“You've been very trying, venerable imam,” President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi said during 2018's Police Day celebrations. The president's remark, directed at the Grand Imam of Al-Ahzar Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb, encapsulates the relationship between the (...)
Islamist groups — the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood (MB), Salafis and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya with all their factions — won 67 per cent of the seats in the 2012 parliamentary elections and went on to tip the balance in favour of Mohamed Morsi over Ahmed (...)
US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem prompted Ahmed Al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's leading seat of learning, to release a (...)
As news of massacres and other horrors perpetrated against Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims dominates the media and social networking sites human rights activists around the world are asking how best to defend this persecuted minority.
UN Human Rights (...)
On 30 June 2013 millions of Egyptians took to the streets to demand an end to Muslim Brotherhood rule. They succeeded. But have we really freed ourselves from the Brotherhood's reactionary beliefs and terrorism? And what of the group four years (...)
The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb announced the dismissal of Al-Azhar University president Ahmed Hosni Taha and appointed Mohamed Hussein Al-Mahrasawi as acting president in his stead. Taha had been in office just three months.
The (...)
For months Al-Azhar and its Grand Imam Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb have faced heated criticism for failing to combat extremism. Such criticism has been amplified in the wake of the Palm Sunday bombings of the Church of St George in Tanta and St Mark's (...)
Holy Week began, as always, with the observance of Palm Sunday. Within hours tragedy struck.
As Coptic Christians attended church services across Egypt terrorist bombs in Tanta and Alexandria claimed the lives of dozens of people and resulted in the (...)
As Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani defended the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood during the Arab Summit in Jordan the Revolution Brigade, which many experts on Islamist affairs believe to be an affiliate of the Muslim (...)
Two years ago there was talk of the Muslim Brotherhood engaging in a process of ideological revision and a complete overhaul of the Guidance Bureau. The move was spearheaded by a wing of Brotherhood youth led by Gamal Hishmat, Essam Talima, Hamza (...)
Last week security forces arrested Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Bureau member Mohamed Abdel-Rahman, the man in charge of the organisation's activities in Egypt, together with six of his aides — Galal Mustafa, Mohamed Amer, Amar Al-Sarwi, Ahmed (...)
Omar Abdel-Rahman, who died last week at the age of 78 in Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina where he was serving a life sentence, asked to be buried in his native village in Daqhaliya, in Egypt. Will this wish be carried out? And (...)
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood failed to gather any support for a rally on 25 January. The day passed calmly, with Egyptians taking advantage of the extra day's holiday which coincided with the mid-year school break. Apart from a few gatherings in (...)
The Muslim Brotherhood has not yet given up on its attempts to undermine the Egyptian state and society and is now taking advantage of current economic straits. It is seeking to use its commercial assets, including pharmaceutical firms, to fan (...)
On 20 November, Chief Public Prosecutor Nabil Sadek announced that 292 people would be tried before military courts on charges of forming 22 terrorist cells under the umbrella of the Daesh affiliate Sinai Province, perpetrating “terrorist and (...)
The lead up to 11 November, the day on which the Muslim Brotherhood has called on people to take to the streets to protest the deterioration in their living standards, saw the pound being floated and cuts to fuel subsidies. The subsequent (...)
The movement Dunk, which means hardship, emerged two years ago and as time passed it grew in tandem with rising prices. Recently the movement called for a “revolution of the poor”, to be staged on 11 November, and the hashtag thawrat al-ghalaba (...)
A new round of squabbling has erupted in the long simmering animosity between the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis in Egypt. The row this time was triggered by an interview Sheikh Mohamed Hassaan gave to Al-Watan newspaper in which he claimed the (...)
The Muslim Brothers and their allies had nothing to cheer about on the third anniversary of the breakup of the sit-ins at Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Nahda Squares. They produced some proclamations here and there and the occasional shocking Tweet but they (...)
Recent days have brought an onrush of unprecedented crises in the history of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. Some concern Brotherhood youth, others the old guard, and still others the leaders who have been standing trial in criminal court, most (...)
Two years after President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi called for the “renewal of religious discourse”, Al-Azhar's Grand Imam, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, has unveiled a new strategy for the development of religious discourse at home and abroad.
Al-Sisi made the (...)
Despite attempts on the part of some Muslim Brotherhood leaders to halt the movement's disintegration, the Jordanian chapter of the Brotherhood has announced that it no longer has any links with its mother organisation.
The break, first mooted a (...)
Ahead of the anniversary of the 25 January Revolution, and as part of the government's efforts to highlight the dangers posed by the Muslim Brotherhood, a committee charged with auditing and administering the terrorist organisation's confiscated (...)
Rabaa Al-Adaweya Square, in northeastern Cairo's Nasr City, is one of the capital's best-known squares. It is located in an important military area: to the west of the square is the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Defence, housing estates for (...)
Al-Azhar is situated midway between two areas teeming with Islamic monuments: Al-Darb Al-Ahmar and Al-Gamaliya. In close proximity are the Husseiniya, the Mohamed Abu Dahab Mosque, Wakalat Al-Ghouri, the Palace of Qaitbay, Bayt Zainab Khatoun, the (...)