EGYPT-IRAN: SUNNI THEOLOGY FACULTY IN TEHRAN MOOTED
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Religion&loid=8.0.422746714&par=0
Cairo, 7 June (AKI) - Cairo's University of al-Azhar - the highest seat
of Sunni learning - will send a group of researchers to Tehran to look at
setting up a Sunni theological faculty there, al-Azhar's imam Mohammed Sayyed
al-Tantawi said, after a meeting with the cultural attache of Iran's commercial
office in Cairo, Mohammad Zamani. The initiative would be a significant step
forward in the normalisation of relations between the two countries, at a
moment in which the governments of Cairo and Tehran are tentatively seeking to
resume relations broken off nearly 30 years ago.
"The decision to set up a theological faculty in Tehran addresses the
need to bring Sunnis and Shiites closer together and contrast the forces that
are compromising the unity of the Islamic world and of the ummah [community of
the Muslim faithful]" Tantawi said.
For his part Zamani highlighted the prestige of the al-Azhar university
in the Islamic world and said he hoped for an exchange of teaching staff, texts
and students from the two countries.
The majority of Iran's population is Muslim, with an overwhelming 89
percent Shiites and 9 percent Sunnis.
"Between Sunnis and Shiites there is a unity of vision because they both
prary to the same and only God, believe in the five pillars of the faith and
both look towards Mecca" said Tantawi.
The current drive to renew relations, which were severed in 1979 after
the Islamic revolution in Iran, apparently results from the recent thaw between
the US and the Islamic Republic.
(Ale/Aki)
Jun-07-07 11:50
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