{"id":412163,"date":"2010-03-10T13:54:53","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T18:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/faithworld\/?p=12255"},"modified":"2010-03-10T13:54:53","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T18:54:53","slug":"al-azhar-leader-sheikh-tantawi-dies-in-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/412163","title":{"rendered":"Al-Azhar leader Sheikh Tantawi dies in Saudi Arabia"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_12256\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"width: 360px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12256\" title=\"tantawi\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/faithworld\/files\/2010\/03\/tantawi-350x253-custom.jpg\" alt=\"tantawi\" width=\"350\" height=\"253\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi in Cairo September 16, 2006\/Nasser Nuri<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, who as the head of Egypt&#8217;s most prestigious  seat of Islamic learning al-Azhar was Sunni Islam&#8217;s top authority, died of a heart attack on Wednesday  on a visit to Saudi Arabia, religious officials at al-Azhar said. He was  81.<\/p>\n<p>Mohamed Wasel, Tantawi&#8217;s deputy, will temporarily take charge of  the Sunni Muslim institution until Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak  appoints a new head. Wasel has been heading al-Azhar&#8217;s committee for  inter-faith dialogue.<\/p>\n<p>Al-Azhar, which runs schools, universities and other educational  institutions across Egypt and sends scholars to teach in countries  across the Muslim world, receives most of its funding from the state.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;The government usually chooses a moderate sheikh and all we can  ask of them is that their coming choice will be a sheikh who will work  for the best interest of the people and will be biased not for the  government but for truth,&#8221;<\/em> Sheikh Mahmoud Hamdy Mugahed, former Azhar  scholar and now parliament member, said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/af.reuters.com\/article\/topNews\/idAFJOE62907J20100310\">Read the whole story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/RTRFaithWorld\"><span style=\"color: #005a84;\">Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at   RTRFaithWorld<\/span><\/a><\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi in Cairo September 16, 2006\/Nasser Nuri Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, who as the head of Egypt&#8217;s most prestigious seat of Islamic learning al-Azhar was Sunni Islam&#8217;s top authority, died of a heart attack on Wednesday on a visit to Saudi Arabia, religious officials at al-Azhar said. He was 81. Mohamed Wasel, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4076,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}