Islamic university on the way:
It is with absolute disbelieve reading the Jyllands Posten and CPH Post article 'Islamic University on the way'. Al Azhar is widely known for its extremism and to be under the influence from organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood which has got notorious members and Al Azhar 'graduates' such as Al-Zawahiri who is Osama Bin Laden's spiritual mentor.
Moreover it has hatched terrorism apologists such as Tariq Ramadan [2] who is the grandson of Hassan Al Bannah the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood[5] in 1928, Hani Ramadan who is Tariq Ramadan's brother headed the Al Taqwa Bank in Switzerland which has funded Al Qaeda terrorism with clandestine credits to Al Qaeda members.
Tariq Ramadan is prohibited to enter the United States on charges of involvement with terrorism – Tariq Ramadan has previously defended the Islamic practice of stoning women to death for adultery in France in 2003 to name a few of the values he promotes in a well articulated and soft spoken manner which can best be described as an Islamic Goebbles.
Moreover even in Egypt the Al Azhar University is causing controversy.
Egyptian reformists such as intellectual and poet Ahmed Abd Al-Muti Higazi who has explained "...Those who quote [religious scriptures] and impose the word [namely, the chief clerics] are the ones responsible for producing fundamentalist terror...." Higazi added, "The positions of the sheikh of Al Azhar...were established by the state, but they serve only to root the principle of quote-hear-obey. They kill creativity and lead to the atrophy of the Arab mind."[1]
With this in mind one can be tempted to ask what exactly Rasmus Alenius Boserup understands by the logic development in regard to the Islamic Faith Society turning to Al Azhar, needless to point out that the notorious Imams Akhmed Akkari and Abu Laban went to Egypt among places prior to the explosion of the cartoon crisis, the pictures they showed were not of the little Mermaid as we all know.
"Rasmus Alenius Boserup, director of the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute in Cairo, believed it was a 'logical development' that the Islamic Faith Society would turn to Al-Azhar for co-operation in developing its activities in Denmark. 'There's hardly anything dangerous in that,' said Boserup,"
Danish-Egyptian 'Dialogue' in this context is a rather Owellian twist bearing resemblance to Newspeak – From there the logic is to be found, but then again, considering the Islamic Faith Society and what the Al Azhar University stands for there is a real and sinister logic.
If taking the Al Azhar curriculum on face value this will be the 'dialogue' which we can expect to get and which is to even the untutored mind promoting a supremacist ideology with a religious sanction – Not to mention with what little imagination it takes to figure out which kind of students such a University will hatch – I will let the reader to decide whether Boserup is being sincere or sarcastic when exclaiming 'There's hardly anything dangerous in that,'.
From Middle East Research Institute on the Al-Azhar in Cairo:
If we examine some of the extremist curricula, we will find that the principle of fighting any non-Muslim and killing him is not an offensive innovation by [founder of Wahhabism] Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab and by [ Ayman ] Al-Zawahiri, [Osama bin Laden's deputy and the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization]. This [is] because a book of the Hanafi [school of thought], ' Al-Ikhtiyar fi Ta'lil Al-Mukhtar ' [by Abdallah Ibn Mahmoud Al-Mawsily ] teaches the next generation that 'the war against the infidels is an obligation of all intelligent, healthy, free, and able men…
And when the Muslims besiege their enemies in a town or a fortress, they must call upon them to convert to Islam. If they convert, [the Muslims] must cease fighting them, and if they do not convert, they must call upon them to pay the jizya [poll tax]. If they refuse to pay the jizya, the Muslims must call upon Allah's help in the war against them, to erect catapults, to destroy their fields and their trees, to burn them, and to pelt them [with catapult stones], even if [the enemies] use Muslims as a human shield…'
What Kind of Thinking are We Teaching Our Next Generation, that It has the Right to Attack Other Countries in Order to Convert Them to Islam?
The book then instructs [Muslims] to act with compassion in this war: 'The Muslims must not breach a contract assuring protection [of the subjugated], must not take more than their share of the booty, must not mutilate bodies, kill madmen, women, children, cripples, one whose right hand has been amputated, or an elderly man, unless one of them is a king or a person able to fight, to incite [to war], to give advice about war or to instigate [fighting] by means of his possessions.'
The stipulation that women, elderly, and cripples would be pardoned if they did not incite to war implies that everyone, in effect, should be killed, since no citizen living in a country attacked by foreigners does not incite to battle…[3]
More on the Al Azhar from National Review:
One issue on the agenda should be Al Azhar. Immediately after 9/11, a group of leading clerics and professors declared jihad against the U.S. at the most prestigious Islamic center of learning in the Muslim world, the Egyptian-government-supported Al Azhar. The issue of extremism at Al Azhar has emerged as one aspect of the war on terrorism which has not received much attention.
DECLARATION OF WAR
Sheikh of Al Azhar, one of the most coveted positions of authority in Sunni Islam, from 1929-1935 was Muhammad al-Ahmadi al-Zawahiri, grandfather of al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri. More recently Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, who previously served as mufti of Egypt until he was appointed by the government as Sheikh of Al Azhar, has led the call in Egypt for jihad against U.S. forces in Iraq.
At a press conference last year, Tantawi called on the Iraqi people to "continue its jihad in defense of religion...whether [by] martyrdom operations [i.e. suicide operations] or [by] any other means." He encouraged volunteers from Muslim countries to go to Iraq "to support the jihad...because resistance to oppression is an Islamic obligation...." During a Friday sermon at Al Azhar the following day, Tantawi added: "The American aggression against Iraq is not acceptable to Islamic law.... The Iraqi people must defend itself...because it is a jihad that is authorized by Islamic law.... The gates of jihad are open until the Day of Judgment, and he who denies this is an infidel..."[4]
This leaves little doubt in mind and but an ice-cube from the top of the ice-berg – How is it possible that such issues can be ignored?
In who's interest is it and for what purpose?
Clearly the Al Azhar is a University in which students are taught the Islamist ideology which has resulted so far in graduating the most notorious Islamic terrorists in today's world, among those are the late leader and co-funder of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas Sheik Akhmed Yassin [6].
Rolf Krake
Quoted sources:
[1] http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/stalinsky200404120847.asp
[2] http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/111
[3] http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD79004
[4] http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/stalinsky200404120847.asp
[5] Muslim Brotherhood http://www.meforum.org/article/687
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Azhar_University