Word: sheikhs
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Islam's oldest university has a new rector. Ending a seven month search Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser picked Sheikh Hassan Mamoun, 70, to head Cairo's Al Azhar ("The Resplendent") University, for 1,000 years the most renowned center of Moslem learning...
...take the job. As Grand Mufti of Egypt from 1955 until 1961, he issued thousands of rulings and interpretations on religious matters. As the 39th rector of Al Azhar, Mamoun's responsibilities are even more impressive. The post carries with it the titles of Grand Imam and Sheikh of Islam, which makes Mamoun the nearest thing to a Moslem pope. Yet with Egypt struggling to slough off its feudal ways, he must also guide the university toward turning out the educated elite essential to run a modern nation...
...school, mired for centuries in rote teaching of the Koran, is already in the midst of a thriving renaissance. Mamoun's predecessor, Sheikh Mahmoud Chaltout, a leading scholar of the Koran who died in December, opened a school of commerce, made the study of English compulsory, revised the medieval law curriculum, established a separate college for girls. The government built an ultramodern "City of Islamic Missions" where Al Azhar's 3,600 foreign students, including six Americans, live in national dormitories with their own kitchens and common rooms...
That bombshell reverberated round the world. CLAY PROUD TO BE A MOSLEM, read a headline in Karachi. At Cairo's University of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Sayed Sabik said: "We are all pleased that a Moslem set such a well-mannered religious example of sportsmanship." And at a "Savior's Day" rally in Chicago, while 4,000 delirious followers shouted "You tell it, dear apostle," Black Muslim Leader Elijah Muhammad claimed a share of the heavyweight title for himself. "White people wanted Liston to beat up and probably kill poor little Clay," said Muhammad. "But Allah and myself said...
...Died. Sheikh Bechara el Khoury, 74, first President of independent Lebanon from 1943 to 1952, who spearheaded his country's revolt against the French, gave it one of the Middle East's few stable regimes, but was forced to resign when opposition politicians charged (but could not prove) that his family was profiting from government deals in everything from cement to gold; of cancer; in Beirut...