Special Report - Egypt deploys scholars to teach moderate Islam, but scepticism abounds

Students revise for a Koran verbal recital exam in one of the Al-Azhar institutes in Cairo, Egypt, May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih

CAIRO (Reuters) - In his battle against militant Islam, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is relying not just on bomber planes and soldiers but on white-turbaned clerics from Al-Azhar, Egypt's 1,000-year-old centre for Islamic learning. He wants clerics to counter radicalism in the classroom.

In a televised speech in January at an Al-Azhar conference centre in Cairo, Sisi called for "a religious revolution" in Islam. Radicalised thinking, he told the audience of Islamic scholars, had become "a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world."