Décès de l'imam Tantaoui, plus haute autorité de l'islam sunnite

[Al-khiyal]

Décès de l'imam Tantaoui, plus haute autorité de l'islam sunnite

LE CAIRE, Mercredi 10 Mars 2010 -- Cheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantaoui, grand imam d'Al-Azhar (Egypte), la plus haute autorité de l'islam sunnite, est décédé mercredi en Arabie saoudite d'une attaque cardiaque, a annoncé l'agence officielle égyptienne MENA. Cheikh Tantaoui "est décédé mercredi dans la capitale saoudienne Ryad après une attaque cardiaque subite" alors qu'il se trouvait à l'aéroport international de la ville pour regagner Le Caire, a indiqué l'agence. Il a été transporté d'urgence dans un hôpital, selon la même source.

[Al-khiyal]

Sheikh Tantawi, Egypt's top cleric dies aged 81

March 10, 2010 -- Egypt's foremost Muslim cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, has died, aged 81, while on a trip to Saudi Arabia. Sheikh Tantawi was the Grand Imam of the al-Azhar mosque and head of the al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam's centre of learning and scholarship. He died of a heart attack in the Saudi capital Riyadh, where he was attending a prize-giving ceremony. Sheikh Tantawi had infuriated radical Islamists with his moderate views on women wearing the veil. His body will be taken to the Saudi city of Medina, the burial place of the Prophet Muhammad, for burial, Egyptian authorities said. An adviser to the Sheikh told Egyptian television Sheikh Tantawi's death was a shock, as before leaving for Saudi Arabia he had seemed in "excellent shape and health". A member of Sheikh Tantawi's office, Ashraf Hassan, told news agency Reuters that Mohamed Wasel, Sheikh Tantawi's deputy, was expected to temporarily take over leading the institution until the Egyptian president appointed a new head for the body.

Sheikh Tantawi was appointed to his position by Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak in 1996. But as a government appointee, he was always forced to negotiate a careful path between his religious imperatives and his government position, the BBC's Christian Fraser in Cairo says. He was vocal in his opposition to female circumcision, which is common in Egypt, calling it "un-Islamic". Last year, Sheikh Tantawi barred female students at the university from wearing the full-face covering niqab veil. He also caused upset other Muslim scholars by saying that French Muslims should obey any law that France might enact banning the veil. His views on the veil prompted Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood to accuse him of "harming the interests of Islam". He has also condemned suicide attacks, saying extremists had hijacked Islamic principles for their own ends. "I do not subscribe to the idea of a clash among civilizations. People of different beliefs should co-operate and not get into senseless conflicts and animosity," he told a conference in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur in 2003. "Extremism is the enemy of Islam. Whereas, jihad is allowed in Islam to defend one's land, to help the oppressed. The difference between jihad in Islam and extremism is like the earth and the sky," Sheikh Tantawi said.

[Al-khiyal]

وفاة محمد سيد طنطاوي شيخ الجامع الأزهر

توفي محمد سيد طنطاوي شيخ الجامع الأزهر عن عمر يناهز 81 عاما، اثر ازمة قلبية المت به خلال زيارته للرياض.

وذكرت وسائل الاعلام الرسمية المصرية ان "فضيلة شيخ الازهر محمد سيد طنطاوي توفي صباح اليوم الاربعاء في العاصمة السعودية الرياض اثر ازمة قلبية مفاجئة".وكان شيخ الازهر قد وصل إلى الرياض أمس الثلاثاء للمشاركة في حفل توزيع جوائز الملك فيصل العالمية.

وذكر مراسل بي بي سي في القاهرة ان الازمة القلبية المت بالشيخ طنطاوي بينما كان في طريقه الى المطار عائدا الى مصر. ونقل على اثرها الى مستشفى قريب حيث فارق الحياة.

وقد نقل جثمان شيخ الأزهر على متن طائرة خاصة الى المدينة المنورة حيث يوارى الثرى في مقابر البقيع, وقد أرسلت الحكومة السعودية طائرة خاصة الى القاهرة لنقل عائلته للمشاركة في مراسم الدفن.

