Introducing Sheikh Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi

Last week, when the Grand Sheikh Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi announced his intentions to formally ban the wearing of niqab in educational institutions, it was not the first time his pronouncement on female attire stirred controversy. Back at the end of 2003, when the French government announced its ban of all “conspicuous religious symbols” in public schools, Tantawi issued a statement legitimizing the requirement. He effectively called on Muslim women living in France to accept the restriction against their own better judgment – we might even say, their Tantawi-informed judgment – of what they should wear.
Many of those expressing outrage at this Sheikh’s most recent legal “opinion” are responding to what has been perceived as a pattern of capitulation to the desires and demands of secular governments. Tantawi, as Sheikh and Grand Imam of the al-Azhar complex, is posted at the top of the hierarchy of Sunni Islamic learning. However, he is also under watchful eye (if not the thumb) of his appointer: Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Thus, the entire spectrum of interpreters of Islam is ready to pounce on his every ruling, especially with the charge that he is merely a puppet of a secular, authoritarian regime.
It should be noted that many of the most critical voices who charge him with betraying Islam appeal to the concepts of free choice and individual liberties in order to express their disapproval – this was true both of this ban and of his support of the French one. Meanwhile, so-called moderates and secularists nod with approval at what appears to them as an affirmation of Western, liberal values (with the objective of liberating women from restrictions that are viewed as symbolized in headwear). Tantawi himself insists that the ban issues solely from his interpretation of what is Islamic. Whether or not he acknowledges the role of free choice and liberty in this and other rulings, Tantawi is nonetheless caught up in a bizarre tug-of-war over a supposedly secular and individualistic language of rights and representation of true Islam.
This is not the space to sort out all the elements of this niqab controversy, nor to speculate about Tantawi’s “true motives.” This recent episode does, however, provide a good occasion to ask: who is this man? From where does he derive his authority? Against what background has he taken this stance opposing what has become, for many, a symbol of feminine piety? And what else has he put forth in the way of positions and fatawa? In this and future posts, an effort will be made to err on the side of generosity in characterizing each figure. Flaws and inconsistencies are best understood through the lens of the sympathetic viewer.
Tantawi was born in 1928, in the village of Selim Al-Sharqi, in the governorate of Sohag. The man shares his birth year with the organization of the Muslim Brotherhood (the organization that is, by the way, his most meticulous overseer and outspoken critic). To provide a bit of perspective, that means that in the background of his extensive and life-long studies of the Qur’an, the Hadith literature, the art of Tafsir, and juridical tradition is a span of history that includes almost the entire life of the independent nation of Egypt, the reign of three Egyptian kings, the Second World War, the founding of the state of Israel, the Nasser period, a couple of wars with Israel, Sadat, Mubarak, and so on. From this perspective one might begin to see his inclination to “moderation” and compromise in a new light – as a pragmatic approach that has enabled many prominent figures of this generation to cope with one of the most difficult half-centuries in history.
Tantawi went from the village of his youth to school in Alexandria at the age of 16 – towards the end of World War II. He memorized the Qur’an – a rite of passage for any would-be scholar. From there, he entered Al-Azhar University, graduating from the Faculty of Religious Studies in 1958. In 1966, Tantawi completed his PhD in both Hadith and Tafsir. He completed his own massive exegesis of the Qur’an, and this art of interpreting the Holy Book and fundamental juridical sources has remained his specialty.
Tantawi spent almost twenty years outside Egypt – in both Libya and Saudi Arabia – but his career as a religious scholar continued without interruption. In 1986, not long after returning to Egypt and having barely gotten under way with an appointment to dean of Faculty of Arab and Religious Studies at al-Azhar, Sheikh Tantawi became Grand Mufti of Egypt – a position he was to hold for a decade. Since 1996, Tantawi has served as Sheikh of al-Azhar University and Grand Imam of al-Azhar mosque. He is thus the leader of the most prestigious institution of Islamic learning in the world of Sunni Islam. Both of these positions (Grand Mufti and Grand Imam) are official appointments made by president Mubarak, though with respect to the two institutions represented (the Dar al-Ifta or “house of fatwas” and the al-Azhar complex, respectively) the first is the more closely and officially connected to the state, while the second brings with it greater scrutiny from the Muslim populace both within Egypt and abroad.
Throughout his climb to what is at least symbolically a supremely influential position, Tantawi has proven to be a master of compromise and has been regarded with all the ambivalence that this brings. Perhaps the first, most controversial event in this regard was in 1989, when Tantawi, then Grand Mufti of Egypt, issued a fatwa that described some forms of financial interest as tolerable. Among them, those paid by government bonds and those on ordinary savings accounts. Though there are complex conversations about the authentic principles of Islamic finance and economics, many Muslims have taken ban on interest as a clear and unquestionable principle. This practice is taken to be a form of unearned gain and has become one of the bases of many an Islamic critique of capitalism. Thus Tantawi’s ruling sounded like a statement of approval and an act of facilitation for ever advancing influence from Western business practices and Western businesses themselves. In the realm of economics Tantawi has earned a reputation of taking liberty with his interpretive authority in order to accommodate those in power. However, the ruling did not issue as fiat. Tantawi’s rationale was based on an interpretation of the sources as banning usury – an extreme and manipulative form of interest-taking – but not any and all comparable forms of gain. In this case, as in others, therefore, it seems only fair to look more closely at Tantawi’s rulings and reasons. The temptation, on all sides, to view his rulings as a decision between religious and secular or Islamic and Western does an injustice both to this man and his office.
