Cairo - In an interview with the editors-in-chief of three national newspapers, El-Sisi said that the "new council will be created to take charge of reforming religious discourse and fighting extremist ideas in a systematic way, as well as drying up the sources of the terrorists' funding." El-Sisi said the war against terrorism must include an intellectual and cultural dimension to help correct distorted interpretations of Islam. Presidential spokesman Alaa Youssef also told reporters last May that El-Sisi's decision to form the new council was motivated by more than just the 9 April bomb attacks. "Since he came to office three years ago, President El-Sisi has been calling on the leading moderate Sunni Islam institution of Al-Azhar to play a cardinal role in reforming religious discourse," said Youssef. However, political analysts have suggested that El-Sisi's decision to form the NCCTE came after he lost hope that Al-Azhar alone would be able to lead the necessary reforms of religious discourse. Independent MP Mohamed Abu Hamed told Ahram Online that "when President El-Sisi called for a religious and cultural revolution two years ago, he thought Al-Azhar would be able to take the lead. Two years later, it is clear Al-Azhar alone cannot shoulder this responsibility." Nabil Abdel-Fattah, a political and religious analyst at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS), wrote in an article in Al-Ahram last May that he agrees that al-Azhar has not done enough to reform religious discourse. Abdel-Fattah argued that "the deep-seated religious conservatism of Azharite clerics leaves them unable to reform religious discourse." Abdel-Fattah also believes a major task facing the National Council for Combating Terrorism and Extremism should be to overhaul the religious curricula of Al-Azhar University, its associated institutes and schools. "The existing curricula explain why the institution became prey to domination by the Muslim Brotherhood for a long time, not to mention that most of the violent attacks that have hit Egypt since 30 June 2013 – when the Muslim Brotherhood regime was removed from power – have been perpetrated by graduates of Al-Azhar University," said Abdel-Fattah. Abu Hamed said he finished drafting a law to reform Al-Azhar earlier this year, but he has so far not been able to gain wide support among MPs for this legislation.
