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Azhar Scholars Urge Yemen to Reconsider Religious Schools Ban
CAIRO, May 20 (Islamonline) - A group of Islamic scholars called on the Yemeni government Sunday to overturn a recent decision to close all religious schools and ban religious education in the country.
"This is a plan to contain the Muslim world in general, and the Arab world in particular," said a statement released this week by scholars from the Al Azhar University, Sunni Islam's highest center of religious learning. "The people of Yemen and their government need to take a measure over this inflammatory issue."
The government of the Arab Muslim country, said it was banning religious education after complaints from Western countries that it was turning into a haven for religious extremists. They said was part of an attempt to stamp out Islam in some Muslim countries.
Scholars from Al Azhar, warned that "undermining religious education is based on a myth spread by secularists in the West that such education is behind terrorism and violence in the region".
The scholars said in their statement that was sent to newspapers and news agencies that extremism in fact stems from the lack of religious awareness or understanding of the true spirit of Islam.
They said that similar calls have been made to close Al Azhar University in Egypt before, just as the Universities of El Zaytonh in Tunisia and El Qayrawan in Morocco, two other major Islamic universities, were closed.
Some countries in the region have often said they wanted religious education abolished to weed the roots of fundamentalism in the Middle East. Israel has also called for closing religious classes at al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam's holy sites, claiming that they threatened "world peace."
Azhar Scholars expressed their astonishment that such a decision coincided with the report by the U-S Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, which warned Arab leaders against the growing Islamic trends in Arab soceities.
The CIA report followed a bomb attack last October on the American warship USS Cole, in the southern port city of Aden, which killed 17 U.S. sailors.
The U-S has blamed the operation on religious activists, however, the attack remains under investigation.
U.S. officials have said Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, who is based in Afghanistan, may have been involved in the attack.
Yemen is a Muslim Arab Middle Eastern country, situated in the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula and it has a population of around seventeen million. Most of them are Sunni Muslims.
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