The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ash-Sharif, Prof. Ahmad At-Tayyeb averred, “It is high time for major international scientific institutions to reconsider their interest in education, and to collectively conduct a serious dialogue about the challenges facing them and the teachers in our today’s world. This pivot alone is the basis for countries’ advancement, progress and humaneness.”  During his speech at the Summit of Religious Leaders on Education, at the Vatican, which coincided with World Teachers’ Day, His Eminence the Grand Imam called on the Global Compact on Education committee to pay attention to “educational curricula,” stressing that it is saddening to see these curricula eroding and disintegrating under open modernity and unrestrained freedom. It is curricula, however, that shapes the youthful minds, knowledge, tastes, behavioral patterns and conduct, stating, "We, as representatives of religions, do not sense a threat on the part of the teacher as much as we sense it through educational curricula that are one-legged, deliberately substituting man in place God, and matter in place of spirit. These curricula were acquired by teachers under the influence of pure materialist and physical philosophies, which have been overdue for a long time. Hence, they have dominated the human mind, senses, and conscience. It has also paralyzed humans’ ability to think outside its modernist frameworks or sing out of tune.” The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar referred to a question that has always occupied his mind, which is how to reconcile intellectual and scientific modernity of the West, forcefully self-imposing for students and youth around the world, and among other approaches combining the dictates and techniques of science with the values and morals of religion, blending together the demands of the body and the longings of the soul. Such reconciliation is extremely difficult because it resembles a confrontation with the entire world and a revisiting of the key elements of its civilizations and cultures. Yet, it is certainly not impossible or unreachable for the Divine Power.

The Vatican will host the Summit of Religious Leaders on Education, organized by the Global Compat for Education committee with the Congregation for Catholic Education, in the presence of a constellation of religious leaders and their representatives around the world. It aims at promoting a "Global Compact for Education" that takes into account the current challenges to education and the teacher in our time. This meeting coincides with World Teachers' Day, which falls on October 5 each year, the date set by the UNESCO since 1994 to celebrate the teacher.