وقال عبد الله النجار احد مستشاري طنطاوي، خلال مقابلة مع قناة النيل المصرية، ان وفاة طنطاوي كانت مفاجأة، وان الشيخ كان يبدو في" صحة وحالة ممتازة" قبيل زيارته للسعودية.

وشغل طنطاوي منصب شيخ الجامع الازهر منذ عام 1996 خلفا للشيخ جاد الحق علي جاد الحق.

وشهدت رئاسة طنطاوي لمؤسسة الازهر العريقة عددا من المواقف التي اثارت جدلا واسعا في اوساط الاعلام المصري، واثارت آراؤه المعتدلة حفيظة المتشددين، مثل قراره بحظر ارتداء النقاب داخل قاعات الدراسة اواخر العام الماضي.

واعتبرت تلك الخطوة بمثابة فصل من فصول الصراع بين الاسلام المعتدل الذي تناصره الدولة المصرية وبين جماهير اصبحت تميل اكثر الى الرؤية المتشددة للاسلام.

وكان طنطاوي فوجئ اثناء زيارته لمعهد ازهري في مدينة نصر شمالي شرق القاهرة بطالبة في الصف الثاني الاعدادي ترتدي النقاب داخل قاعة الدرس فأمرها بخلعه. ونقلت وسائل الاعلام انه قال امام التلميذات ان "النقاب مجرد عادة ولا علاقة له بالدين الاسلامي من قريب او بعيد".

وبرغم ارتداء غالبية المسلمات في مصر للحجاب، وهو غطاء الرأس الاسلامي، فان عددا متزايدا من النساء في مصر بدأن في ارتداء النقاب.

وذكرت وكالة رويترز للانباء نقلا عن اشرف حسن، وهو من العاملين في مكتب طنطاوي، ان من المتوقع ان يتولى واصل حسن نائب طنطاوي قيادة مؤسسة الازهر حتى يعين رئيس الجمهورية رئيس جديد للمؤسسة.

ويضم الازهر عددا كبيرا من الجامعات والمعاهد والمدارس التي تنتشر في انحاء القطر المصري ويتلقى غالبية تمويله من الدولة.

[Al-khiyal]

Décès de l'imam Tantaoui :
Condoléances du président Bouteflika

Mercredi 10 Mars 2010 -- Le président Abdelaziz Bouteflika a adressé un message de condoléances à la famille du grand imam d'Al-Azhar cheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantaoui, décédé mercredi à Ryad d'une crise cardiaque, qui "incarnait la modération et la clairvoyance", a rapporté l'agence APS. "Le défunt était un pionnier des muftis et des exégètes du saint Coran. Il incarnait la modération et la clairvoyance et s'opposait à toutes les formes d'extrémisme, d'intégrisme et de fondamentalisme avec pour seul objectif de servir la religion et de guider la nation musulmane sur le droit chemin", écrit M. Bouteflika. "L'Algérie gardera un excellent souvenir" du religieux sunnite "qui lui a voué une amitié sincère et un soutien constant, notamment pendant l'épreuve de l'extrémisme à laquelle elle a été confrontée les dernières années", ajoute le président algérien.

[Al-khiyal]

Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, 1928-2010

Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, supreme sheikh of the internationally-known Islamic religious university of al-Azhar in Cairo, died this week in Saudi Arabia, aged 81. His remains have been interred in Jannat al-Baqi, the blessed cemetery of the relatives and companions of the Prophet Muhammad, in Medina. There is a disturbing cause for irony in the trivial fact of Tantawi's burial. Jannat al-Baqi is today a vast, empty space, from which the fanatical Wahhabis, who took over Mecca and Medina in 1924, removed the tombs and markers honoring the distinguished early Muslims whose graves were there. Wahhabism, which became and remains the state religion of Saudi Arabia, condemns monuments for the dead, and even intercessory prayers for the deceased, as forms of idolatry. In reality, erection of tombs and visits to them had been Muslim customs for more than 1,400 years. In addition, foreigners are not typically granted space in Jannat al-Baqi. Westerners might imagine Tantawi earned this honour because of his piety, but he was not a defender of traditional Islamic spirituality. Rather, he was a religious functionary, who served the Egyptian state no less than the ideological interests of the Saudis and other fundamentalists. In 2002, Tantawi changed his position on terrorism against civilians, by endorsing suicide attacks, and two years later he delivered a eulogy at the funeral of Yasir Arafat, a Marxist who was never identified with religious study.

