By Youssef El Beshlawy
In an official statement on Tuesday, Al-Azhar condemned a fatwa by Youssef Al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian Muslim cleric, which he had published on his website on Saturday.
In his fatwa, he labelled the 30 June events as a military coup, and urged all Egyptians to support ousted president Mohamed Morsi to restore him to his “legitimate post.” He also claimed that the Minister of Defence General Abdul Fatah Al-Sisi had consulted personalities who “do not represent the Egyptian people,” including Ahmad Al-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar.
Al-Azhar replied on Saturday in an official statement, blasting Qaradawi’s “arbitrariness and shallowness,” and asserting that the 30 June demonstrations carried out by millions of sincere, peaceful Egyptians could not be labelled a coup. They added that the uprising against Morsi did not differ from the January 25th Revolution.
The statement claimed that Al-Tayeb would have betrayed his national role had he had refused to participate in the latest national dialogue, called for by political and religious icons.
It added that Qaradawi’s fatwa “soils religion in political fights for power,” and stressed the efforts that Al-Azhar made to prevent the situation from deteriorating and reaching “this dire situation”.
“The true wise man is not who can tell the good from the bad. The true wise man is who can tell which of the two wrongs is better, and which of the two goods is worse.”
Al-Azhar reproached Qaradawi for the terms, expressions and allusions he employed in his fatwa. According to the Islamic institution, they are a ”deliberate call for sedition to which Al-Azhar cannot reply.”
