitor: Al-Azhar Fatwa Global Center was\u00a0established\u00a0in November 2016 based on a decision from Al-Azhar\u2019s Grand \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11841"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11843,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11841\/revisions\/11843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}