Ali Gomaa

Professor Mohammad Fadel of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law argues that Gomaa representative of "authoritarian forms of political Islam." According to Fadel, Gomaa "incited the Egyptian military, in a sermon given to the armed forces in the presence of its senior leadership, to kill supporters of the deposed president, urging them to "shoot to kill" (iḍrab fī’l-malyān)." Fadel adds: "ʿAlī Jumuʿa exhorts the armed forces to cleanse Egypt of the former president’s supporters, even claiming that the army’s position was vindicated by, among other things, the "innumerable visions (tawātarat al-ruʾā) of the Prophet of God" that came to Egypt's living saints in which he communicated to them his support for the military against the former president."

Another justification was that the Prophet let his uncle Al-‘Abbas ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib take usury in Mecca when it was a non-Muslim city, and he did not prohibit him except in the year of the Farewell Pilgrimage.

According to Dr James Dorsey of Nanyang Technological University, "Gomaa asserted in 2015 that women did not have the strength to become heart surgeons, serve in the military, or engage in sports likes soccer, body building, wrestling and weightlifting. A year later, Gomaa issued a fatwa declaring writer Sherif El-Shobashy an infidel for urging others to respect a woman’s choice on whether or not to wear the veil."

In February 2015, he was noted for statements regarding the burning to death of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh by ISIL in which he claimed to have proof that the burning was photoshopped and that the pilot was not in fact burned to death. He stated as proof of his claim that in the video published by ISIS, Al-Kasabeh stands still while being burned, something that would seem impossible.

Gomaa believes the best antidote to Islamic extremism is "traditional conception of sharia law — along with knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence"

Gomaa is highly critical of the rebel group ISIL In September 2014, he, alongside 226 other prominent Sunni scholars, was a signatory to an open letter denouncing ISIL and its religious tenets.

He was succeeded as Grand Mufti by Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam in February 2013.

Following the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état, Gomaa expressed his support for the coup encouraging soldiers to kill those protesting the coup and cancelled a visit to London out of fear of prosecution for this. According to Dr David H. Warren of University of Edinburgh, Ali Gomaa was one of "the most prominent supporters of the coup and its bloody aftermath." Warren notes that Gomaa referred to anti-coup protestors as the "dogs of hell" and seemed to justify the army's mass killing of these protestors. Dr Usaama al-Azami of the University of Oxford also notes that Gomaa told the army shortly before the Rabaa massacre that they "should not hesitate to kill those who oppose them." After the massacre, al-Azami adds, Gomaa justified the army's actions.

In March 2011, Gomaa's 60th birthday and the official retirement age of Egyptian government employees, the SCAF issued him a one-year extension to help with the continuity of government. In June of the following year Muhammad Morsi was elected Egypt's new president. On 20 July 2012, Gomaa held a national press conference to announce the start of the holy month of Ramadan and announced the month in the name of Egypt's new president. In March 2013, Gomaa retired from his position of Grand Mufti of Egypt, and Dr. Shawqi Allam became Egypt's new Grand Mufti.

Dr. Ali Gomaa made several public statements in relation to the massive uprising that began on 25 January 2011 and led to the stepping down of former Egyptian President Mubarak on 11 February 2011. His general position was one of caution addressing the potential for mass bloodshed and chaos. He was clear that public protest to address grievances is a fundamental human right, but cautioned that mass demonstrations leading to a disruption of day-to-day life could be considered impermissible (haram) from an Islamic legal point of view.

On 3 February 2011, Gomaa went on national TV to answer "hundreds of calls he received that day" with concerns about attending Friday prayer services. He issued a fatwa allowing people who feared physical harm from further mass protests to pray at home and not attend Friday prayer services.

In an op-ed in The New York Times, he supported the passage of the 2011 Constitutional referendum, calling it a "milestone" for Egyptian democracy.

However, the Mufti still rejects the death penalty for apostasy. In 2009, posted on his website that he does not believe that apostasy is punishable by death. In fact, it was only two years ago that Sheikh Ali Gomaa made clear statements to the effect that apostasy is not punishable by death in Islam, a position that he holds to this day.

