Awqaf Platform: Forming a Plate Best Served Tolerant
President El-Sisi sponsors launch of world's largest religious platform by Egypt's Awqaf Ministry, promoting tolerance and renewal.
The Egyptian Ministry of Charitable Endowments (AKA Awqaf) (MoCE) dates back to 1835, when the then ruler of Egypt, Mohamed Ali, promulgated a decree on the creation of the Public Endowment Authority (PEA). In 1913, PEA was transformed into a ministry.
Originally, PEA was created to oversee and manage charitable endowments across Egypt. Decades later, it was decided that the newly formed ministry was to further oversee mosques as well as their activities, personnel, and services on Egyptian soil.
Being a key party to the preaching of the true message of Islam both inside and outside Egypt, the MoCE has always been on the frontline of promoting tolerance, coexistence, and human fraternity while combating all forms of extremism and radicalization.
The tools and channels adopted for that mission have always been written publications, mosques, and traditional media. The existing MoCE website is almost solely news-oriented in nature; much to the contrary of the mission expected from the MoCE.
As part of that mission, the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (SCIA) was created in 1960 to promote the true merciful teachings of Islam worldwide. SCIA went by traditional media. A chip off the old block, SCIA sent preachers outside Egypt and received international students on scholarships from many countries.
Engaging new media is inevitable, however, for a notion to be driven home. With a visionary polymath on top, the MoCE has been seeking to cope with new media to deliver on its promise of promoting the great values of Islam. The incumbent minister, dr. Ossama Al-Azhary, declared on his first day of assuming his office in July 2024 that a world-class platform would be launched soon.
A promise strenuously kept, the MoCE launched its new platform (awkafonline.gov.eg) on Wednesday 18 June 2025 under the patronage of his excellency president Abdelfattah El-Sisi in a ceremony headed by the prime minister of Egypt, Dr. Mostafa Madboli.
The new platform is meant to form a plate that is determined to be knowledgeable, tolerant and promoting peace, coexistence, respect, and human fraternity. What has been achieved so far is the infrastructure of a greatly ambitious project. To understand how unprecedented and unique this platform is, one needs to consider the following facts:
1. It is part of a larger determination by the Egyptian state to build, honor, and glorify human life, God's most sublime creation according to Islamic understanding. Egypt is pursuing several presidential, nationwide sustainable development initiatives, including A New Beginning to Build the Human Being, and Decent Life. Initiatives of such magnitude and aims may come to fruition only through paying due attention to human development, most notably mental, cognitive, psychological, and spiritual welfare.
2. The new platform features three main phases, the first of which is due for launch on 18 June 2025; with an unlimited room for scaleup. It is meant to achieve all its milestones up to sustainability by mid 2027.
3. The first phase includes 60,000 pages; making it the biggest religious platform in the whole world.
4. By the end of all milestones, the platform is meant to hit a staggering count of several million pages.
5. The platform is expected to be coupled with a smart phone app (phase 3) and a translation-based scaleup into several languages.
6. The platform approaches religious issues from various angles, including legal, linguistic, philosophical, sociological, medical, historical, and other perspectives.
7. The platform adopts a moderate line of thought that seeks to promote the true, great values of Islam.
8. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and chatbot features are to be expected as part of the operational and interactive functions of phase three of the platform.
9. The approach adopted for the platform is set to renew Islamic religious discourse in a way that preserves the fundamentals of faith, regards as humanized -rather than deified- Islamic scholarly heritage, and views with an all-inclusive eye the history of Islam.
10. The platform is based on the Al-Azhary's four-part strategy: (a) confronting religious extremism, (b) confronting irreligious extremism, (c) character building, and (d) civilizational revival and contribution.
Make no mistake, it is a historic moment of a historic product for the good of Egyptians, Muslims, and the whole word.
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