CAIRO — In a move to tighten state control over religious discourse, Egypt has launched a campaign to force Muslim clerics to read standardized government-written sermons at Friday prayers.
Minister for Religious Endowments, Mokhtar Gomaa, gave the first-such scripted sermon Friday at Cairo’s Amr ibn al-As Mosque. Reading from a batch of notecards, Gomaa recited a sermon against corruption titled, “Bad money is a lethal poison.”
“Our prophet has condemned the person who gives a bribe, who receives a bribe, and mediates between the two,” he said. The same sermon had been posted several days earlier on the ministry’s official website.
Dating back to the days of ousted autocrat President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt has previously tried multiple times to monitor and influence the content of Friday sermons. But this marks the first time ever that pre-written sermons are being nationally distributed and enforced.
The move comes in the context of wide-ranging campaign by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s government to control public expression. All unauthorized demonstrations have been criminalized, thousands have been jailed, activists and rights lawyers have been prosecuted or banned from travel and voices critical of the government have been largely silenced.
El-Sissi has also launched a public campaign to reform and modernize Islamic discourse, weeding out religious extremism and separating politics from religion. He has repeatedly called for a “religious revolution” with the Cairo-based Al-Azhar — the Muslim world’s most prominent Sunni religious institution — leading the way. However, critics say, his autocratic rule has only fueled militancy and extremism.
“It is the first time in Egypt’s history to read from a paper,” said Deputy Minister of Religious Endowments Gaber Tayaa, who also said that some of the Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, have been considering the same step. “The minister wanted to take the lead.”
