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Egypt's Al-Azhar hails Gambia on its stance over Rohingya Muslims

January 30, 2020 at 1:33 am

The Grand Imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tayeb on 4 February 2019 [VINCENZO PINTO/AFP/Getty Images]

Egypt’s highest Islamic authority Al-Azhar thanked the Gambian government on Tuesday for filing a criminal case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Court condemning “the killings, abuse, genocide and displacement against the Rohingya Muslims.”

Speaking at the Al-Azhar Global Conference on Renovation of Islamic Discourse held in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, the country’s grand mufti Shawki Allam said that such events “should not pass without reckoning,” describing the international community’s negligence to the event a “disgrace.”

The conference was attended by a group of prominent international political and religious figures, representatives from the Arab endowment ministries, and Islamic councils from 46 countries of the Islamic world.

Read: We need to consider how the Egyptian revolution will succeed

During the conference, Allam called on the Muslim scholars “to discuss the renewal of Islamic thought without compromising Islamic constants and values,” describing the step as “of utter importance.”

The Grand mufti yet warned against a “singular involvement of young generations,” in the renovation move.

Myanmar was thrust into the spotlight in 2017 when the Burmese military forcibly displaced over half a million Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine state, driving them into neighbouring Bangladesh. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) subsequently called for the Myanmar government to be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, including ethnic cleansing and genocide.

This prompted the European Union (EU) to re-impose an arms embargo on Myanmar. At the same time, the US has imposed economic sanctions on the Burmese security forces and high-profile military generals.