Muslims believe that the Ka’aba that stands in Mecca’s centre was built by the Prophet Abraham as the first structure constructed for the worship of the Divine. For the past 90 years, it has also been under the control of the Salafi religious establishment.
It was thus fitting that at a counter-terrorism forum held there last week, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar linked “extremism” to “bad interpretations of the Quran and the practice of the Prophet”. One wonders if any part of the religious establishment quite realises the challenge ahead of it.
Studies into medieval Muslim scholars often reveal deep levels of sophistication. The great historical scientific discoveries of the Muslim world that are now famed in the West were not achieved by atheists. Rather, they were often driven by the religious authorities.
Comparable contemporary Muslim scholars are exceptionally rare. Not only is it particularly exceptional to find “renaissance men” (or renaissance women), it is extraordinary in the 21st century to find sophisticated specialists of religious disciplines in Muslim communities.
On the contrary, some communities will bemoan the standard of imams that minister to them in mosques. While some of today’s Christian clerics in England might succeed as academics in highly competitive universities, one can no longer say the same about Muslim religious authorities. That is a rather peculiar situation, given that the very notion of the university is something that arose out of the Muslim madrasah system. But this did not happen by some fluke of history.
The purist Salafi movement, which became very influential in the latter half of the 20th century, deeply affected traditional notions of religion and religious learning in the Muslim world.
Moreover, the colonial era ensured that religious institutions were crippled in a variety of fashions, not least of which was through the dismantling of endowments that supported many institutions and scholars. The nationalist regimes that followed created other challenges, where systems of education prioritised a variety of fields, but placed religious studies at the bottom of the scale.
As successive generations went through that system, the standard of graduates diminished. Throughout much of the Arab world, education generally suffered, particularly in religious institutions.
When the Grand Imam of Al Azhar recognises the need to engage in educational reform, one wonders if the scale of reform that is required is really apparent.
The likes of ISIL are able to appear credible because they cannot be accused of being in league with power – particularly with autocratic governments that dominate parts of the Arab world – unlike the religious establishment.
But beyond issues of independence and non-partisanship, which are uncommon among contemporary religious authorities in the Muslim world, the depth of educational degradation is immense.
Unfortunately, standards of education in the Arab world and Muslim communities are not where they should be. The dearth of refined religious authorities is partly, as the Grand Imam pointed out, responsible for a space within which radical extremists recruit.
In the short term, certainly, Muslim religious authorities ought to properly deconstruct and intellectually demolish the arguments of radical extremists, with transparency and depth.
But in the long term, the educational systems of most Muslim societies are in dire need of aggressive reform.
Dr HA Hellyer is an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute in London, and the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC
On Twitter: @hahellyer