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Sisi's call for religious tolerance divides Muslims

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's call for religious tolerance has been interpreted differently by Salafists, Al-Azhar scholars and secular critics.
Muslim scholars and popes of eastern churches attend the conference "Azhar in the face of terrorism and extremism" in Cairo, December 3, 2014.  Grand Imam of Egypt?s al-Azhar Institution Ahmed al-Tayeb addressed a two-day international conference in Cairo organised by his institution. The grand imam stressed that "terrorist organisations" try to sell a "fraudulent" image of Islam.Pope Tawadros II, the pope of the Coptic Orthodox church launched the conference alongside Tayeb. Around 600 Muslim scholars and
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CAIRO — On the occasion of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Jan. 1 gave a speech in which he called for a religious revolution against extremism. He said there are ideas and texts in Islam that have been sanctified over hundreds of years and cannot be ignored. These erroneous ideas, however, have painted a bad picture of the Muslim nation as one characterized by killing and destruction, he said. It has been almost five months since Sisi's speech, in which he also blamed Al-Azhar for rekindling such religious rhetoric. Although the goal of Sisi’s speech was to encourage tolerance and eliminate sectarian polarization, each Islamic current interpreted his words to suit its own ideas and beliefs.

The Salafists, among them Sheikh Mohammed al-Abasiri, demanded the cancellation of Sufi holidays because of their alleged unethical and un-Islamic practices. Meanwhile, Sufi sheikhs, including Mohammed al-Shabrawi, called for the rejection of Salafism, because, he claimed, the Wahhabi ideology is the main reason behind the spread of terrorism in Egypt.

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