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Mending Vatican ties: Al-Azhar wants pope to declare Islam peaceful
2013-06-08 - Arab News - An envoy from Al-Azhar in Cairo, raised the prospect of restoring ties with the Vatican yesterday but called on Pope Francis to take "a step forward" by declaring that Islam is a peaceful religion. "The problems that we had were not with the Vatican but with the former pope. Now the doors of Al-Azhar are open," Mahmoud Abdel Gawad, diplomatic envoy to the grand imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed Al-Tayyeb, told Italian daily Il Messaggero in Cairo. 

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Saudi Arabia's Awakening Shakyhs: Where are they Today?

During the 1990's a younger generation of Saudi religious shaykhs rose to prominence on a wave of anti-Western rhetoric and criticism of Saudi government policies. A government crackdown in 1994 put some of the most prominent members of the Awakening movement in prison for the rest of the decade. Since their release, most have lost their positions within the Saudi religious-educational bureaucracy, but many have been able to resume a public, if more subdued role within the religious community.