Outcry as university restricts staff media appearances

Lecturers at Egypt’s Islamic Al-Azhar University have condemned a recent ruling by the institution’s President Mohamed el-Mahrassawy that prevents them from appearing in the media without prior approval from the state seminary’s administration.

The decision was made last week after Saad Eddin Al Helali, a professor at Al-Azhar University, angered Islamic authorities in the predominantly Muslim country by publicly declaring his support in a phone-call to a television channel for Tunisia’s plan to grant women equal inheritance rights with men, the first such step in the Islamic world.

Many Muslim clerics around the world have condemned the Tunisian plan, which has yet to be approved by the parliament, saying it violates Islamic Sharia law.

“Is all this because of an opinion that the university president didn’t like?” said Soad Saleh, a professor of Islamic jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University, referring to the restriction on media appearances.

“If we are prevented from appearing in the media, to whom will people direct their questions?” said Saleh, a frequent guest on Egypt’s state and private TV stations.

“If the university believes that we have to quit preaching activities in the media, I’ll comply because I don’t accept that in my old age and with my long scholarly history I have to seek permission from the university's president or his secretary to do my mission [on TV],” the 73-year-old professor told private newspaper Al-Watan.

Regulation

The university, affiliated to Al Azhar sheikhdom (administration) – Egypt’s oldest Islamic seat of learning – said the move is aimed at better regulating its staff’s performance.

“Like other state institutions, Al-Azhar University has the right to regulate its affairs in a way that preserves its dignity and responsibility in imparting the genuine tenets of Islam,” the university said in a statement.

Lecturers, who want to appear or work on media platforms, are obliged to apply for approval from the university’s administration in complying with its regulations, the statement added without specifying penalties for would-be violators.

For many years, Al-Azhar lecturers have hosted or been guests on radio and TV programmes in Egypt, answering ordinary people’s questions on Islam’s views of religious and other issues.

The Cairo-based seminary has denied that the curb targets a certain lecturer, and did not say when the decision will take effect.

‘Humiliating’ decision

Mohamed Eweida, the head of Al-Azhar University’s Teaching Staff Club, a type of an independent professional union, condemned the decision, calling it “humiliating”.

“The university’s president should know that the time of the Inquisition is over,” Eweida said in a press statement.

He warned that the restriction benefits radical Islamists, allegedly by removing moderate Islamic scholars from the media arena. “As an elected head of Al-Azhar lecturers, I’ll face this humiliating decision with all my might,” Eweida said without elaborating.

In recent years, Al-Azhar University, seen as a stronghold of Islamists, has been under criticism from secularists in Egypt. Critics have accused the university, which admits only Muslim students, of teaching extremist religious views. Detractors have also blamed Al-Azhar for the emergence of radical groups across the Muslim world, a claim the influential institution has denied.

Egypt's Muslim President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who led the army’s 2013 ouster of his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi, has repeatedly called for religious reform in order to back up the country's relentless campaign against violent militancy.

“How can this religious reform be achieved while Al-Azhar professors are banned from appearing in the media?” said MP Amna Nosseir, who is also a professor of Islamic philosophy at Al-Azhar University.

“I hope that the university president thoroughly studied his decision before he issued it. The decision is completely wrong and must be opposed until it is revoked,” added Nosseir in press remarks.

Several Egyptian rights advocates also slammed the restriction. “This decision violates freedom of opinion and expression,” Hafez Abu Seda, the head of the non-governmental Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, said in a statement.

“The ban should be limited to the idea that the teaching staffer does not speak in the name of the institution [Al-Azhar University] and that his/her opinions are personal,” added Abu Seda.