Al-Rahmah newspaper, owned by Salafī preacher Muhammad Hassān, published the full text of the amendments to the law regulating the Azhar affairs, lashing out at passing the law only four days before the first session of the new parliament was convened.
The paper said that Grand Shaykh of the Azhar Dr. Ahmad al-Tayyīb had issued a decision no. 108 of the year 2011 to set up a legal panel to prepare a new draft law to restructure the top Sunni Muslim establishment in a way to achieve its lofty message.
The move was in response to sit-ins staged by the Azhar Youth Coalition that called for reforming the religious institution and purging it of the remnants of the dissolved National Democratic Party, including the Shaykh of the Azhar himself, who was a member of the NDP policy secretariat.
The paper says that Shaykh Tayyīb chaired a committee that brought him to guarantee the top post until his death and whoever is survived by him becomes a grand shaykh, adding the law is a "joke" that does not realize independence but rather makes some stratagems reminiscent of the dissolved NDP tricks.
It noted that Tayyīb has dedicated himself to a political role away from the Grand Shaykh post and mistakenly thought that he was the actual president of Egypt although his opponents are growing in number.[Mulham al-'Isawī, al-Rahmah, Feb. 3, p. 12]
