Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, appears to blame Israel and by implication the US for chaos in Arab world
The leading “moderate” authority in Sunni Islam has blamed Zionism and the “new colonialism” for the collapse of the Middle East, further undermining western efforts to secure the region’s stability.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, the premier source of religious authority in Islam, was speaking at a counter-terrorism conference in Saudi Arabia, as part of efforts to encourage the Muslim world to join forces against terrorism.
However, he seemed to blame Israel and by implication the United States for the chaos in the Arab world.
“We face major international plots targeting Arabs and Muslims,” he said. The plots wanted to break up society “in a way that agrees with the dreams of the new world colonialism that is allied with world Zionism, hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder.
“We must not forget that the only method used by new colonialism now, is the same that was used by colonialism in the past century, and its deadly slogan is ‘divide and conquer’.”
Al-Azhar University has been a key bastion of support for the regime of Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptianpresident, whose overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi it backed in 2013.
However, despite western hopes that together they would be a force for “moderate” Islam, both the Grand Imam and the military-backed regime have promulgated the same conspiracy theories about western responsibility for the Middle East’s woes as many Islamists.
In his speech, given in Mecca alongside Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti, he used codewords for America like “the new colonialism” to suggest it was responsible for revolutionary turmoil both in Egypt and elsewhere.
“It is now exploiting areas of turmoil and sectarian divides, and it has succeeded, unfortunately, in tampering with this nation as its cunning and treachery and authoritarianism allows,” he said.
“The results of this cunning tampering were that Iraq was lost, and Syriawas burned, and Yemen is being torn apart, and Libya has been destroyed. There is still a lot up their sleeves that only God knows, and from which we seek refuge with God.”
All sides in Egypt’s internal conflicts between the Muslim Brotherhood, supporters of the army, and secular Left-wing activists have relied on a steady stream of anti-American invective over the years, despite the fact that whoever was in power was happy to accept American military support, including financial backing.
Egypt is fighting its own war against militant Islamism, both in the Sinai,where it is facing a long and bloody insurgency, and in neighbouring Libya, where it bombed territory held by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) after the killing of at least 20 Egyptian Christians. However, the government is also in alliance with hardline Salafi Islamists despite the Salafi roots of Isil’s ideology.
SOURCE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/11430829/Moderate-Sunni-Islam-leader-blames-Zionism-and-new-colonialism-for-Middle-East-collapse.html
As Tarik Ramadan said in an Al Jazeera interview: “We are being destabilized because we are destabalizable’, we were colonialized because we were colonializable…
Destabilizable and Colonializable… What are the root causes of those states of being? Could they be intense rival tribalism, cultural mistrust of ‘The Other’, sectarianism, blood feuds, rife corruption as the major business model and the almost automatice use of the gun and bomb to settle political and personal differences (i.e ‘The Strong Man Rules’ Syndrome).
It almost makes one yearn for the days of the Ottoman Empire. All those aforementioned conditions existed then, too, but at least it would be their problem to deal with.
Neither colonialism nor Zionism existed when the destructive war of the camels took place. None was around when the house of Abu Sufyan decided to wipe out the house of Muhammad or neutralize what was left. Disunity has always been a feature of the Arabs.
Ali Dashti says that the only miracle Muhammad performed was to weld the divers and hostile Arab people together and impose his will on them with his message.
The Ottoman Empire was muhammadan, yet Arab nationalism saw to its demise after the empire and Kaiser Germany had jointly lost WW1. Nation states sprang up from the grave of the empire. If statehood is no longer desirable to the Arabs, they have a choice to re-merge. But experience shows that past attempts failed not because of colonialism or Zionism, but by the lack of will to subdue one’s nationalistic pride.
Shifting the blame for one’s failure is a very easy but cowardly game.