It's an institution so highly revered in Sunni Islam that President Obama chose it as a co-host of his famous "A New Beginning" address to the Muslim world in his first year in office.
Now, as Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi calls on Al Azhar University in Cairo to help reform Islam, Al-Azhar's grand imam, Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb, is digging in his heels, reports Raymond Ibrahim at Jihad Watch.
Sisi and others have criticized the medieval-era or earlier books -- including the sacred histories and biographies of Muhammad -- that form the basis of Al Azhar's teaching.
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It's movements such as ISIS that rely on these books and their interpretation of the Quran for the doctrine of Islamic supremacy through violent jihad and other means.
In a recent television interview, the sheik, who is Egypt’s highest authority on Islam, was asked about his university’s reliance on the books, Jihad Watch reported.
Tayeb insisted there's no problem with them.
“Our heritage books are innocent and being abused by those ignorant or indecent among us -- and that’s all they can be: either ignorant or indecent,” he said.
But Ibrahim points out that it's from one of the histories of Muhammad, for example, that ISIS justifies burning people alive.
Tayeb argued that without the books, Muslims would be free to interpret the Quran as they wish.
He then, without mentioning Sisi's name, countered the Egyptian president's call to "change religious discourse."
"When [reformers] say that Al Azhar must change the religious discourse, change the religious discourse, this too is, I mean, I don’t know -- a new windmill that just appeared, this “change religious discourse” -- what change religious discourse?" the sheik asked.
"Al Azhar doesn’t change religious discourse -- Al Azhar proclaims the true religious discourse, which we learned from our elders," he declared.
Ibrahim noted Sisi made the call to "change religious discourse in a speech on New Year's Day 2015 "in an effort to change the international image of Islam, from one of war and enmity, to something more tolerant."
"Now," Ibrahim wrote, "the highest Muslim authority in Egypt has made clear that Al Azhar never had any intention of changing anything, that the 'religious discourse' articulated in the Medieval era -- one of hostility and violence for the other, in a word, jihad -- is the only ''discourse' Muslims can accept."
In his June 4, 2009, address in Cairo, Obama said, "For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning," praising it as one of "two remarkable institutions" hosting the event, along with Cairo University.
Later in the speech he remarked: "As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam -- at places like Al-Azhar -- that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment."