Everything about Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy totally explained
Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi (
Arabic: محمد سيد طنطاوى) (born
28 October 1928) is the Grand
Imam of
Al-Azhar Mosque and Grand
Sheikh of
Al-Azhar University. He has been described as "perhaps the foremost Sunni Arab authority", "acknowledged as the highest spiritual authority for nearly a billion Sunni Muslims", and "a supreme authority."
He joined the Alexandria Religious Institute in 1944, and became a member of the
faculty of Ausol Aldeen in 1968. In 1972 he became a member of the faculty of Arabic & Islamic Studies at the Islamic University of
Libya. In 1980 he moved to
Saudi Arabia where he became chief of the
Tafsir branch of the
Postgraduate studies branch at the
Islamic University of Madinah. He returned to
Egypt in
1985 when he became
Dean of the Faculty of Ausol Aldeen in the prestigious Alexandria Religious Institute.
In
1986 he was appointed as
Grand Mufti of Egypt on his 58th birthday,
28 October 1986. He held this position for almost ten years, until he was appointed Grand
Imam of
Al-Azhar Mosque and Grand
Sheikh of
Al-Azhar University by the
President of Egypt,
Hosni Mubarak, on
27 March 1996.
(External Link
) The Al-Azhar Mosque is one of the most influential and important
Sunni Muslim institutions.
He has taken a line against
Suicide bombings, and unlike his compatriot
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, he's condemned the use of suicide bombings against Israelis, rejecting the argument that all Israelis were legitimate targets because at some stage they'd all carry a gun. In April 2002, during his weekly sermon, he described Jews as "the enemies of Allah, sons of pigs and apes." In 2003 he called suicide bombers "
enemies of Islam", adding "people of different beliefs should co-operate and not get into senseless conflicts and animosity. Extremism is the enemy of Islam. Whereas, jihad is allowed in Islam to defend one's land, to help the oppressed. The difference between jihad in Islam and extremism is like the earth and the sky"
Speaking after the
September 11, 2001 attacks he said "It's not courage in any way to kill an innocent person, or to kill thousands of people, including men and women and children." He said that
Osama bin Laden's call for a
Jihad against the west was "invalid and not binding on Muslims", adding "Killing innocent civilians is a horrific, hideous act that no religion can approve". He said the
Qur'an "specifically forbids the kinds of things the Taliban and al-Qaida are guilty of".
He is somewhat conservative, and is opposed to
Women as Imams in mixed
Congregations during Friday prayers (
Jumu'ah). He also called Haydar Haydar's book, ‘
Feast for Seaweed’, blasphemous. In 2001 he issued a fatwa banning women from acting as surrogate mothers or from receiving frozen sperm from dead husbands.
Tantawy completed a seven thousand page exegesis of the
Qur'an (
Al-tafser al-waset). This
Tafsir took over ten years to complete. He has also written
Bano Israel (Jacob's Son's) and
Muamlat Al-bank (Bank's Dealings ).
Tantawy recited the
Salatul janazah at the
funeral of
Yasser Arafat in
2004, during which he said that "Arafat has done his duty as a defender of the Palestinian cause, with courage and honesty". During the
controversy of the
French headscarf ban in schools, he issued a
Fatwa allowing Muslim Girls to take off their
Hijabs while attending school, using the
lesser of two evils principle. He has issued a fatwa which allowed
abortion in cases where a woman had become pregnant through rape, though this created controversy and
Mufti Ali Gomaa said Tantawy was wrong, and that irrespective of how the life was created, after 120 days an abortion becomes
haram, forbidden. Tantawy has also clearly indicated that
female circumcision isn't an Islamic practice, especially in
1997 when he said "The
Ulema (theologians) of Islam are unanimous in agreeing that female circumcision has nothing to do with religion" and revealed his own daughter hadn't been circumcised.
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