This Sunday’s issue of the Coptic Egyptian online publication Apologetics contained an interesting presentation of a TV program showing Al-Azhar’s Grand Imam Sheikh Al-Tayeb praising Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.  The publication added that many saw in it a “[c]ode of ethics and high moral values.”

There was an embedded YouTube video clip (in Arabic, no subtitles), whose title quoted Sheikh Al-Tayeb’s words that the beauty of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount made him tear up.

The video was originally published on YouTube on August 2, 2013, and it is unclear why Apologetics decided to run it yesterday.  There was just a terse statement that the video had recently been shared on Facebook and Twitter.

The 3-minute, 29-second clip shows Sheikh Al-Tayeb sitting across the TV host and marveling at Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, whose beauty regularly brings tears to his eyes.  From notes brought with him, he reads out excerpts of the Sermon:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

Blessed are the meek,

Blessed are those who mourn. ...

Pausing, Sheikh Al-Tayeb explains to his host that the Messiah came to “save societies from the throes of materialism, unbridled passions and deadly selfishness, and to prepare them for a new paradigm.”

He further clarifies what is meant by the meek – the humble and quiet persons, those who do not pick fights with their neighbors.  He then resumes his reading, reminding his interlocutor to pay good attention to the words:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness ...

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me...You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person” (Matthew, 5). “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.

He asks the TV host again to be attentive to the words used: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

“This program of high moral and spiritual principles was meant to act as a counterweight to the prevailing materialism[,]” explains Sheikh Al-Tayeb.

“But isn’t this extreme tolerance and laxity, an invitation for more oppression and persecution?” interjects the TV host.

“No,” explains Al-Tayeb, “not if you realize that these teachings were not just meant for a small group of people. No, Jesus – Peace Be Upon Him – was reconditioning society as a whole, inculcating it with a new set of values, different from the prevailing one whose evil had remained entrenched in the minds of people for so long. The Messiah came to turn these evil ways on their head, and put a far more spiritual order in their place.”

This interpretation of Jesus’s message is no doubt a slight deviation from Christian orthodoxy, which places emphasis on personal more than social transformation.  It is probably an import from Islam, where the religious and the socio-political are often intertwined.  Be this as it may, the appreciation shown by Sheikh Al-Tayeb is in line with his former reputation as an enlightened figure.  He was recently perceived to be more of a hardliner than he really is, namely in the debate around the reform of Al-Azhar’s educational curricula.

The presence of an important Salafist current in the midst of the venerable learning academy, long viewed as a haven of religious moderation, may be the culprit.  The Egyptian government, through the minister for religious endowments, controls Al-Azhar University, including its finances.  Not really a guarantee of independence from extremist ideologies of foreign import, when considering the financial crisis the government is now facing.

A recent statement attributed to Mohammad el-Baradei, a former presidential candidate, was broadcast Sunday on the Shiawave YouTube channel.  It claims that the Egyptian Ministry of Finance asked Al-Azhar’s Islamic Center to issue a controversial fatwa against the Iraqis’ Popular Mobilization Forces currently fighting IS terrorists.  Saudi Arabia allegedly offered to reward the fatwa with three billion dollars, likely to alleviate Egypt’s financial woes (if the news does not turn out to be Shia propaganda).  As is well-known, Saudi Arabia is home to the most extreme interpretation of Islam, called Wahhabism or Salafism, the same one that has infiltrated Al-Azhar for the past three to four decades.