Al-Azhar Not to Drop Plan to Hold Anti-Shia Competition
Abdul Munim Fuad, the dean of Al-Azhar’s faculty of Islamic sciences, said the Egyptian center is going to hold the contest.
Earlier, the Shia Awqaf Department of Iraq said that head of Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb had announced the cancellation in his meeting with Iraqi ambassador to Cairo.
Al-Azhar had said late last year that it planned to hold a competition on "Spread of Shia Islam in Sunni Community; Reasons, Dangers and How to Confront It”.
Fuad rejected what the Shia Awqaf Department of Iraq said, stressing that the competition will certainly be held.
He said Shias "have no power in Al-Azhar to be capable of cancelling the contest”, adding that Al-Azhar is an independent institution which "will not accept any interference in its affairs”.
Fuad claimed that the planned competition does not insult Shias but "only highlights the need for confronting Shias’ inroads into Egypt and Sunni communities”.
This is a scholarly competition aimed at getting the students acquainted with how to do research and use scholarly methods to "confront extremist ideology”, he went on to say.
He also claimed that Shias have constantly rejected Al-Azhar’s invitations for dialogue.
There has been a rise in anti-Shia sentiments in Egypt in the past few years due to attempts by extremists and Takfiri groups.
