Egypt’s President Turns to Religion to Bolster His Authority

When President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi opened a much-heralded extension to the Suez Canal in August, the official Friday Prayer sermon that week hailed it as a “gift from God”. When Egyptian voters elected a new Parliament in December, a preacher on state TV urged its members to “obey those in authority, specifically the highest authority”, and referred indirectly to Mr. Sisi as “God’s shadow on earth”.

In the latest decree, the Ministry of Religious Endowments on Monday instructed preachers that any call to protest on Jan. 25, the fifth anniversary of the revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, would lead to “sabotage, murder and destruction”, and constituted a “full crime”.

To some Western observers, Mr. Behery seemed to be taking Mr. Sisi’s call for a revolution in Islam at Al Azhar last January. In that address, Mr. Sisi urged Egypt’s clerical leaders to purge Islam of the ideas he said were used by extremists to justify violence and had made the religion “an enemy of the world”.

“Egypt is the country of injustice”, Mr. Behery wrote in a Facebook post before he was imprisoned.

Some clerics appeared to take Mr. Sisi’s speech last year as an attack on the integrity of Al Azhar itself, said Nathan J. Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University who specializes in the Middle East.

“For people within Al Azhar, there was something remarkable and distasteful about a president and a general lecturing them about religion,” he said. “You saw some pushback, in the form of a proxy struggle. Then there was the episode with Islam Behery.”

In public, Al Azhar has always been loudly supportive of Mr. Sisi. Weeks later, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, a senior Al Azhar cleric, justified violence against Muslim Brotherhood supporters, whom he described as “putrid people” and “riffraff”. 

“The angels are supporting you from heaven,” Sheikh Gomaa told police and military leaders.

“I don’t see him as a dictator,” said Ashraf El-Sherif, a lecturer in political science at the American University in Cairo, referring to Mr. Sisi. “He’s the representative of an alliance of dictatorial state institutions.”

“It’s just another way of exerting control,” Amira Abd el Sayed, 20, said recently during her lunchtime break. “It’s important to control the discussion of religion,” said Adam Mustafa, a law student. “The media has made this into an issue, not the students.”

Sheikh Tayeb was “not even a proper sheikh,” or religious scholar, said Amira Mohamed, one of a group of students in hijab sipping coffee on a lawn. “In reality, the fatwa came from the president. Everyone knows that.”

“We have the cure to the diseases that ISIS and other groups are spreading,” said Dr. Ibrahim Negm of Dar al-Ifta, a state-funded body that issues fatwas, or religious edicts.

“There are no more outlets for discussion,” said Ali Kandil, a schoolteacher in a wealthy Cairo suburb who was ousted from his position as a prayer leader because he had spoken publicly against “tyrants”. “If anyone talks, he is killed or arrested,” he said. “If he’s not arrested, he flees the country.”

Pointing to the “ruin and chaos” that political upheaval wrought in neighboring Arab countries, the 3,100-word official sermon warned against any “destructive” public protests in Egypt.

“To avoid evil and please God,”  it said, “a person shall obey the rulers.”