The dwindling credibility of Al-Azhar -- once the Sunni Muslim world's most prestigious seat of learning -- may have helped spawn the rise of extremist Islamist thought. Gihan Shahine sheds light on why the demise took place, and what can be done to reverse it 'Long way to go' In an exclusive interview, Al-Azhar University President outlines a formula for dealing with present and future challenges by re-examining the traditions of the past When Egypt's former mufti, , was appointed president of Al-Azhar University in 2003, he realised just how heavy his burden would be. The university's deteriorating standards were "part of a more general disintegration in Egypt's educational system overall," he said. Instead of crying over spilt milk, El-Tayeb has since been attempting to explore the reasons for the demise, and devise solutions for a reversal. The basic tenet of that revival, in El-Tayeb's mind, is the need to reintroduce students to the legacy of Islamic tradition that is based on the holy Quran and the Sunna, or teachings of the prophet. "Some might think it is strange that modernising education would mean going back to traditional sources," El-Tayeb said with a smile, "but what they don't understand is that precise legacy will teach students the true ethics of tolerance." Islamic theology is based on a Quranic concept that people were created different, he said, and that difference must only be dealt with via debate, rather than dismissals or a clash. "Islam acknowledges Christianity and Judaism as divine religions, and accepts the difference in exigencies and ideologies as inevitable," El-Tayeb said. "And that is exactly what a legacy of Islamic tradition has to teach. "Tradition teaches us how Prophet Mohamed, his sahaba (disciples), and early Muslims managed to deal with other cultures and overcome confrontations with different civilisations," El-Tayeb said. "It is from them that we learn the art of debate, and the true ethics of war." Muslims, for instance, are not allowed to kill women, children or the elderly in times of war; nor should they cut a tree or disturb a priest worshipping in his den." While critics of Al-Azhar have often laid the blame for the university's demise with a 1961 law that forced Azharite students to study public school textbooks in addition to their own curricula, El-Tayeb does not agree. "I was a student in my final year of Al-Azhar secondary school when the law was first enforced. I admit that the extra material was a heavy load, of course, since we had to sit for almost 25 exams at the time. But at the same time, that load did not negatively affect our educational standards at all." At the university level, El-Tayeb would similarly rebut claims that Al-Azhar's branching out to include faculties of medicine and engineering had negatively affected the ancient university's educational standards. "Those colleges are only meant to provide society with doctors and engineers who are also good Muslims," he said. "Nor can anyone claim that scientific colleges have monopolised the best students, leaving Islamic studies to the underachievers." The real problem, in El-Tayeb's eyes, is the quality of teaching -- the same epidemic infesting education everywhere in Egypt -- and not just at Al-Azhar. "The problem has become a vicious circle," he said. "Unqualified school teachers produce unskilled university students. Some of them end up being incompetent university staff and preachers and so on." Matters went from bad to worse when underpaid Al-Azhar professors went to work in the Gulf, where, although they may have been well- compensated, there was no "chance for real, in- depth research work, and professors would become entrenched in a solitary doctrine which was doesn't accept diversity," El-Tayeb said. For many, regardless of the lack of scholastic achievement, the temptation to take on such Gulf jobs was too hard to resist. Making matters worse, those who ended up coming back authored books that current Al-Azhar University students now depend on. Many are filled with the Gulf's predominant wahabi doctrine, El-Tayeb said, an austere interpretation of Islam that shows little tolerance for other ideologies, and often accuses those who think differently of apostasy. "These books are usually superficial -- a far cry from traditional source material which presents a variety of views that breed tolerance." An ardent student of tradition, El-Tayeb's teachers included distinguished scholars like Sheikh Abdallah Deraz, Ali Abdel-Qader and Abdel-Halim Mahmoud, who all managed to adapt their traditional upbringings in a way that allowed coexistence with the foreign climates where they obtained their higher degrees. "In college, we were introduced to seven doctrines, including those of Shia and Sufism, and told they were all correct -- a rare advantage that distinguishes Al-Azhar from the world's Islamic universities," El-Tayeb said. "Every student, however, would then be free to follow the doctrine of their choice." That same atmosphere existed in the dormitories where students of different doctrines co-existed, and "in collective prayers, where everybody would follow a single imam (prayer leader)." That dynamic, El-Tayeb said, always meant Egyptians were more tolerant, and less susceptible to extremist thinking, than people in Morocco, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia, where there are restrictions on doctrines and alternative ideologies are often seen as deviant. "That kind of bias can even result in accusations of apostasy -- which is exactly the problem we are facing now." According to El-Tayeb, "we do have a long way to go, and a lot of hard work to do, before we can clear up all those misconceptions again."
