UNDER THE CRESCENT: The faces of Islam A key but increasingly controversial figure in the Sunni world, Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi speaks to Mary Fitzgerald in Cairo
He is the man everyone from the pope to the US government turns to when they want to engage with moderate Islam. Scores of dignitaries, including Prince Charles and several archbishops, have filed through his cavernous wood-panelled Cairo office to hear him solemnly repeat that Islam is a religion of peace.
As Grand Sheikh of the venerable Al Azhar mosque, Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi has inherited a legacy that makes him one of the most influential voices in Sunni Islam, the creed followed by a majority of Muslims. Within the Sunni world, however, the credibility of that voice and the institution it represents is bitterly contested in a debate that reflects many of the internal tensions of modern Islam.
In a rare interview with The Irish Times, Sheikh Tantawi rounded on critics that claim Al Azhar has failed to grapple constructively with some of the biggest challenges facing Islam. "Al Azhar is distinguished by its moderation and its distance from extremism," he says. "It confronts lies with truths, injustice with justice and disloyalty with loyalty."
The slender minarets of Al Azhar - its name means "the brilliant" or "the radiant" in Arabic - have dominated the skyline of Cairo's teeming Islamic quarter since its foundation more than 1,000 years ago.
The original mosque gradually evolved into Sunni Islam's most revered seat of learning, an intellectual centre of gravity that safeguarded a strictly orthodox interpretation of Sunni tenets.
Committees within its walls handed down fatwas (religious opinions) on every aspect on life. In a religion with no central authority and no clerical hierarchy, Al Azhar became the closest thing Sunni Islam had to a Vatican.
Its ulama (scholars) were renowned, its edicts considered definitive and millions of Muslims looked to it for guidance.
In the 1960s, however, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser brought the ancient bastion of Islamic learning under government control. Al Azhar's grand sheikh was to be selected and appointed by the president and its ulama joined the state payroll. Since then Al Azhar has been dogged by allegations that its role is little more than government stooge, its prestige more historical than real.
Al Azhar's blessing of controversial decisions such as the peace treaty with Israel led many to believe it had become "a government institution with little public credibility", as one former member of its fatwa council lamented.
Today Sheikh Tantawi, appointed grand sheikh by President Hosni Mubarak in 1996, is a highly political figure in a highly politicised institution. Aware of this, he weighs his words carefully during the interview, appearing to mentally parse his answers until they are reduced to the blandest platitudes.
Islam, he says, is "a clear religion that calls for sincere worship of God and honourable morality. It gives each person his just due." Asked about the damage extremism has caused to the faith, he replies: "It has resulted in serious matters such as murder, destruction, corruption and aggression. All that is ugly and vile and all that religions of scripture are innocent of.
"The effect of this is that those who do not know Islam and do not know that it calls for human brotherhood will have a bad opinion of Islam."
On the Danish cartoons controversy: "This occurred out of ignorance and ill manners because people who are well mannered do not offend prophets."
His advice for European Muslims? "To understand their religion well, to know Islam extends its hands in peace to those who extend theirs in peace, to know that it calls for human brotherhood and that difference of ideologies does not prevent co-operation."
There is an air of world-weariness about Sheikh Tantawi, a diminutive septuagenarian dressed in long brown robe and the traditional Azhari red fez wrapped in a circular band of white cloth. He cuts a tiny figure in his vast office, its walls carved with geometric arabesques and hung with depictions of Islam's three holiest mosques in Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.
Not one, but two framed official portraits of Mubarak are displayed prominently. Sitting under the Egyptian president's gaze, Sheikh Tantawi bristles at the suggestion that Al Azhar's credibility may have suffered because of its links with the government. "I believe this kind of talk only comes from people who are ignorant and those who are liars," he says. "The job of Al Azhar is to support the government when it does something right and to advise and criticise it when it does something wrong."
No stranger to controversy, Sheikh Tantawi has proved unafraid to challenge religious orthodoxy, although critics claim such moves usually happen to coincide with government policy.
He upset conservatives by ruling that organ transplants and fixed interests on bank deposits were permissible, decisions many considered ran contrary to Islamic strictures.
