Egypt's state religious body puts Islamic centres under control, tightens grip

The move comes as part of a series of measures by the state to control the religious discourse, deemed as a tool to spread radical and extremist ideas

Egypt's ministry of religious endowments (Awqaf), one of the country's top state bodies, has decided to put all Islamic cultural institutes and preacher training centers under its control starting next academic year.
In a statement on Friday, Awqaf said it will not allow the educational centers, which used to be run by independent religious groups and associations, to be used “as a backdoor for extremism or terrorism.”
The move comes in a series of measures taken by the ministry and the country's leading Sunni Islamic institute, Al-Azhar, to control the message and curb extremist ideas.
The latest decision mandates that only the syllabus assigned by the ministry will be allowed for study because text books “representing certain affiliations” help to feed radicalism and are “tearing apart the societal texture.”
Heads of the ministry directorates in different cities would have to monitor these education centers, the ministry said, and to write reports on the text books and the teachers in the period of no more than a month.
Starting next academic year, only those certified from the ministry can head the center and those teaching should be “qualified and specialised.”
“No association or group will be an exception to this rule,” the ministry said, warning that any cultural or educational institute, not certified “with a written permit” from the ministry or Al-Azhar, would be deemed “illegal.”
The ministry said it will increase the number of its affiliated centers “to accommodate those wishing to receive the correct Islamic knowledge.”
It is not the first time that the state tightens its grip through Awqaf ministry on the religious speech, which authorities say was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamist allies, and was used against the country's national interest and security.
President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has on several occasions blamed religious discourse for the extremism that Egypt and other countries in the region are suffering from.
Last year, Awqaf ministry mandated all preachers to acquire a permit before giving religious sermons on the pulpit, ruled out hundreds of preachers and banned holding Friday prayers at the small less-regulated mosques known as Zawaya, which were often dominated by preachers from the Brotherhood and the fundamentalist Islamist Salafis.
According to a law passed under former President Adly Mansour, unauthorised preachers face jail terms of up to a year and maximum fines of LE 50,000 ($7,000).
“The danger coming from some of these institutes…is no less danger than claiming control over some mosques and Zawaya which some groups attempted to do,” the Friday statement said.
“As the ministry started to tighten its control over the mosques, some groups and associations used the (educational) institutes as a substitute to spread their ideas.”
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