Egypt's top cleric has rejected a statement from a research institute affiliated with his prominent Islamic university that called war against Iraq a "new crusade" and urged holy war against Islam's enemy, his office said Monday.
Omar Bastaweissy, office manager of Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, said Tantawi has repeated often since the Islamic Research Center's statement last week that "there is nothing called 'new crusade,' and the use of such word now is unjustifiable and completely rejected."
Tantawi, considered by many to be Sunni Muslims' highest religious authority, was referring to a March 10 statement in which the center said that according to Islamic law, "if the enemy descends on the land of Muslims, jihad (holy war) becomes an Islamic obligation on every male and female Muslim because our Arab and Islamic community will be facing a new Crusader battle targeting our land, honor, faith and nation."
Tantawi was quoted in Monday's edition of the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat as saying: "It is impossible that the phrase of 'new crusade' means a war of Christians against Islam."
"We are exerting efforts to prevent a war against Iraq and sharing the same stance with us are other Christian countries like France and Germany," he was quoted as saying.
"Inciting strife and wars in the name of religion is rejected now, as it was rejected in the past," Al-Hayat quoted Tantawi as saying in an interview.
However, Al-Hayat said Tantawi concurred with the Islamic Research Center's statement that if Iraq is attacked, Muslims have a religious obligation "to defend Iraq."
Tantawi, however, differentiated between terrorism and jihad, which can mean any sort of holy war or struggle. "Jihad, which is sanctioned by God, is to defend rights, soul, property, land and honor, while terrorism is aggression on the safe," he was quoted as saying.