"Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi: the builder of the regime's religious face""Tantawi caused controversy ever since he took over his post as a Sheikh in 1996 coming from a different religious post, which is the Mufti of the Egyptian lands, and in the midst of the struggle [that opposed] Mubarak's regime to the violent fundamentalist groups. Leaping to the highest post of the "religious authority" has transferred Tantawi from an esteemed Professor into a "political employee" who daily receives arrows and daggers and plays parts in the complicated relation between the regime and the society.
"Tantawi is the author of important jurisprudence [works] according to experts in the science of interpretation. He received his doctorate degree in interpretation with an excellent evaluation on the bright political subject in his time, "The children of Israel in the Qur'an and Sunnah" (published in 1969 in the heart of the battle of Egypt and the Arabs with Israel), followed by research on: mediator interpretation of the holy Qur'an (1972), the story in the holy Qur'an (1990), and transactions of banks and provisions of religious law (1991).
"The history of research will often forget the Sheikh and will remember the political positions where Dr. Tantawi played the part of "a religious analyst" of the regime's behaviors, especially his fatwa on whipping the journalists in the case of the President's health, and shaking hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres and his latest attempt at removing the Niqab off one student in Al-Azhar. All these are mostly political battles although Al-Azhar has a religious and not a political status. Its Sheikh is an employee and not a symbol of political struggles.
"However, Tantawi is the Sheikh of Al-Azhar who strongly tried to build a role for Al-Azhar in the political playgrounds and a [position] that was not present in Islam…The regime pushed the Sheikh to the front line in confronting the opponents who brandished the Qur'an and spoke of what "god said and what the Prophet said." Tantawi represented the religious repulsion wall in confronting the withdrawal of religious legitimacy from a regime that lives off a double legitimacy (a political and a religious one). The role is not a new one for the holders of prominent religious posts. Indeed, since the decision of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman al-Kanouni that Al-Azhar must be ran by "a higher Sheikh" and not just by a mere supervisor, this was the beginning of the implementation of the role of Al-Azhar in [providing] religious legitimacy to the political regime…" - Al-Akhbar Lebanon, Lebanon
