Working for tolerance and cooperation

Mai Samih , Saturday 3 May 2025

An Egyptian NGO has been working on spreading the values of tolerance and cooperation among communities across Egypt.

tolerance and cooperation among communities

 

Many institutions aiming to counter violence, conflict, and intolerance have been set up worldwide in recent years, among them the Global Centre for Combating Extremist Ideology (Etidal — “moderation” in Arabic), which was established in Saudi Arabia in 2017 after the Arab-Islamic-American Summit in Riyadh. 

The centre is affiliated to the Saudi Foreign Ministry and works on exposing and combating extremist thought and spreading the concepts of tolerance and moderation and supporting peace. Another Saudi initiative, Fikr (“thought” in Arabic), aims at tackling the roots of extremism and enhancing the understanding of the true concepts of Islam all around the world. 

It is a department affiliated to the Saudi Interior Ministry, and both initiatives also aim at combating the media propaganda of terrorist organisations.

Following Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt from June 2012 to June 2013, the country witnessed 10 long years of attacks on the unity of Egyptian society. For this reason, the religious institutions in the country took action to counter such challenges by combating extremist thought and avoiding its spreading among young people.

Director of the Centre for Christian-Muslim Understanding and Partnership (CCMUP), an organisation that spreads awareness about religion and organises lectures and other activities, Anglican Bishop Mouneer Anis gave details about how the idea started. 

“The CCMUP was established in 2022 after years of collective work between the Anglican Church and Al-Azhar. There was a joint dialogue agreement signed between the two parties on an international basis, and in 2002 this was also signed by the grand imam of Al-Azhar and the head of the Anglican Church in the UK,” Anis said.

“After the agreement was signed, activities were organised like the Nezraa Shagara Min Al-Amal programme (“we are planting a tree of hope”) with the aim of developing a culture of dialogue among children. We also organised Maan Min Agl Masr (“together for the sake of Egypt”), a project in which priests and imams exchanged perspectives. Some 100 imams and 100 priests from different sects were trained and jointly attended lectures and other activities like visits to Christian and Muslim religious sites.”

Meetings were held with the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the mufti of the republic, and the secretary-general of the Islamic Research Academy (IRA) in Cairo, along with the minister of endowments and the Anglican Pope. The aim was to help them get to know each other better with a view to working together more in the future.

The group would visit schools and hospitals together, for example, and the programme was put together at CCMUP headquarters. 

“After that we started another project, Maan Min Agl Tanmeyat Masr (“together for developing Egypt”) that targeted young people. This time around, there was no religious preaching, just joint work like helping people organise literacy classes or first-aid classes or art and music classes,” Anis said.

 Many projects were started with Al-Azhar and the Misr Al-Kheir Foundation, an NGO. “It was on the basis of these activities that the CCMUP was founded,” he added, saying that at first there was no physical centre but just seminars or dialogues.

“After I retired, I was asked to establish the CCMUP as a physical institution. So, we established the centre, which was inaugurated in 2022,” he said.

THE CENTRE: The centre has a board of trustees, both Muslims and Christians, including the current mufti, Nazeer Ayad, who represents the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the former head of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Mustafa Al-Fiki, former deputy prime minister Zeyad Bahaaeddin, former governor of Menoufiya Adli Hussein, former minister of industry Ibrahim Fawzi, and a group of priests and other public figures.

It was founded in the Anglican Province of Alexandria to promote national unity, peace, and cooperation among different religious communities through Christian and Islamic studies, community initiatives, discussions, and conflict resolution. 

“The CCMUP has three main activities. The first is Christian-Muslim studies, where we try to focus on Muslim studies in particular as there are foreigners living in Egypt who do not know a lot about Islam,” Anis said.

“We ask Al-Azhar University to send us professors to teach Islam to this group, and there are lectures for students from Al-Azhar University and students from the Faculties of Theology who study together and are taught by professors form Al-Azhar and the Faculty of Theology,” he added. 

When students, both Muslims and Christians, study Christianity together, they are lectured by professors from the Faculty of Theology, and when they study Islam together, they are lectured by professors from Al-Azhar. 

“The second activity is organising societal initiatives, so that both Muslims and Christians participate together. One initiative was a conference for preserving the environment,” Anis said, in which young priests and imams preached about methods of keeping the environment clean. They explained the concepts of pollution and recycling and demonstrated methods to preserve the environment. 

“We also organised another initiative, Enaho Kawkabna (“it is our planet”) with the aim of teaching children how to preserve the environment,” he said. 

“The third activity is peacemaking and resolving conflicts. We train the participants by using scientific methodology. In some cases, people may think that conflicts can be resolved by hugging each other without really solving any of the underlying problems. We teach Muslim and Christian participants on a three-day course how to solve different types of problems, how to resolve a conflict if it erupts, and how to build peace so that conflicts do not occur in the future.”

These three types of activities are tailored to achieving main aims like “spreading the culture of acceptance of the other, achieving societal peace, and building societal cohesion,” Anis said.

“The population in Egypt is growing. It is now 110 million, and when a society expands, and there are different cultures, religions, and sects, these things could lead to fragmentation unless certain conditions help to hold it together,” he added.

OPPORTUNITIES: The CCMUP also gives the opportunity for foreigners living in Egypt and people living in other countries to join its activities in order to spread peace and harmony among nations. 

“We are visited by people from other countries, as Egypt has the oldest Islamic university, Al-Azhar, in the world. Whoever seeks knowledge about Islam should come to Egypt as it is the country of Al-Azhar. They can learn about Islamic culture and the Islamic religion, and various people from the US as well as members of diplomatic missions living in Egypt have come to us to learn more,” Anis said.

“We ask an imam who is fluent in English to lecture, so that he is able to explain what Islam is and easily answer questions.”

