Egypt’s top Muslim scholars have announced proposals for a new religious school, overseen by the state, whose graduates would be the only clerics allowed to preach. This is the latest measure in the fight to tackle rising extremism in Egypt and counter the stream of effective propaganda put out by Islamic State and other Islamist terror groups which have proved alarmingly effective in winning young Muslims across the world to the cause of violent jihad. It is long overdue.
The plan is a compromise between the Egyptian government and al-Azhar, the ancient Muslim university in Cairo that offers the only acknowledged theological leadership throughout Sunni Islam. President Sisi wanted something much more restrictive. The ministry of religious endowments originally insisted that all Friday sermons should