He was a man who brought controversial ideas to the table. Last year, he sparked a massive upheaval after arguing that the niqab – full-face covering – should be banned from Egypt. Now, the outspoken Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar Mohamed Tantawi is dead as a result of a sudden heart attack while on a trip to Saudi Arabia. He was 81-years-old. The grand sheikh was the head of Sunni Islam's most notorious institution. The vast majority of Egypt's 80 million people adhered to his statements and the institute's decisions on matters of faith. He will be remembered as a moderate who attempted to show support for women's rights and break from the traditional conservative manner Islamic leaders in the region had become accustomed to in recent decades. An outspoken leader, he often came under threat from fundamentalists and was hated by the Salafists in Saudi Arabia, ironically the place of his death. He will likely be remembered for his outburst last year at an elementary school in Egypt where he lashed out at a young girl who was fully veiled. He said it wasn't a part of Islamic tradition and should be barred from Egyptian institutions. It was part of his years of championing women's rights, something that went at odds with the traditionalism inherent in al-Azhar. He famously told Egypt's parliament that “men are not made of gold and women from silver.” 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 the Sheikh’s last and most prominent “opinion†were responding to what had 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, was posted at the top of the hierarchy of Sunni Islamic learning. However, he was also under watchful eye (if not the thumb) of his appointer: Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Thus, the entire spectrum of interpreters of Islam was ready to pounce on his every ruling, especially with the charge that he was merely a puppet of a secular, authoritarian regime. It should be noted that many of the most critical voices who charged him with betraying Islam appealed to the concepts of free choice and individual liberties in order to express their disapproval – this was true both of the niqab ban and of his support of the French one. Meanwhile, so-called moderates and secularists nodded 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 insisted that the ban issued solely from his interpretation of what is Islamic. Whether or not he acknowledged the role of free choice and liberty in this and other rulings, Tantawi was nonetheless caught up in a bizarre tug-of-war over a supposedly secular and individualistic language of rights and representation of true Islam. 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. 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 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 served as Sheikh of al-Azhar University and Grand Imam of al-Azhar mosque. He was 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 was at least symbolically a supremely influential position, Tantawi had proven to be a master of compromise and had been regarded with all the ambivalence that this brought. 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, 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 decisions between religious and secular or Islamic and Western does an injustice both to this man and his office. Another cluster of issues for Tantawi had been provided by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His place at the center of controversy in these cases had 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 had been ushered to center stage as a mediator and a vital Muslim voice of moderation. For the most part, he had been natural in the role. However, on occasion he let his patrons down by taking a so-called hard-line stance against the occupation. Though he had been willing on many occasions to take part in meetings and negotiations with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, he had been caught channeling the anger and hatred towards this transplant nation that permeates throughout the region. A related issue had been suicide bombings and Tantawi’s positions on this matter were without a doubt the most scrutinized of his career. He had 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 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 had been more inconsistent – at least on the surface. He had 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 US 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 found 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 exhibited in this and other cases, an astute awareness of different audiences – none of which were 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 UN 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 had become the emblem of Tantawi’s career. Critics accused Tantawi of negotiating competing expectations by compromising on principles. But Tantawi played an important role in actually negotiating between warring factions. In addition to his work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Tantawi 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 issued statements not only calling for an end to violence between Muslims, but also calling for Iraqis to participate peacefully in democratic elections. Tantawi was also known to have a longstanding and strong relationship with the Coptic Pope Shenouda, and he repeatedly emphasized that Christians and Muslims must and do enjoy equal citizenship in the Egyptian state. Something can be said about Tantawi’s rulings on women. As the niqab controversy suggested, the Grand Imam 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 ruled to permit abortion in some circumstances; he banned surrogate motherhood as well as artificial insemination from anyone other than a living husband; he labeled female circumcision un-Islamic; and he prohibited women from leading prayer. These rulings like those on other issues suggested a mixture of conservative and liberal values. This was symptomatic of his life-long challenge of walking a line between secular and traditional religious life. In fact, Tantawi’s job would have probably been 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 spent more than six decades devoted to the interpretive efforts of ijtihad. **portions of this appeared in Betsy Mesard's “Introducing Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi“ BM
