CAIRO — On June 4, Egypt’s Al-Azhar stepped into the controversy of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. During a speech, to mark the United Nations’ celebration of the World Environment Day, Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb said that monopolizing natural resources, including water, is tantamount to stealing a God-bestowed right, and that water is common and collective property that no one has the right to undermine.

Tayeb castigated Ethiopian policy, saying that those who deny water “are unjust aggressors who ought to be internationally and regionally stopped to protect the people’s rights and against their perversion and corruption of the earth.”

Commenting on the possible use of force to resolve the crisis, Tayeb said the rules of “fighting enemies” in Islam “forbid us to kill children, women and young boys in the enemy’s army, just as it is forbidden to kill monks in their monasteries and peasants in their fields. It is also prohibited to demolish buildings in the enemy’s country.”

On June 6, Osama al-Hadidi, the director of Al-Azhar International Center for Electronic Fatwas, said during a telephone interview with Sada al-Balad satellite channel, that controlling and monopolizing water is forbidden as per the Islamic Sharia, and is seen as corruption, injustice and assault on the rights of others.