State-sponsored Al-Azhar scholars have begun a campaign to deter high school students in the Giza governorate from destructive thoughts, state-media reported on Thursday. The state report added that the campaign arrives in light of a larger state project for the reformation and "renewal of religious thought." A conference is scheduled to take place 9 March with the participation of Al-Azhar sheikhs, school teachers, students, and Ministry of Education officials. Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi had called for a "religious revolution" and for a "religious discourse that is in tune with the times" in a speech he gave on 1 January of this year. On a number of occasions, including last year in October, Al-Sisi met with religious officials and stressed the importance of improving religious preachers' speeches in order to "better represent" Islam and Egypt. According to a ministerial decree issued in January 2014, the Ministry of Religious Endowment now has authority over all mosques in Egypt. Imams have been arrested on charges of taking their religious sermons into a "political context". The ministry has banned 12,000 imams who are not certified by Al-Azhar to deliver sermons, and replaced them with 17,248 imams who have degrees from Al-Azhar institutions.