On 24 June 2007, after an 11-year-old died under the knife undergoing circumcision, he decreed that female circumcision was not just "un-Islamic" but forbidden.

In 2007, he "unequivocally told The Washington Post that the death penalty for apostasy simply no longer applies."

In November 2006, he ruled that female circumcision (also referred to as female genital mutilation or FGM) should not be applied; this ruling is in accordance with Egyptian law, which also forbids female circumcision. This ruling came about after a conference instigated by research and a documentary on FGM in Somalia by the German action group Target. The fatwa is now also used in Western Europe to combat FGM.

On 18 April 2006, an article entitled "Egypt's grand mufti issues fatwa: no sculpture" appeared stating: "Artists and intellectuals here say the edict, whose ban on producing and displaying sculptures overturns a century-old fatwa, runs counter to Islam. They also worry that extremists may use the ruling as a pretense for destroying Egypt's ancient relics, which form a pillar of the country's multibillion-dollar tourist industry." Jay Tolson defended Gomaa, saying that "while Gomaa did say that it was un-Islamic for Muslims to own statues or to display them in their homes, he made it very clear that the destruction of antiquities and other statues in the public sphere was unacceptable and indeed criminal. He is also on record deploring the Taliban's destruction of the great Buddhist statuary in Afghanistan."

He served as the eighteenth Grand Mufti of Egypt (2003–2013) through Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah succeeding Ahmed el-Tayeb. He has, in the past, been considered a respected Islamic jurist, according to a 2008 U.S. News & World Report report and The National, and "a highly promoted champion of moderate Islam," according to The New Yorker. In more recent years, however, he has been characterized by Western scholarly observers as a supporter of "authoritarian" forms of government, and The New York Times notes in 2013 that he encouraged security forces to kill protesters against the Egyptian coup of that year.

Ali Gomaa was appointed Grand Mufti in late September 2003. by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, replacing former Mufti Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb. El-Tayeb was appointed Al-Azhar University president, taking over from Ahmed Omar Hashem.

In addition to the courses he taught at the University, Gomaa also revived the tradition of open classes held in a mosque where he taught a circle of students six days a week from after sunrise until noon. Gomaa established these lessons in 1998 with the aim of protecting the Islamic intellectual tradition from being lost or misinterpreted: "I want people to continue in the tradition of knowledge reading the classical texts the way they were written, not the way people want to understand them."

In addition to the lessons in al-Azhar, Gomaa also began giving the Friday sermon (khutbah) in Cairo's Sultan Hassan Mosque in 1998 after which he would give a short lesson in Islamic jurisprudence for the general public followed by a question-and-answer session. In addition Gomaa speaks fluent English, and he was a former chairman of Al-Azhar University's Islamic Jurisprudence Department.

Gomaa has told American journalist Lawrence Wright that he worked with Islamic Group prisoners who later embraced the "Nonviolence Initiative" and denounced violence. "I began going into the prisons in the 1990s.... We had debates and dialogues with the prisoners, which continued for more than three years. Such debates became the nucleus for the revisionist thinking."

Gomaa graduated from high school in 1969, at which point he enrolled at Ain Shams University in Egypt's capital, Cairo. Having already begun to memorize the Quran, he delved deeper into his studies of Islam, studying Hadith and Shafi'i jurisprudence in his free time while at university. After completing a B.Comm. (Bachelor of Commerce) at Ain Shams in 1973, Gomaa enrolled in Cairo's al-Azhar University, the oldest active Islamic institution of higher learning in the world. He received a second bachelor's degree (B.A.) from al-Azhar, then an M.A., and finally a Ph.D with highest honors in Juristic Methodology (usul al-fiqh) in 1988. Since he had not gone through the al-Azhar High School curriculum, he took it upon himself in his first year at the college to study and memorize all of the basic texts, which many of the other students had already covered.

Ali Gomaa was born in the Upper Egyptian province of Beni Suef on 3 March 1952 (7 Jumadah al-Akhirah 1371 AH). Gomaa is married and has three adult children. In person, Gomaa's appearance has been described as "tall and regal, with a round face and a trim beard."