Tantawi became known last year as a symbol of change in the Islamic lands, when he banned female students at al-Azhar from wearing the niqab, the face-veil. Tantawi condemned niqab as a folk custom without a basis in Islam – and as Muslims around the world know, only Saudi Arabia maintains a widespread imposition of the face-veil on women when they leave their homes. In recent times, the niqab has been universal in the Saudi kingdom, but since the accession to the throne of King Abdullah in 2005, and the beginning of a slow and less than effectual programme of social reforms, women in the western coastal region of Hejaz, including Jeddah, Mecca, and Medina, have sought to revert to their pre-Wahhabi freedom from face covering. Women travelling in the hajj pilgrimage to the holy cities do not wear niqab, and women in the old, Ottoman-ruled Hejaz had never accepted the practice.

Tantawi was a moderate in the same way King Abdullah is a moderate; compared with the radicalism of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the hard-line Wahhabi clerics, both appear to be in the vanguard of an Islamic renaissance. Prior to his order prohibiting niqab at al-Azhar, Tantawi condemned female genital mutilation (FGM), which he also described as unconnected to Islam. But both niqab and FGM have been supported by radicals among Muslims. Opposition to the un-Islamic niqab and FGM is to be applauded, but much more is needed from the head of al-Azhar, and from Muslim faith leaders in general, than these minimal actions. Although the niqab ban at the university provoked demonstrations by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, and caused even more controversy when it was extended by the Egyptian government to public universities, such progressive opinions are diluted when they are viewed as politically dictated by rulers who do not otherwise restrain corruption in their countries.

Rather than a cleric who will fulfil the orders of Egypt's secular president, Hosni Mubarak, without question, al-Azhar needs educators who will revive the spirit of inquiry, debate, and analysis among Islamic scholars. The Muslim imagination has been stifled by the influence of excessive oil wealth, the arrogance of leaders who govern without accountability, and the ignorance of fanatics who believe that knowing a few verses of Qur'an or hadiths – the oral commentaries of the Prophet Muhammad – makes them outstanding religious leaders. In the third Islamic century – corresponding to the ninth century, CE – the African Muslim scholar al-Jahiz noted critically, "every Muslim thinks he is a theologian, and that nobody else is better" at defending the religion. Sadly, this situation remains a constant in Muslim life.

The revitalisation of Islamic thought will begin when al-Azhar is no longer a battleground between the Mubarak government and the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, but, rather, a humanistic centre of learning independent of political and ideological demands. Wavering, along with Mubarak, between suppression and appeasement of fundamentalism, Tantawi failed to reinforce the Islamic principle that, as Muhammad himself is believed to have said, "the differences among scholars of religion are a blessing and a mercy". The prophet of Islam also declared, according to a well-established hadith, "My Companions are like the stars in the night sky – following any one of them you will be rightly-guided."

Muhammad Sayed Tantawi lived during a time of great challenge for Islam: the challenge to reaffirm faith while adapting to a new order of society. While he sometimes appeared as a source of enlightenment, he was finally too fond of access to power. Perhaps for him, King Abdullah was a more comforting protector than President Mubarak. But the road to Islamic fulfilment will be followed, as it was in the past, by those unafraid to separate themselves from political castes and official institutions, who search their own hearts, as well as the precedents of the Muslim intellect, for a reaffirming courage and determination. At al-Azhar, in the country of Egypt, and in the Muslim lands as a whole, personalities have yet to appear who can be justifiably compared with the great minds of the Islamic past, especially the wise Sufis. Tantawi has come and gone, and left scant traces of his passage in the sands of the Middle Eastern deserts.