Another cluster of issues for Tantawi has been provided by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His place at the center of controversy in these cases has been less a matter of “religion vs. secularism” and more a matter of Arab loyalty vs. international (read Western) pressure. Throughout his career – and more often than not under intense pressure from American diplomats and would-be peacemakers – Tantawi has been ushered to center stage as a mediator and a vital Muslim voice of moderation. For the most part, he has been a natural in the role. However he has on occasion let his patrons down by taking a so-called hard-line stance against the occupation. Though he has been willing on many occasions to take part in meetings and negotiations with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, he has been caught channeling the anger and hatred towards this transplant nation that seethe throughout the region.
A related issue has been suicide bombings and Tantawi’s positions on this matter are without a doubt the most scrutinized of his career. He has been quite consistent in saying that it is never justified to take innocent life – a conviction about the textual sources that cannot be reduced to political pandering. After a number of major incidents around the globe, he has issued and reissued this opinion. In 2001 in the wake of the events of September 11, he very loudly and clearly condemned bin Laden for sanctioning and overseeing the killing of innocents. Furthermore, in 2006 a statement was issued with the purpose of clarifying the nature and meaning of jihad as justifying defensive use of force, only. In this case it seemed that Tantawi was as interested in persuading a Western audience that the term does not mean all-out war on non-Muslims as he was of persuading any Muslim majority.
With respect to Palestinian suicide bombing, Tantawi has been more inconsistent – at least on the surface. He has at times condemned suicide bombings against Israelis, while at other times condoning them, even arguing that the Palestinian attacks against Israelis may be understood as fundamentally different in moral quality from those by al-Qaida against U.S. targets. In 1998 he explicitly stated that such attacks in the Holy Land are permitted under Shari’ah law. This must not, however, be regarded as hypocrisy. One can find in this wavering an attempt to be consistent about the harming of innocents while acknowledging the truly grave degree of injustice to which Palestinians are daily subjected. Moreover, Tantawi exhibits in this and other cases, an astute awareness of different audiences – none of which are particularly good at perceiving moral complexity and nuance. Unfortunately a 21st Century Sheikh of al-Azhar does not get to manage which audience sees or hears what message.
Last year, Tantawi provoked intense criticism (including calls for his resignation) by shaking hands with Israeli president, Shimon Peres, at a U.N. sponsored interfaith conference in New York. Efforts by Tantawi’s representatives, to point out that the metropolis is well-known as a place where shaking hands doesn’t mean anything, proved futile. Instead, the fall-out highlighted the absurdity of state-sponsored Sheikhdom: though many Egyptians may have developed an attitude of resignation towards their government’s normalized relationship with Israel, a higher standard is in place for this representative of Islam. As for the standards applied to the representative of Islam within the limits of Mubarak’s Egypt? Well, herein lays the tension that has become the emblem of Tantawi’s career.
Critics accuse Tantawi of negotiating competing expectations by compromising on principles. But Tantawi has played an important role actually negotiating between warring factions. In addition to his work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Tantawi has engaged in trying to ease tensions between factions in Iraq. In 2006, he even offered to travel to Iraq to mediate between Sunni and Shi’a groups, and throughout America’s presence in Iraq, he has issued statements not only calling for an end to violence between Muslims, but also calling for Iraqis to participate peacefully in democratic elections. Tantawi is also known to have a longstanding and strong relationship with the Coptic Pope Shenouda, and he has repeatedly emphasized that Christians and Muslims must and do enjoy equal citizenship in the Egyptian state.
To return to the constellation of issues that opened this piece, something can be said about Tantawi’s rulings on women. As this most recent controversy suggests, the Grand Imam has had much to say about issues impacting the behaviors of women, in both public and private life. To name just a few pronouncements in this regard: he has ruled to permit abortion in some circumstances; he has banned surrogate motherhood as well as artificial insemination from anyone other than a living husband; he has labeled female circumcision un-Islamic; and he has prohibited women from leading prayer. These rulings like those on other issues may suggest a mixture of conservative and liberal values.
This is symptomatic of his life-long challenge of walking a line between secular and traditional religious life. In fact, Tantawi’s job would probably be much easier if it actually were a simple traceable line. This distinction between “Islamic” or “religious” and “secular” has become the dominant and most readily available conceptual tool for making judgments about figures like Tantawi. And while it does identify very real spheres of influence in Tantawi’s career, it is too reductive to explain the positions of a man who has spent more than six decades devoted to the interpretive efforts of ijtihad.
BM