Anis also gave the example of a concert with the Embassy of Ireland, in which Egyptian musicians and Sudanese refugees took part.

Among the lecture series that have been organised were lectures for university students from the US who were invited for two weeks to learn about Islam. “They visited Al-Azhar administrative building, Al-Azhar University campus, and Al-Azhar Observatory as well as many Islamic sights,” Anis said.

“We also organised a course about understanding Islam by a professor who discussed the beliefs and philosophy behind the Islamic religion, and this was also attended by many diplomats. A lecture entitled ‘Making Sense of Islam’ by professor Tarek Al-Gohari, an Egyptian living in Washington, was also attended by many foreigners.”

“A seminar by a professor from Yale University in the US about the attributes of God from the Islamic perspective was organised, along with a lecture for Egyptian diplomats by the secretary-general of the Dar Al-Iftaa Peace Institute, Ibrahim Nigm, who explained how the Dar Al-Iftaa faces up to violence and extremism.”

“We organised three educational trips, each lasting for three days, for students, priests, and imams. The latter groups took turns lecturing the participants on the same topics.”

Up to now, the organisation has only put on activities in Cairo. However, it intends to organise courses in Minya governorate in future with the Beit Al-Eyla (family house) Foundation, the Coptic Church, Al-Azhar, and the Misr Al-Kheir Foundation, in other words entirely by Egyptian institutions. 

Another activity organised by the CCMUP was the Journey of Learning, a five-day conference that brought together Muslim and Christian theology students in order to promote peace and understanding. The students learnt about the principles and values of the Islamic and Christian religious traditions. Christian students learnt directly from Muslim scholars and students about Islam, and Muslim students leant directly from Christian scholars and students about Christianity. 

It was unprecedented that scholars and students of one religion should teach scholars and students of another about their religion. The topics tackled included charity work in Christianity and Islam, the principles of Biblical and Quranic interpretation (tafsir), and the role of religion in preserving community values and ethics, along with embracing diversity from Islamic and Christian perspectives, and loving our neighbours in Christian and Islamic thought.

“I want to thank everyone for the beautiful spirit of brotherhood and love that prevailed throughout the event. We are truly happy to have participated in this wonderful journey of learning. It was indeed a learning journey and an opportunity for cultural dialogue and exchange. I gained and learned a lot from it,” said Peter, a participant in the conference. 

“We got to know each other better, remembered our societal and ethical values, and remembered that our love for each other goes beyond differences in belief and religion. I am pleased to have met my Christian sisters and brothers, and my takeaways from the sessions are beautiful companionships and feelings of love, warmth, and understanding,” said Mohamed, another participant. 

JOINT PROJECTS: The Maan Men Agl Masr project was started in 2013 and lasted until 2015. About 30 imams and 30 priests from different parts of the country were invited for three days to attend lectures repeated four times a year on working together in society.

The lectures focused on facing up to extremist thought and featured visits to Islamic and Christian religious sites like mosques, churches, and monasteries and the Islamic and Coptic Museums in Cairo. The slogan of the project was “know each other to be able to coexist and communicate to be able to work together for the sake of Egypt.”

The CCMUP then started another phase of the project, called Maan Men Agl Tanmeyat Masr (“together for developing Egypt”) that started an experimental phase in 2017. In this project, Christian and Muslim youth were brought together from areas vulnerable to sectarian violence to co-operate in local community service projects stressing the importance of effective communication and spreading the culture of accepting the other and peacemaking. 

Through lectures and workshops, the project was able to develop the capabilities of the young people participating in them by teaching self-development, effective communication, the building of societal peace, and positive and creative thinking. This helped them to understand the rights and obligations of citizenship and entrepreneurship. 

The workshops also featured arts, crafts, sports, and field trips to help achieve cohesion between young people from different areas and religions.  

The CCMUP announced in a ceremony this year that it was launching the Professor Ali Al-Saman Prize that targets people or institutions in the Middle East who work on maintaining peace between the different religions and cultures. The prize will be awarded to books or research articles or arts initiatives that aim at bridging the gap between the different cultures and religions.

The prize is named after Ali Al-Saman for his efforts in maintaining dialogue between people from different cultures and religions and spreading peace. Al-Saman was the former head of the International Organisation for Interfaith Dialogue and Civilisation in the World. He was also deputy chair of the Al-Azhar Permanent Committee for Dialogue between the Ecclesiastical Religions and consultant to former grand imam of Al-Azhar Mohamed Sayed Tantawi.  

In the projects, “we focus on children and young people as if they grow up in a culture of dialogue and acceptance of the other, this will result in achieving societal peace,” Anis said. “The grand imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, has asked us to involve children from the religious institutes of Al-Azhar in our activities, and in the It’s Our Planet project, children from four institutions from Al-Azhar took part, for example.”

“The main drawback we face is financing, since otherwise there are no barriers,” he added. “We are trying to overcome this through the Misr Al-Kheir Foundation that has been supporting the CCMUP through its Manahi Al-Haya (Aspects of Life) Department that supports development, scientific research, education, and healthcare.”

This will be supporting the peace-keeping courses and the prizes awarded to young people for societal dialogue and peacemaking. “The more financial support we get, the more work we will be able to do,” Anis added.

Among the organisation’s future plans, Anis lists extending its activities across Egypt.

“We have received offers to establish more centres in other governorates. However, while we are eager to expand, we are cautious as we do not want to go beyond our present capacities. There must be maturity in our expansion, even as we want to see centres in the other governorates. We aim at forming more Christian-Muslim partnerships in different places so we can jointly serve Egyptian society,” he said.

“The most important wish I have is to see the new generations work together in spreading the message of peace and unity,” Anis concluded.


* A version of this article appears in print in the 1 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

Short link: