Religious Affairs Minister Ahmed Azoum said on Wednesday, December 9, 2020, that the ministry has not marked any irregularities in the activity of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in providing training courses for imams and religious actors.
The Minister of Religious Affairs, while attending the "Here Sun" program on "Shams FM," affirmed that the ministry has signed a cooperation agreement with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy since 2014 regarding this formation. He explained that the training of the center does not interfere in the substantive aspect of the religious issue but rather in training imams and religious actors in the way of conveying ideas and combating extremism and corruption.
Azoum assumed the courses are supervised by the Ministry of Religious Affairs through preachers and regional delegates. The ministry receives correspondence about the purpose to inform it of these activities, noting that some imams from the ministry's perspective have participated in these training courses over the past six years.
Regarding accusations of politicization and partisan propaganda, Ahmed Azoum said that he did not mark any political practice in the center activities, revealing that the Independent High Electoral Commission (IEC) monitored mosques during the 2018-2020 elections and assured the ministry that it had not registered any infringements in worship place that would affect the outcome of the elections.
The "Hand in Hand" project aims to spread the values of citizenship, fight corruption, and set the values of moderation, tolerance, and co-existence in the front of extremism, dispute resolution mechanisms, democracy and human rights, and speech and social networking mechanisms.
