Ahmed el-Tayeb

Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb is an Egyptian scholar born in Kurna, Luxor Governorate in Upper Egypt, on 6 January 1946. He is the forty-eighth Grand Imam of al-Azhar, in office since 19 March 2010, appointed by President Hosni Mubarak following the death of Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. ^{1 2}

El-Tayeb is a professor of Islamic doctrine and philosophy at al-Azhar University, was president of al-Azhar University from 2003 to 2010 and Grand Mufti of Egypt from 2002 to 2003, and chairs the Muslim Council of Elders. He belongs to a Sufi family from Upper Egypt and is a hereditary Sufi shaykh. ^{1 2}

Ahmed el-Tayeb was born in Kurna, Luxor, in southern Egypt on 6 January 1946, corresponding to 3 Safar 1365 AH. ^{1 2}

He studied doctrine and philosophy at al-Azhar University, graduating in 1969, then took a master's degree in 1971 and a PhD in Islamic philosophy in 1977. ^{1 2} He later studied at the University of Paris for six months, from December 1977 to 1978. ² He speaks French and English fluently and has translated a number of French references into Arabic. ¹

El-Tayeb worked his way up the academic ladder at al-Azhar University as teaching assistant, lecturer and assistant professor of doctrine and philosophy, was seconded as dean of the Faculty of Islamic and Arabic Studies for boys in Qena and then in Aswan, and was appointed dean of the Faculty of Usul al-Din at the International Islamic University in Pakistan. ¹ He also worked at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, Qatar University, the United Arab Emirates University and the International Islamic University in Islamabad, where he worked in 1999–2000. ^{1 2}

He served as Grand Mufti of Egypt between 2002 and 2003, then as president of al-Azhar University from 28 September 2003 to 19 March 2010. ^{2 1} On 19 March 2010 President Hosni Mubarak issued the decision appointing him Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, succeeding Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. ¹

El-Tayeb's public work is institutional, exercised from the office of Grand Imam rather than through personal media programmes: under him al-Azhar addresses the world through conferences, meetings and televised statements, and he chairs the Muslim Council of Elders, which organised the global Human Fraternity conference in Abu Dhabi. ^{1 2}

He met Pope Francis at the Vatican on 7 November 2017 to discuss spreading the culture of peace and coexistence and renouncing extremism and Islamophobia; they met again in Abu Dhabi in February 2019, where they signed the Document on Human Fraternity, and again at the Vatican on 15 November 2019. ² The Document later inspired the UN resolution that designated 4 February as the International Day of Human Fraternity. ²

His chief institutional initiatives are his chairmanship of the Muslim Council of Elders and the Document on Human Fraternity signed with the Vatican in 2019. ^{1 2} In April 2011, after the January revolution, el-Tayeb returned all the salary payments he had received since taking over the leadership of al-Azhar and asked to work without pay, in support of the Egyptian economy, which was passing through a crisis. ¹

This section should be read as a presentation of differing positions reported in the sources, not as the museum's verdict on them.

On Egyptian affairs: El-Tayeb was a member of the Policies Committee of Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party; he initially refused to resign from it, saying there was no conflict between his role at al-Azhar and membership in the party, then resigned from his party post in April 2010. ^{2 1} The writer Zainab Abd al-Ilah summarised his stance on the 25 January 2011 revolution as cautious: in a statement on 29 January he described the protesters' demands as just while warning against chaos; after Mubarak's second speech he said that demonstrations in this form were forbidden in Islamic law (haram) and a call to chaos; he expressed regret over the Battle of the Camel clashes and called on the young protesters to enter dialogue. ¹ The sources report that he backed the military's removal of President Mohamed Morsi. ² In a televised statement on 14 August 2013, el-Tayeb absolved himself and al-Azhar of any prior knowledge of the dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in, saying he had learned of it from television, and affirmed the sanctity of blood and that violence is no substitute for a political solution and dialogue. ¹ Some Muslim Brotherhood members accused him of being "a remnant of the ousted Mubarak regime and National Democratic Party", while the Brotherhood's leader Mohammed Badie had congratulated him on his appointment as Grand Imam. ²

On religious and global questions: He has strongly rebuked the Sunni anti-Shi'a preaching that increased after the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad cracked down on rebels in the Syrian civil war. ² He strongly condemned the Islamic State (ISIL), saying it acts "under the guise of this holy religion" and gave itself the name "Islamic State" in an attempt to export "their false Islam", and he came out against the takfirism the group practises. ² He has been criticised for not expressly stating that the Islamic State was heretical; the article notes that the Ash'ari school of theology, to which el-Tayeb belongs, does not allow calling a person who professes the shahada an apostate. ² In late 2016, at a conference of over a hundred Sunni scholars in Chechnya, el-Tayeb defined orthodox Sunnism as the Ash'aris and Maturidis, the followers of any of the four schools of law, and the followers of the Sufism of Imam Junayd al-Baghdadi — excluding the Salafis, also known as Wahhabis, from the Sunnis under that definition. ² In May 2021 he wrote on Twitter that a woman is permitted to assume senior positions such as in the judiciary or the issuing of fatwas and to travel without a guardian, that there is no such thing as the "House of Obedience" in Islam, and that guardians have "no right" to prevent women from marrying without adequate reasons. ² He holds that the niqab is not an obligation but is permissible, and that the obligation is the hijab. ¹

El-Tayeb has written a number of books and studies in Islamic doctrine, philosophy and Sufism, among them al-Janib al-Naqdi fi Falsafat Abi al-Barakat al-Baghdadi (Dar al-Shorouk, 2004), Madkhal li-Dirasah al-Mantiq al-Qadim, Mabahith al-Wujud wa-l-Mahiyah min Kitab al-Mawaqif, and Buhuth fi al-Thaqafah al-Islamiyyah, written with others. ^{2 1} He edited Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi's treatise on the nature of the intellect, with an introduction in French, and translated works on Ibn Arabi from French, including Michel Chodkiewicz's book on sainthood and prophecy in the doctrine of Ibn Arabi and Osman Yahya's history and classification of Ibn Arabi's works. ¹

El-Tayeb belongs to a Sufi family from Upper Egypt; his brother Muhammad el-Tayeb heads the Khalwati Sufi order. The museum does not publish family detail beyond what understanding his work requires. ^{1 2}

In 2005 he received the Order of Independence from King Abdullah II of Jordan during his participation in the International Islamic Conference in Jordan that year; in 2013 he received the Sheikh Zayed Book Award as Cultural Personality of the Year; and in March 2020 he was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of Samarkand, in recognition of his efforts to propagate moderate Islamic thought and strengthen Egyptian-Uzbek ties. ² As Grand Imam, his words and statements reach al-Azhar's worldwide audience through the institution's channels and conferences; such figures change constantly, and the museum records them only with a date. ³

• The defined sources cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Later translations and edits of this article require periodic review with clear update dates.