CAIRO — Al-Azhar, which The National calls the world’s top Sunni Islam institution, asked Arab and Muslim governments on Sunday to form an “urgent” mediation committee as hostilities between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis intensify.
Grand Imam Ahmed Al Tayeb urged leaders “to uphold the spirit of brotherhood and the bonds of religion, blood and language” and to bring about “an immediate and comprehensive halt to all acts of war, fighting, destruction and sabotage,” according to The National. The committee would draw on figures from across Arab and Islamic countries, and Al-Azhar said it would support it in every way it can.
The Saudi-led coalition said it shot down two ballistic missiles fired at Khamis Mushait and three drones over Riyadh and the Eastern Province, and a projectile struck a residential site in Najran, injuring six people, the civil defence said, The National reported. Coalition spokesman Maj Gen Turki Al Malki said on Thursday that attacks on Saudi airports had killed 19 people and wounded 364. Those figures come from Saudi officials, and TEH could not check them independently.
The National called the move “a rare foray by the revered institution into politics and diplomacy” that “will probably be treated as a largely symbolic gesture.” Earlier on Sunday, Egypt’s top security body pledged “all necessary and possible forms of support” to Saudi Arabia, and parliament will reconvene for two more days to weigh Sisi’s request on Saudi Arabia’s defence.
Who counts as neutral is already disputed. Yemen’s foreign minister, Afrah Al-Zouba, rejected Iranian proposals to mediate, in a report Arab News carried from Asharq. Writing on X, she said “those who arm one side in a war cannot be mediators in that same war.” Iran, she said, cannot mediate a conflict in which the Yemeni government accuses it of taking part.
In May, Tayeb met Saudi Ambassador Saleh Al-Husseini in Cairo and praised the efforts of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in serving pilgrims, according to a Saudi Press Agency report.
On Sunday, Gulf foreign ministers meeting in Manama backed “mediation efforts and diplomatic initiatives” by regional and friendly countries while holding Iran “fully responsible” for attacks on member states, according to the GCC ministerial communiqué.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s foreign ministers opened a two-day session in Baghdad on Saturday. The National’s account does not say how Al-Azhar’s proposal relates to that meeting or which states would sit on the committee. TEH could not locate Al-Azhar’s own statement, so the quotes above are The National’s English rendering, and no reply from Riyadh, Tehran or the Houthis had surfaced in the sources TEH read. Whether any side in the fighting would accept a mediator it did not choose is the question the proposal leaves open.
