Grand Imam of Al-Azhar ahmed At-Tayyeb received Dr. Ahmed Fouad Hanno, Minister of Culture.
Grand Imam At-Tayyeb stressed the necessity of confronting eccentric artistic and cultural patterns that have swept through our societies and aimed to exclude culture and marginalize its role in building the human beings and shaping their awareness. Such patterns, added the Grand Imam, dissociated Arab youth from everything that instilled in them pride in their religious and moral identity, making them vulnerable to polarization, in light of the spread of ignorance, lack of knowledge, and the absence of good education and purposeful media content.
During his meeting with Dr. Ahmed Fouad Hanno, Minister of Culture, at Al-Azhar Headquarters, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar called for the necessity of developing a national strategy to confront the cultural and civilizational decline that has afflicted our societies. Such a decline, asserted the Grand Imam, has negatively that affected the youth. Thus, he called for producing cultural, artistic, and media content that addresses solutions to contemporary societal crises and offers applicable visions, noting that Al-Azhar has reprinted Al-Azhar Magazine issues since its inception, in 106 volumes, to inject new cultural blood in the veins and revive the values promoted in the magazine, most notably dialogue, diversity, acceptance of others and mutual respect. HE Grand Imam At-Tayyeb stressed that Al-Azhar education enlightens the students about various sources of knowledge. He pointed out that he shares with his generation an affinity with the Ministry of Culture, which played a role in their intellectual and cognitive formation through a stream of culture that the ministry offered through lectures, radio channels, newspapers, and book series that were issued weekly in economics, sociology, translated novels, contemporary thought publications, and various disciplines. This, added the Grand Imam, has helped shape our knowledge and nurture us with a solid cognitive formation. He thus stressed the need for the ministry to restore its role in education and intellectual and cognitive construction.
For his part, Minister Hanno expressed his pleasure with this meeting with a great scholarly and religious figure such as the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, stressing that the ministry's prospective strategy will witness intensified cooperation with all parties and institutions concerned with building the Egyptian citizen and developing various means toward raising awareness and mainstreaming education such as electronic books. This step, he added, is meant to confront the problems of the high cost of paper and printing, stating: "We seek to extend bridges of cooperation with Al-Azhar to inform young people and help them benefit from the ministry's assets, provide cultural doses, and rebuild the human being, given that culture is the first wall of protection from extremism."
Dr. Hano further stated that the ministry shares with Al-Azhar the keenness to reach broad masses in the various Egyptian governorates through hundreds of cultural centers across the country and work to raise aesthetic and creative sensibility among young people and the public in general. He further stressed that the ministry takes pride in the cooperation agreements that link it with Al-Azhar Ash-Sharif and other institutions that care for children and youth.
Follow the latest news on Google News
