Hidden Answers To Religion Revealed
God comes to us, not in our attractiveness, like “Oh, I really love this person and just hate their sin.” No, he finds me reprehensible because of my rebellion, just like we find certain wicked people reprehensible because of their sin. Although it is possible for a person to accept both types as valid, in reality, most people will tend to focus on one type to the exclusion of the other. Who was the person who discovered Switzerland? And, of course, who could forget the ears? And some religious officials, even those suspicious of the Muslim Brotherhood, came to feel that the struggle taking place between the Brotherhood and the country’s new political leadership had become one between religion and secularism and, therefore, that it was necessary to take sides. It also showed these entities as having a sense of institutional mission and interests, sometimes different from each other and, while generally in line with the regime, still distinct from it. While it is a part of the state and has a leadership that is loyal to the regime, Al-Azhar still managed to assert a measure of autonomy and demonstrate that its closeness to the centers of power did not make it totally subservient.
The state gives special emphasis to tolerance and it also exerts greater control over the religious sphere than in most other Arab countries. Indeed, the 2011-2013 period greatly increased the desire of Al-Azhar’s leadership to protect its autonomy from the political sphere and consolidate its internal control. Indeed, official religious institutions do not always serve regime interests efficiently, even when placed in the hands of supporters. The struggle and its outcome may have provided a rare window into the kinds of disagreements that occur on a regular basis in Egypt’s official religious domain, but also in the Arab world generally. Their struggle illustrated how official religious institutions are not merely tools of the regime but also arenas of conflict. The barely hidden struggle among Egypt’s religious institutions came into full public view in summer 2016 in the contest over written sermons. It did earn some support from those who argued that the level of sermons was unimpressive and that their length was excessive, but the real motivation seemed as much political as it pertained to the homilies themselves.
Gomaa tried to save face by making the written sermons not obligatory, but he had clearly lost in the unusually public confrontation. It is the act of making a decision that brings joy to a person; the understanding that what they have chosen to believe is right for them. At the time, Religious Affairs Minister Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa led a campaign to shut down unlicensed mosques, bar preachers who did not have official permission to preach, reorganize charitable and support activities undertaken by committees associated with leading mosques, and close mosques during periods between prayers.27 Today, even supporters of the campaign acknowledge that its reach was incomplete, with the monitoring and staffing capacity of the ministry of religious affairs, even buttressed by security bodies, simply insufficient to implement the full control intended. In the following year, the Sisi regime continued to move against Muslim Brotherhood supporters throughout the religious establishment, dismissing them from positions of authority, seeking to end their influence over the educational curriculum,26 and shutting down a strong protest movement among Al-Azhar students.
Ahmad al-Tayyib, the sheikh of Al-Azhar, and therefore the figure at the head of its vast network of educational and scholarly institutions, sat beside then-field marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi when Sisi announced Morsi’s removal. It was clear they were aimed at religious thinking that Sisi held responsible for promoting extremism, terrorism, and violence. While there have been complaints from religious officials and others about the heavy-handedness of the regime campaign, religious spaces in Egypt-especially mosques and broadcasters-are far more tightly controlled than they were a few years ago. Even three years after the regime’s efforts to bring about strong centralized control over religion, officials acknowledged there were still Salafi, Muslim Brotherhood, and other preachers opposed to the regime able to make their voices heard. Some institutions have separate priorities, while efforts to enhance their effectiveness and credibility often increase their autonomy-and thus their ability to pursue separate agendas and even provide some limited, protected space for dissident groups within their own ranks. Official religious institutions and Islamist organizations may be political opponents, but they are also often ideological cousins.34 In short, by building institutions with a wide reach and allowing them some measure of specialization and autonomy, the state apparatus shows it is not a coherent body.