Sunni Islam's top cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, died on Wednesday in Saudi Arabia of a heart attack suffered while boarding a plane, Egyptian officials and state media said. He was 81 years old.
Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar - Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning - was in Riyadh to attend the King Faisal awards ceremony, the official MENA news agency said.
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Tantawi was boarding a plane early Wednesday morning when he suffered severe pain and fell on the stairs, Egyptian television said.
He was rushed to the Amir Sultan hospital in Riyadh where doctors proclaimed him dead.
An Egyptian official told AFP that Tantawi had died of a heart attack.
His body is likely to be sent back to Cairo on Wednesday evening, the television said.
Controversial handshake. Peres (L) and Tantawi (Archive photo: GPO)
Tantawi, who was born in the Egyptian village of Saleem al-Sharqiyyah on October 28, 1928, was appointed Grand Mufti of Egypt in 1986. He held this position for almost ten years, until he was appointed Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque and Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University by President Hosni Mubarak.
About a year ago Tantawi caused a storm in
the Muslim world when he shook Israeli President Shimon Peres' hand during a United Nations-hosted interfaith meeting in New York.
Tantawi explained that he did not recognize Peres. The handshake sparked harsh criticism among the Egyptian opposition, which went as far as to demand the cleric's resignation.
Tantawi told the independent Egyptian paper Al Masri al Youm at the time that "I shook the hand of anyone who held out his hand. Among those was Shimon Peres, whom I did not recognize, so I shook his hand like I did the others, at random without even knowing him... And if I had known who it was, would the handshake amount to heresy?"
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