Prof. Ahmad At-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ash-Sharif received, on Thursday at the headquarters of Al-Azhar, Lord Tariq Ahmed, British Secretary of State for North Africa, South and Central Asia, Commonwealth and the United Nations.  The Grand Imam welcomed the British Minister and his accompanying delegation, praising the strength and development of Egyptian-British relations especially in the field of combating extremism and terrorism, as well as standing together to recover from the repercussions of the Corona pandemic. He affirmed, “We have long suffered in the East from the ideas of extremist groups and the evils they brought as they have tried to spoil the normal relations between the East and the West”. He stressed that terrorist groups are neither a product of Islam nor of Christianity or any particular religion, but they are rather the product of political manipulations and compromises that have made them able to grow and penetrate until they have become in the form we see today. 

During the meeting, the Grand Imam stated, "There is no list of human rights that all people agree on; rather there are some general rules that everyone adhere to. There are many issues about which the views of the East might totally be different from those of the West, such as the Western slogans regarding the freedom of expression which were, on the one hand, promoted as human rights and, on the other, exploited to offend sacred and religious symbols explicitly, the case which is unacceptable”.  His Eminence   pointed out that "The best example of this was allowing the extremists who adhere to terrorist ideology in Sweden to burn copies of the Holy Qur’an and to provoke the feelings of Muslims around the world, forcing them to react accordingly, only to call them extremists when they go out peacefully to express their rejection of such provocative acts. For us,   this is the dictatorship of chaos. This also applies to the Palestinian resistance which the West classified as terrorism; but for us it is a legitimate resistance, an inherent right of this unarmed Arab people who have bitterly suffered for more than seventy years”.   

On his part, Lord Tariq Ahmed congratulated the Grand Imam on the occasion of the advent of the holy month of Ramadan and the approaching of ˁEid ul-Fiṭr, expressing the UK's appreciation for the role of Al-Azhar in introducing the correct image of the Islamic religion, which some extremist groups seek to tarnish. He also affirmed UK's commitment to guaranteeing the freedom of religion and belief, highlighting the role of religious leaders in introducing the true religion in the face of extremist ideas and groups. The British Minister presented an official invitation from the United Kingdom to the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar to attend and participate in the activities of the Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Belief, to be held in the British capital this year under the direct supervision of Mr. Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, and also to participate in the events organized by civil society organizations in Britain which will be held alongside the official ministerial conference.