Egypt's top Islamic authority sets up fatwa kiosk to counter extremism
Clerics take a woman's question inside the booth. Photo courtesy: The Guardian
(Web Desk) - Egyptian Muslims in Cairo will now be able to get answers for their religious problems on the metro station.
According to the Guardian al-Azhar al-Shar, Egypt’s top Islamic authority, has installed a small fatwa kiosk in the Cairo metro. Its purpose is to offer travelers religious advice on different topics and also to counter the threat of growing extremist ideology in Egypt.
The kiosk, which is situated in Cairo’s al-Shohada metro station, consists of a small green patterned booth with a group of religious scholars inside of it. Commuters who want their questions answered can go and talk to the scholars while sitting inside, shielded from the loud noise of the metro. The booth functions for two shifts every day and visitors are welcome from 9am until 8pm.
The booth is proving to be quite popular with metro commuters, many of whom stop to discuss their problems. A sheikh staffing the booth for the morning commute said that people usually wanted to discuss “the issues of daily life, and what religion says about such things. The topics we mostly discuss are marriage, divorce and inheritance,”
On a more important note al-Azhar al-Shar hope that the booth would help correct people’s misconceptions about Islam and would also aid in fighting against extremism in the country.
Egypt has seen increasing terrorist activity ever since Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi has come to power. The terrorist violence has caused ongoing fighting in the Sinai Peninsula and has also led to a number of high level attacks on Coptic Christian sites throughout the country.
However opponents of the booth have said that the project, while well meaning, is unlikely to have much of an effect on extremism as it is improbable that it would attract people who already have pre-existing extremist tendencies. The criticism is such that Mohamed Abu-Hamed, an Egyptian MP who has clashed in the past with al-Azhar al-Shar, said that the whole project was simply “absurd” and that al-Azhar was doing it to “evade making any real changes”
Al-Azhar has a long history in Egypt. It was was established in Cairo in 971 to be a learning center for Sunni Muslims.
