Thousands of Egyptians call on a daily basis prominent clerics from Al Azhar, the top Sunni authority in the Islamic World, to ask them for fatwas, advice and religious guidance over phone, a service founded by businessmen and the sheikhs themselves.
"Why are religious issues so often discussed with a frown, with tension, with stiffness and violence?" Sheik Khalid el-Gendy, “the charismatic religious scholar who helped found the service,” was quoted as saying.
"We reject this. As a matter of fact we - a group of religious scholars - understand that we have to work with the new technology and to use it to serve religion," the cleric told New York Times.
The effort by the al-Azhar sheiks to offer religious guidance over the phone is just one of many attempts by Muslims in various nations to harness the modern fixation with gadgetry to disseminate the seventh-century religious guidelines in the Holy Quran and the Prophet Mohammad’s Hadith, or sayings.
It is one of many pay-per-call services introduced in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East during the last year, said the paper.
"There is no doubt that some religious scholars are as yet unable to assimilate the rhythm of modern life," said the sheikh. "They remain frozen inside the manuscripts with no intention of going beyond that."
All pay-per-call services in Egypt, including the Islamic Line, got off to a rocky start. The inauguration of 900 numbers coincided with the mass introduction of mobile phones.
The founders have already established an Islamic Line in Jordan and hope to spread it soon to other countries like Morocco, Yemen and the Palestinian territories. An international English version is also under consideration, according to NY Times.
Sherif Abdel Meguid, the businessman who started the line, believes that his company is harnessing modern technology to enhance the pre- eminence of Cairo as a center for temperate religious learning.
"It will have re-established Al Azhar's position as disseminating moderate, relaxed religious views to other Arab countries," he told the paper.
And Sheik Khalid likes to point out that the Islamic Line offers something far better than all the others, even the American Embassy line.
"This too gets you a visa, but a visa for paradise," he said.
A well-known fact about the majority of the Egyptian people is that they respect their religious tradition in a country, which was the cradle for Islamic movements and Sufi groups – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
