Tag: students

Al-Azhar Dean to ‘monitor classrooms’

Posted on By 3arabawy

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.”

Kefaya denounces MB arrests

Posted on By 3arabawy

The security crackdown against Muslim Brotherhood leaders and student activists is the beginning for a wider crackdown on all forms of dissent in Egypt, Kefaya said today in a statement. The movement extended its solidarity to the Islamist opposition, warning the country’s political forces not to get distracted by side battles. “No matter what was said about the Azhar students’ actions… it is the regime and its security services who are the real criminals,” the statement charged. “The security services ceased protecting ordinary citizens and have become solely devoted to protecting the ruling regime. This regime mobilized its forces to smash peaceful protests over the past two years. This regime unleashed thugs to beat and kidnap peaceful citizens from the streets in April and May 2006 for their solidarity with the judges. This regime used thugs to prevent the opposition of winning in November 2005 parliamentary elections. This regime openned the doors of Ain Shams University for thugs, and stormed Cairo University few weeks ago. This regime has adopted arbitrary detentions and torture as a rule, not an exception.”

It is this regime that all should unite in confronting, the statement asserted, calling for the release of the detained MB Azhar students.