Sheikh Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi

716PM GMT eleven Mar 2010

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The Grand Mufti of Cairo"s Al-Azhar mosque, Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, in 2006 Photo AFP/GETTY

As the head of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the earlier chair of guidance in the Sunni Muslim world, he argued for physical politics, enrichment of women"s rights and rendezvous with both the West and Israel. He was a extreme censor of al-Qaeda and cursed the attacks of Sep eleven 2001.

Given his position, his fatwas eremite edicts were due some-more weight than those released by teenager scholars (whose fatwas of a draconian inlet were mostly bloody opposite journal headlines). Tantawi"s own edicts, by contrast, gave joy to those in the Middle East and over who hoped that a Muslim temperament was concordant with element enrichment and, to a little extent, "Western" values.

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But his faithfulness to Hosni Mubarak, the strict Egyptian president, that seemed infrequently to verge on slavish, annoyed critique and disregard at home and abroad.

Unwillingly but inevitably, Tantawi helped combine most of the antithesis to Middle Eastern, pro-American dictatorships (such as the one he served) at the back of the regressive forces of the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies and offshoots. Moderate attitudes towards sacrament and multitude lucky formerly by liberals and nationalists came to be compared with him and by him with peremptory order and American unfamiliar policy.

This was not helped by a miss of domestic sure-footedness that competence have been endearing in a less domestic cleric.

On one occasion, he was indicted of stealing his boots and utilizing them to strike reporters who asked him formidable questions. After fluctuating his defamation of self-murder attacks to their make make use of of in the Palestinian cause, he afterwards appeared to backtrack.

In late 2009, he launched a discuss opposite the niqab the full-face deceive increasingly ragged by women in Egypt by privately ripping afar that of a teenage lady at a propagandize dependent to Al-Azhar he was visiting, most to the shock of all concerned.

In 2008, he attempted to repudiate jolt the palm of Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, at a United Nations interfaith forum. When a sketch of a clearly organisation handclasp was published, he claimed he had unsuccessful to recognize the Nobel assent laureate, a drawn out figure in Israel"s peacemaking efforts over the last dual decades.

Born on Oct twenty-eight 1928 in the encampment of Salim, Mohammed Tantawi came from a normal family in farming top Egypt. The eldest of 6 brothers, he had memorised the Koran by his teenagers and, at the age of 15, assimilated the Alexandria Religious Institute.

A array of educational positions in Egypt and abroad followed, culminating in five years outlayed at the Islamic University of Medina, in Saudi Arabia.

In 1986, he was allocated Grand Mufti of Egypt by President Hosni Mubarak. The dual men shaped a close down payment they were of identical age and temperament, though possibly Tantawi was indeed a follower in the president"s make use of of secular, nationalist, peremptory government, or merely authorised himself to be co-opted, is hotly disputed.

Under reforms instituted in the 1960s by Abdul Gamal Nasser, the charismatic but compulsory owner of complicated Egypt, appointments to the country"s comparison ecclesiastic positions had come underneath approach domestic control. These enclosed those of the Grand Mufti and of the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, a on all sides to that Tantawi was towering in 1996.

When Nasser"s recognition in the Arab universe was at the height, this division did not mistreat the clerisy"s picture of firmness and authority. But as Egypt"s change and, later, President Mubarak"s repute waned, the repairs by organisation became clear.

This was a sold blow for Al-Azhar. Established in the 10th century and prolonged the Oxford or Harvard of Islamic teaching, it was, by the time of Tantawi"s ascendancy, losing belligerent to righteous Salafi establishments that transposed importance on ancestral schools with a some-more direct, personal hit with the Koran and conviction as practised in the beginning times.

That these doctrines were drawn out by preachers themselves mostly saved by rich Gulf Arabs did not relieve their appeal.

Tantawi saw the threat, and his initial stairs at Al-Azhar were to relieve the change of the regressive elements, that were already propelling a larger autonomy from Mr Mubarak"s grip. From afterwards on he released fatwas compelling the physical modernism with that Egypt had prolonged been compared but that was apropos increasingly without a friend as it unsuccessful to give climb to comparably Western standards of vital for Egypt"s fast-growing, bankrupt population.

He pronounced that charging seductiveness on bank loans, prolonged cursed as usury, or riba, was in actuality ribh, or only gaining profit, that was allowable. This in the future authorised the growth of a debt industry. He changed on to renouned culture, subsidy radio diversion shows such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

As attitudes towards women became some-more traditional, he asserted their rights. He pronounced women could take heading supervision and legal positions. The make use of of womanlike circumcision, mostly cursed but still at large practised, he described as "un-Islamic", dogmatic that he had not inflicted it on his own daughter. He argued for simpler divorce for women, pronounced that termination was slight in cases of rape, and came to his biggest inflection in the last dual years as discuss raged about the flourishing bent of Egyptian women to wear the niqab.

He accepted the domestic implications for decades, the make use of of even wearing the hijab the headscarf had been declining, quite in middle-class Egyptian society. But as some-more and some-more women, together with students, resumed the make make use of of from the 1980s onwards, those who wished to show their larger tact or friendship or only strengthen themselves from passionate nuisance began wearing the full face-veil. It came to be associated, at slightest in the government"s mind, with await for fundamentalist Islam.

After arising a fatwa permitting girls in France to go uncovered, in suitability with the anathema there on the hijab in schools, he afterwards incited to his own foundation. Visiting a delegate propagandize dependent to al-Azhar in Cairo in Oct last year, he found a lady wearing the niqab and, when she unsuccessful to remove it, did so for her.

His actions unleashed drawn out complaints from opposite the Arab world, with most arguing that to urge women he was denying women"s right to choose.

In the West, he will be remembered for enlivening family with alternative faiths; he sealed an agreement to foster discourse with the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002. Those who met him will recollect him possibly for his personal munificence and soft-spoken, even somnolent celebrity or, generally if they occur to be journalists, as a man able of drifting in to aroused rages.

Apart from the shoe-wielding incident, he stood detached from magnanimous allies on the issue of censorship, that he supported. He once demanded that those convicted of defame be flogged. The editors of the Israeli journal that published the sketch display him with Mr Peres he called lunatics, liars, and the "sons of 60", an Arabic countenance in that the 60 practically refers to dogs and prostitutes.

His vital work of grant was a multi-volume elucidation of the Koran, that took 10 years to finish but did not embrace at large enlightened reviews.

Sheikh Tantawi died unexpected of a heart conflict on Mar 10 whilst boarding an aeroplane in Saudi Arabia. He was buried in Medina.

He is survived by dual sons and a daughter. His mother predeceased him.