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The visit of the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, H.E. Professor Dr Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, to the World Council of Churches (WCC) last week brought together two premier institutions strongly oriented to leadership in peacebuilding and interreligious dialogue.
Both institutions also carefully navigate the turbulent waters of their respective religious traditions on the global scene.
As the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, the graduate programme of the WCC, celebrates its 70th anniversary, Al-Azhar, both the esteemed Cairo mosque and its affiliated university, marks 1050 years of theological education and stands at the apex of Islamic institutions of higher learning, especially in studies of the Qur’an and of Islamic law and philosophy.
Who speaks for Islam?
The preeminence of Cairo’s Al-Azhar in the Muslim world stems from its centuries of educational leadership and its faculty’s authoritative statements of Islamic jurisprudence, providing a baseline of religious knowledge for the Muslim world and mediating between the successive ruling elites in the Arab world and the population at large.
From its earliest centuries, through the Ottoman Empire, and into the modern period of colonial regimes and establishment of new nation states, Al-Azhar has trained the clerics, judges, and governmental functionaries who, through their work, became the guardians of Islamic ethics and Sunni theology in Muslim countries.
For a worldwide religious tradition that has no central governing body or structure, the theological faculty of Al-Azhar has assumed an influential role. Islam is also closely bound to a legal system and so cannot afford to sever its identity from the ethics of daily life or the policies and practices of governance.
Today Al-Azhar includes not only the historic mosque and theological programme. It is also a full-fledged university, Sunni Islam’s most prestigious, with preparatory, undergraduate and graduate programmes in a whole network of teaching institutions that boasts two million students.
Putting the legacy at the service of global peacebuilding
Yet, particularly in Egypt itself, Al-Azhar has also had continually to position itself in relation to nationalism, governmental power, and politics, as well as to other strands in Islam. It was made a state university in 1961, and the imam himself is appointed by the government.
Under the leadership of the present Grand Imam—who was appointed in 2010 and who heads both the mosque and the university—that preeminence has been put decisively in the service of peacebuilding. Dr al-Tayyeb has been a strong voice for moderate Islam, decrying the use of Islam by violent extremist groups. He has initiated programmes to reform religious instruction. And he has organized scholarly conferences on Islamic identity, the role of shariah, and countering extremism.
The Grand Imam was also instrumental in establishing the Muslim Council of Elders in July 2014 in Abu Dhabi, an independent international Muslim body, specifically aimed to unite Muslims everywhere in combatting violent extremism and sectarianism and in building peace.
The council, based outside of Egypt, extends Al-Azhar’s international influence in furthering a moderate Islam, promoting dialogue and understanding and countering violence. The 15 elders themselves hail from a dozen countries and include prominent Islamic scholars and heads of universities and ministries of religious affairs.
In fact, on his way to Geneva, Dr al-Tayyeb stopped in Bahrain and, greeted by the king, met with the council and “underscored the utmost keenness of the Muslim Council of Elders on unity of the Islamic nation and its categorical rejection of any act or ideology begetting conflict and failure as well as fanning discriminatory sectarianism,” according to the Emirates News Agency.
In association with the council’s elders, the Grand Imam has reached out in dialogue not only to other branches of Islam but also in dialogue and partnership with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Pope Francis and, now, the World Council of Churches.
Learn more about the collaboration of the WCC and the Muslim Council of Elders