Acknowledging the right of the French government to prohibit the veil in state schools, he caused outrage by advising Muslim women to comply with the ban. No Muslim authority or country, he argued at the time, had the right to oppose the ban because France is a non-Muslim country.
Sheikh Tantawi has also fostered contacts with Christian and Jewish leaders through his Permanent Committee for Dialogue with the Monotheistic Religions, drawing the ire of hardliners who called for his dismissal after he met with rabbis.
At times, however, his pronouncements result in what appear to be mixed messages from Al Azhar.
Since the September 11th attacks, Sheikh Tantawi has often condemned terrorism and organisations such as al-Qaeda.
Of those who use Islam to justify violence, he tells The Irish Times: "Their interpretations of the Koran and the hadith are misleading because they are interpreting what conforms to their desires even though it contradicts the truth."
When it comes to Palestinian suicide bombers, Tantawi tends to vacillate, declaring in one Friday sermon: "One who blows himself up among those [ Israeli] aggressors is a martyr."
He later qualified his remarks, saying suicide bombers should not target women and children. In 2001, he stated that Islamic law rejects "all attacks on civilians, whatever community or state is responsible for that attack".
More recently, a series of conflicting fatwas regarding the Iraq war revealed tensions behind Al Azhar's hallowed walls, with some scholars advocating armed jihad against coalition forces and a boycott of the fledgling Iraqi government.
Despite initially calling on Muslims "to support and defend the people of Iraq" against the invasion, Sheikh Tantawi later insisted Al Azhar had no right to interfere in the affairs of other nations, a move widely interpreted as betraying the institution's legacy as arbiter of worldwide Sunni opinion.
Such tensions are not new. Within Al Azhar, Sheikh Tantawi has been forced to root out hardline elements and factions opposed to his leadership. In the wider Islamic world, the rigid orthodoxy adhered to by Al Azhar itself has alienated many reform-minded Muslims, while its ties with the Egyptian government have riled militants.
Gamal Al Banna, the author of numerous books on Islamic reform, is a vocal critic of Al Azhar. In 2004, Sheikh Tantawi accused Al Banna, whose more conservative brother founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, and fellow reformists of "separating from Islam", a grave claim that teetered on the verge of declaring them guilty of apostasy.
Al Banna's books have been banned in Egypt at the request of Al Azhar's Islamic Research Council.
"In their eyes, no one outside Al Azhar is allowed to discuss Islam," he says. "No one is allowed to ask questions, all debate is smothered. This is bolstered by the support of the state. Any reform is impossible in such circumstances."
Because of the non-hierarchical nature of Sunni Islam,Sheikh Tantawi's authority rests solely on Al Azhar's centuries-old stature.
Any Muslim who disagrees with his rulings can seek another fatwa elsewhere. Many do, with Qatar-based cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi emerging as Tantawi's main rival in terms of influence. The two have clashed on many issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the role of women. Some critics believe the tarnishing of Al Azhar's image creates a dangerous vacuum in which extremist elements can claim authority.
"Al Azhar used to represent the moderate Islamic mind and it was respected all over the world," says Fahmy Howeidy, a Cairo- based commentator. "It is no longer what it used to be. When it is seen as an institution that represents the government instead of the Muslim people, there is the danger that people will look for leadership elsewhere."
Nevertheless, says Dr Ali El Samman, until recently an adviser on inter-faith dialogue to Sheikh Tantawi, Al Azhar's influence is still felt.
"When you go out of Egypt you feel it more," he explains. "You feel it is still an important reference point for Muslims, particularly in Asia and Africa. There is less of this sense that you get in Egypt that it is too close to the government.
"Al Azhar's credibility is not lost but the institution itself needs to be brought up to our modern times."
Muslims from all over the world still flock to Al Azhar to study Islamic philosophy, Koranic law and theology. Hundreds of thousands come to train as religious authorities. Its reputation as Sunni Islam's foremost centre of learning remains strong, however compromised it may be as an institution.
Whether Al Azhar's leadership can maintain its influence and authority in an increasingly fractured Islamic world remains to be seen.
Mary Fitzgerald is the inaugural Douglas Gageby Fellow at The Irish Times. "The Faces of Islam" appears every Friday