A Report by Shimon Samuels and Alex Uberti
Paris, 29 January 2026
The Al-Azhar Observatory for Combating Extremism (AOCE), a unit of Al Azhar University of Cairo, held a meeting last week at the Anawati Chair of the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies, with the apparent support of the EU, to promote “Peace and Dialogue with a focus on problems facing Muslim communities in Italy”.
Among others, the main objective was to denounce “Islamophobia” by focusing on “the European mentality’s distorted image concerning the concept of Jihad”! Therefore, Western wariness towards radical Islam after decades of terrorism meted out in the name of “Holy Jihad”, is purportedly fruit of the victims’ “distorted mentality”, and not sparked by ongoing extremist propaganda against “infidels” and the Jews!?
AOCE’s manifest intentions are to “monitor extremist ideologies globally” and "dismantle extreme speech from its geographical and linguistic context”.
Nevertheless, it also seems to minimize and downplay the impact of incitement to hatred and violence emanating from a number of Arab-Muslim instances, of which Al Azhar is one of the most prominent.
For example, Prof. Ahmad Al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, views the “extreme contrast between Judaism as a divine religion and Zionism as a racist settler-colonial movement...”, ultimately implying that the “divine religion” has no right to be practiced freely, in no home and by no people.
Such inquisitorial hints are consistently repeated on the AOCE website. The defamatory language includes misnaming Israel as “the Zionist entity”, accusing “Zionism is a plague”, that has “a true bloody face”, that its “terrorist forces deny all values of morality and humanness”, and even “committed their crimes depending on some of their extremist religious texts”...
Who, where and what texts are they really speaking about here?
Prof. Mohamed El-Dewini, the Imam’s Deputy, in a speech of September 2024 entitled “Zionism: Enemy of Peace”, lectures that “The return of Al-Aqsa (Jerusalem) to Muslims is a settled matter, its timing concealed from us, and perhaps it will transpire soon, God willing!” Doesn’t this remind us on how Hamas called its 7 October genocidal attack “Al-Aqsa Flood”? The declared objective was to reach and conquer Jerusalem!
In the same speech, El-Dewini adds cultural appropriation by declaring that “Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was an upright Muslim”. In light of these words, what sense is given to the Abraham Accords for Peace and normalization?
On the AOCE Facebook page, the entire land of Israel is covered by a Palestinian keffiyeh with the following text “Palestine will remain Arab”. This explicitly means denying any Jewish existential legitimacy, unless the Jews or others are subordinates. No thanks!
The same Facebook account carries a quote from Egyptian anthropologist Gamal Hamdan, delegitimizing the Jewish State by relaying the antisemitic trope that Jews today have no ancestral link to ancient Israel – in his own words: “no religious, historical nor biological relation” – thus justifying hatred and resentment.
The “scholarly” AOCE website also handpicked an article from a far-left website, dated 7 October 2024 [sic!], authored by a then undergraduate student that, in the guise of “reviewing double standards”, denies Hamas’ weaponizing of sexual violence and doubts numerous related reports, interviews and testimonies. In doing so, the Al Azhar Observatory exploits a dubious western source to de facto whitewash a significant part of the terrorists’ atrocities.
These examples are among many that do not conform to Al Azhar’s proclaimed “refusal of extremism and violence”, but do confirm its hypocrisy – or at best, its ambiguity – that covers up what could be viewed as propaganda for genocidal intent towards Israel, the Jewish people, their history and identity.
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Dr Shimon Samuels is Emeritus Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre
Alex Uberti is Project Manager of CSW-Europe
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Contact csweurope@gmail.com for more details on this issue.