Following are excerpts from a statement by Sheikh of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, which aired on Channel 1 Egyptian TV on September 8, 2014:

Sheikh Al-Azhar: All the [fundamentalist terrorist groups] are the new products of imperialism, in the service of global Zionism in its new version, and its plot to destroy the [Middle] East and tear region apart. Our evidence for this is the Western American hesitancy and foot-dragging in confronting these terrorist organizations, as compared with the Western onslaught on the Iraqi state in 2003, for example, and the disbanding of the Iraqi army in record time and under fabricated reasons and false pretexts, as well as the providing of justifications that lead one to believe that the people there [the West] interpret security, peace, and human rights to be nothing other than their own peace and security, and human rights exclusively for the whites.

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Europe and America have decided to heed the Saudi-Egyptian warning, although the Western move issued from the womb of personal motives and necessities, and not, sadly, from the womb of human principles and universal values.

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