Sheikh Yusuf Burhami, a leader of Egypt’s Salafi movement—which, since the ousting of the Brotherhood, has become the primary Islamist party—recently issued a fatwa arguing that the biblical statement attributed to Jesus—“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matt 22:21)—could not, as widely held by Christians for some two millennia, have meant that Jesus supported the separation of church and state, “because,” in Burhami’s words, “a separation between church and religion contradicts the texts of the Koran.”
By way of example, he quotes the Koran—“Indeed, the matter belongs entirely to Allah” (Koran 3:154)—which mainstream Islamic exegesis holds as meaning all things
Asserts Burhami: “It’s impossible for the Messiah [Jesus]—peace be upon him—to call for the separation of state and religion, as meaning that politics are to be governed without the Sharia of Allah.”
Instead, according to the Salafi leader, the “true” Jesus—the Muslim one, Isa—if he ever made that assertion, did so to confirm that conquered populations should pay tribute—jizya—or, in the context of Jesus’ discussion concerning the image of Caesar on a coin, that 1st century Jews should pay tribute to the Romans.
The backdrop of Burhami’s fatwa are growing calls to make Egypt’s Christian Copts pay jizya to the state, as they historically did, as the Koran demands, and as vigilante Muslims are currently forcing them to do.