Al-Azhar University administration, led by its pro-Mubarak Dean Ahmad Tayyeb Naggar, is on fast track campaign of stifling dissent on campus, and now inside classrooms.
After blessing the security crackdown on the Free Student Union in Al-Azhar, and regretting “it didn’t happen earlier, by the start of the university semester,” Naggar is now planning to “monitor the classrooms” for any subversive ideas. Defending Naggar’s move, the head of Al-Azhar Professors Association Hassan Oweida said: “It’s the University Dean’s right to monitor classes and textbooks, according to the Law 103, to keep Al-Azhar’s centrism.” This is important, Oweida added, since “it was discovered some Al-Azhar professors were teaching Baha’ism and Communism to their students.”
It always amuses me when Al-Azhar University gets referred to in newswires and Western publications reports as the “highest seat of Sunni learning” or as the “most prestigious Sunni institution in the Muslim World.”