The Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Ahmed el-Tayyeb has recently stirred up a hornet's nest when he criticised a famous religious channel, launched months ago with the aim of promoting what owners and administrators call “moderate Islam”. In statements published in the semi-official daily Al-Ahram on Saturday, el-Tayyeb said the channel, called Azhari, is a “matter of mere business”. But this caused a note of discord to creep into his relationship with his numerous admirers around Egypt. One reader wrote an extended letter to the editor of the Arabic language daily Al-Akhbar, asking the top Muslim cleric questions about what he meant by his statements. “Do the people who present the programmes on this channel really trade religion for money?” asked the reader in his letter. A big number of such channels have popped up across the Arab world over the last few years to talk believers into going along the right path of good and charity. But this has not been without criticism from scholars, who accused the clerics appearing on these channels of spreading intolerance and making the life of Muslims difficult. One of these channels, Al-Rahma (Mercy), was closed down a short time ago because of allegations by some European Jewish organisations that it was full of anti-Semitic sentiments. But the shock to the viewers of Azhari might be much bigger, given the huge readership it enjoys thanks to the luminous clerics and academics it used to host to talk about what they like to call the “beautiful face” of Islam. Sheikh Khalid el-Guindy, an iconic cleric from Al-Azhar who manages the channel, did not return calls by the Egyptian Mail to comment on the statements of the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar. But in previous statements to the media he said his channel was a non-profit that only meant to spread moderate Islam through a host of the best academics and clerics from Al-Azhar. Even with this, other clerics are divided on the channel that gets its name from Al-Azhar, the most important seat of Sunni Islam in the world. “The channel has nothing to do with Al-Azhar,” said Egypt's Religious Endowments Minister Mahmoud Hamdy Zaqzouq. “It gets funding from Libya,” he added. Other clerics found no fault with this. They say the fact that channel presenters and hosts are paid by foreigners is not a big deal. “This is particularly true as long as these people present Islam in a good way,” said Abdelhakam el-Saedy, a scholar from Al-Azhar University. “If Al-Azhar is really angry at this channel, it can start its own channel,” he told the Egyptian Mail in an interview.
