Mustafa El-Menshawy reports on the controversy surrounding radical changes being planned for Al-Azhar's educational system Not everyone is pleased by the recent Governors Council decision to turn more than 6,000 schools run by Al-Azhar into regular public schools. The council, composed of Egypt's governors, also mandated that no new Al-Azhar schools be established. "Al-Azhar was not notified of such decisions," its Grand Imam Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi told Al- Mussawar magazine after the council meeting when the decision was taken. He also argued that Al-Azhar was an independent body "enforcing its own decisions, not that of others". Documents obtained by Al-Ahram Weekly, however, show that directors of Al-Azhar's branches in various governorates received copies of the council's decisions. Tantawi's reassurances about Al-Azhar's independence notwithstanding, the documents showed that the Southern Sinai and Aswan branches of Al-Azhar received letters from the governors asking them to comply with the council's decisions. MP Abdel-Moeti Bayoumi, a member of Al-Azhar's Islamic Research Academy, was angry about Tantawi's attitude. "Why is he deceiving us when the letters have already been sent?" he asked. Bayoumi and two other MPs attempted to get parliament to discuss the council's decision before the assembly's summer recess; they were unsuccessful. Their appeal to parliament called the governors' decisions a "violation of Law 103 of 1961, which calls for Al-Azhar to be an independent body, and for promoting its message moderate Islam across the world. The decisions are a transgression on Al-Azhar's powers." The decision means that affected schools will experience a significant drop in the amount of religious education provided to students. Instead of a curriculum featuring up to a dozen religious subjects only one -- the same religious education class provided in public schools -- will be taught. Although it is within the governors' mandate to issue licenses for the formation of Azhar schools, the motives behind the move have been debated ever since. Ongoing construction on more than 500 new religious schools would be halted by the decision, noted the MPs. Ali Abu Laban, an MP from the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood who teamed up with Bayoumi, saw the decision as part of a series of governmental moves targeting Al-Azhar. "This is turning into a systematic trend," he said, citing a 2003 letter from the cabinet to Al-Azhar University President Ahmed El-Tayeb asking him to refrain from establishing any new religious education departments in any of the university's branches. The Weekly also obtained a copy of a letter sent to El- Tayeb asking him to replace a new Al-Azhar University building in Minya with a Minya University computer science faculty. Laban, no stranger to controversy, said "Zionists" and "Americans" were responsible for these developments. Relations between Al-Azhar and the US government have been tense ever since Tantawi issued a "jihad against aggressors" fatwa in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Although he later retracted the statement, and met with US Ambassador in Cairo David Welch more than once, the US administration had already voiced concerns, with a congressman even asking for Al-Azhar to be added to the US's list of terrorist groups. Prominent Muslim American activist Hussein Ibish told the Weekly by phone from Washington that that kind of characterisation showed "the ignorance of American officials regarding the tolerant line adopted by Al-Azhar". Many Muslim community leaders in the US are graduates of Al-Azhar, he said, "which is revered as a symbol". Ibish said the US was pressuring Egypt "to oversee religious institutions to make sure they are tightly controlled, especially after 9/11". Some analysts said that despite the high level of respect that should be accorded the venerable institution, some criticism of Al-Azhar was valid. "There is a need for change from within, so that Azharite students are better qualified," said prominent religious scholar Gamal Qutb. According to Qutb, that change remains unrealised because of "powers inside Al-Azhar refusing change". Hisham Qassem, head of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), agreed. "Al-Azhar is in the grips of an agonising dilemma of underdevelopment and under-achievement. Its graduates, and the whole establishment, is deeply estranged in a state of stagnation." Qassem was also critical of what he termed a "random policy of building religious schools and Al-Azhar university faculties based on when there are donations to do so". Second year Al-Azhar student Mohamed Salama admitted that some employers tend to bypass Al-Azhar graduates based "on claims that we have received a lower quality of education". Ahmed Suleiman, having just graduated from Al- Azhar's Faculty of Medicine (after having completed his school education in the Al-Azhar system), disagreed, saying the extra religious element made the students more "well rounded. For Azharite students to study several subjects on Islamic schools and branches," he said, "adds more to our spiritual and moral behavior, and allows us to adapt in life better than others." In any case, the controversy is more likely to flare up when and if the decisions are actually implemented. In the words of Al-Gumhouriya columnist Ramadan Abdel- Qader, "these kinds of Governors Council decisions could turn into a bombshell."
