ROME — I was at a conference on religious freedom and interreligious dialogue here on Monday when, late in the morning, journalists in the back rows started receiving phone alerts and promptly left the room. The conference chairman interrupted the proceedings and apologized: The Italian journalists, most of them working the religion beat, had just received important news from the Vatican.  As I followed the unexpected news of Pope Benedict’s resignation — an announcement cleverly scheduled, I was told by a veteran correspondent, on the anniversary of the creation of the Vatican City State so that no one in the Vatican would be expected to answer phone calls — my mind turned to another important religious appointment that day, this one in Cairo.  There are two major official religious figures for Sunni Muslims in Egypt, the majority of the population: the mufti, who serves as a kind of government religious ombudsman, and the grand imam or sheikh of al-Azhar, the head of the august 1,000-year-old seminary by the same name (and now a modern university), who is notionally independent but appointed by the government.  The mufti was about to be elected by a council of senior religious scholars, which was itself appointed by the sheikh of al-Azhar, who was himself appointed by former President Hosni Mubarak. The current sheikh is a liberal — at least relative to his conservative institution — and is known to distrust Islamists, notably the ultra-conservative Salafis, some of the Muslim Brotherhood’s greatest political rivals.  The mufti heads Dar al-Ifta (The House of Fatwa), a body tasked with giving religious advice to anyone who asks. Dar al-Ifta, through its telephone hotline and a Web site, hands out thousands of fatwas every year on issues both spiritual (can prayers be recited aloud?) and mundane (can waiters hide tips from restaurant owners?). He also approves any court sentence calling for capital punishment, announces the sighting of the new moon (which determines the beginning of holidays for Muslims) and takes positions on the religious controversies of the day.  In recent years, as self-styled Islamist sheikhs in Egypt and abroad have increasingly made use of satellite television and the Internet to issue fatwas, the mufti of Egypt has spent much of his time countering those directives he deems extremist or silly.  This year the appointment of Egypt’s mufti was a watershed event, perhaps even more than the resignation of Benedict is for Roman Catholics: It was the first time the mufti would be elected, rather than appointed by the head of state, since the position was created in 1895. For Islamists this is a resounding achievement. They have long complained of the politicization of such positions under Mubarak’s regime and its predecessors.  Last week, though, it was opponents of the Islamists who were worried about politicization — politicization in favor of the Islamists. Some said the al-Azhar Council of Senior Scholars, which elects the mufti, had been stacked with supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood hoping to elect one of their own: Abdul Rahman al-Barr, a member of the group’s steering committee.  The election was already being denounced as yet another example of “Brotherhoodization,” a means by which the group’s critics say it is filling key positions throughout the state. Should a Brother be appointed as mufti, it was feared, the Muslim Brotherhood could then wield the full power of Egypt’s religious establishment to back its own political positions.  As it turned out, an apolitical relative unknown, Shawky Abdel Karim Allam, was elected on Monday. Although a Muslim Brother garnered the second-largest number of votes, Al-Barr was not even shortlisted. This outcome is seen by some as a defeat for the Brotherhood, even though al-Barr’s chances were probably vastly exaggerated for political reasons — both by a religious establishment that is still coming to grips with Egypt’s new rulers and by an opposition that is keen to denounce what it sees as cunning plots by the Muslims Brotherhood at every turn.  The struggle to control religious institutions like al-Azhar and the mufti will likely continue. Al-Azhar traditionalists and the Muslim Brothers share many religious views, but the former regards the political ambitions of the latter with distrust.  In Rome, at the conference on interreligious dialogue, there was a sense of worry. But the identity of the next pope is unlikely to change the outlook of the Roman Catholic Church — and its political impact, at least in Europe, does not compare to the role that religious officials can play in an Egypt that is going through an epochal transformation.  The rabbis, priests and laymen of varying religions have built relations with Egypt’s traditional clerical establishment over the last decade. They are now a little apprehensive about having to get to know the Islamists, too.  Issandr El Amrani is a Cairo-based writer. He blogs at www.arabist.net.
The day Benedict XVI resigned Egypt's religious establishment elected its mufti for the first time -- and it chose an apolitical relative unknown.