Meeting between Sheikh Al-Azhar and Marine Le Pen fulfilled different objectives

Marine Le Pen and Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tayyib have both defended their recent meeting in the Egyptian capital. The leader of the extreme right-wing French National Front met the Sheikh of Al-Azhar on Thursday in his Cairo establishment. Their defence came in the face of a storm of criticism due to Le Pen’s well-known hostility towards Muslims. Al-Azhar has come under pressure from coup leader Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who met with Al-Tayyib last Wednesday. The meeting was followed by a statement issued by the Egyptian presidency alluding to an agreement to make changes in the curricula of Al-Azhar University.

Observers claim that the French extremist intends to use the visit to rid her party of the stigma of extremism, not least because she will be standing in the French presidential election in 2017. Local sources in Cairo said that Al-Tayyib tried through this meeting to divert the anger of Al-Sisi, who is displeased with him for not responding sufficiently to his demand to “renew” religious discourse, which to the coup leader means manipulating what is taught at the historic university.

In an exclusive interview with Sky Arabic TV on Saturday, Marine Le Pen said, without a touch of irony, that it was important for her to visit Egypt for the first time because of its vital role in the context of the influence of “extremists and terrorists” who now constitute a real global problem.

“President Sisi’s speeches, which I consider to be very brave, have motivated me [to visit Egypt],” said Le Pen. “I wanted through this visit to clarify the misunderstanding we have about our vision of the Arab world and the events there and to discuss the efforts to combat extremism.”

The right-winger stuck to her position of objecting to Muslim women wearing the headscarf and what she described as “the Muslims praying in the roads”. She stressed that France is a secular country and that Muslims in France should respect the law of the land.

The Deputy Dean of Al-Azhar, Dr Abbas Shuman, said that receiving the National Front leader, who is known for her extremist and anti-Islam opinions, does not mean she was welcomed by Sheikh Al-Azhar. It simply means, he insisted, that Al-Azhar is opening up to the Other and that it is implementing the true Islamic teachings, proving that Sunni Islam is well advanced compared to political trends across the entire world, especially in the West.

In a statement made on Saturday, Shuman denied that the Azharis were furious because Sheikh Al-Azhar received Le Pen. “Whoever spoke about the anger of the Azharites because the Grand Imam received the leader of the French party only exposed their identity after they claimed that Al-Tayyib remains indifferent while seeing blood being spilled.” He pointed out that the stances of Sheikh Al-Azhar towards bloodshed is known to all. However, he did not explain what he meant by that.

Within the same context, a source at the French embassy in Cairo disclosed that Le Pen’s visit was unofficial, with no coordination by the embassy to organise it; the meetings took place away from any official protocol and the embassy had no idea why she was visiting Egypt.

In the meantime, the Washington Post published a detailed report about the visit and said that some observers abroad criticised Le Pen, stating that the timing was inappropriate. The deputy director of Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa department, Nadim Houri, said: “Perhaps Le Pen’s visit will be interpreted as a means of support for President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.”

This would be embarrassing for the Egyptian regime, given that Le Pen’s party wants to stop issuing licences to build mosques in France and she has likened Muslim prayers in the street to the Nazis. This is problematical because the head of the French Council for the Islamic Religion, Dalil Abu Bakr, has called for doubling the number of mosques in France in order to solve the issue of the lack of places for millions of French Muslims to hold their acts of worship. There are only 2,200 mosques in France; this number needs to be doubled, he said, in order to fulfil the needs of the increasing number of Muslims.

In a long statement issued after her visit to Cairo, Le Pen expressed her extreme views openly as she mentioned what she believed are issues of mutual agreement between her and Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tayyib: “The vital importance of ten million Coptic Christians, the descendants of Ancient Egyptians, who pay a heavy price for Islamic intolerance and the balancing role that France and Egypt should play in the conflicts raging across the Arab world; the stabilising role that Egypt should play in Libya; and the importance of convincing the citizens of North Africa and the Middle East not to relinquish the lands of their ancestors in pursuit of an unknown future in Europe.”

Observers have concluded from this that the meeting between Sheikh Al-Azhar and Marine Le Pen had a political agenda for each of them. While the latter sought to make political gains within the French political arena as a result of the meeting, the former sought to appease Al-Sisi. That he needed to do this is evident from the repeated calls within the pro-Sisi media outlets for Al-Tayyib to be sacked from his prestigious position.

Translated from Arabi21, 31 May, 2015.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.