Goodbye Pope, Hello Mufti
While the Pope’s resignation continues to garner worldwide attention, Issandr El Amrani at The New York Times considers the election of Egypt’s new mufti, Shawky Abdel Karim Allam. The election of the mufti, rather than the traditional appointment, marks a “watershed event” in the Islamic world. El Amrani writes, “[The] identity of the next pope is unlikely to change the outlook of the Roman Catholic Church — and its political impact, at least in Europe, does not compare to the role that religious officials can play in an Egypt that is going through an epochal transformation.”