Conflict and Cooperation between the State and Religious Institutions in Contemporary Egypt (original) (raw)
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Middle Eastern Studies, 2023
This paper examines the relationship between al-Azhar and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) following the 2011 Egyptian uprising. While the interplay between them in the pre-revolutionary period was mostly shaped by the gap between the status of al-Azhar as a body of statist Islam and the MB as a dissident Islamist movement, Mubarak’s downfall yielded a change in their status, raising the question of its effect on their attitude toward one another. Though on the face of it, following Morsi’s ouster, al-Azhar seems to have reverted to its traditional position of backing the de-legitimization campaign of the authoritarian regime against the MB, the paper portrays a more intricate picture: not one of close affinity during the MB’s rule despite the potential to realize common interests and advocate centrist Islam, but one of competition over religious authority; not one of utter hostility following al-Azhar’s support of the coup, but one of restrained conflict.
Egypt and al-Azhar: Love at first fight
Centre for Mediterranean Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2017
The relationship between the current Egyptian administration and the Egyptian religious authority of al-Azhar has been going through some changes in the past few months. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s ascension to the Presidency in 2014 was welcomed by the Coptic Christian community of Egypt and was supported by the al-Azhar University. Nonetheless, efforts to renew the Egyptian national identity and to push for a “religious revolution” in Egypt was met with discomfort, discontent, and, in some circles, distrust. The role of the al-Azhar university and its Grand Imam Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, as a leading authority on Sunni Muslim affairs within Egypt was believed to being sidelined. Consequently, a light should be shone on the intricacies of the different points of contention which dominate the political and religious fora in Egyptian society.
Caught in geopolitical crossfire: Al-Azhar struggles to balance politics and tradition
When Pope Francis I visited Egypt in 2017 to stimulate inter-faith dialogue he walked into a religious and geopolitical minefield at the heart of which was Al-Azhar, one of the world’s oldest and foremost seats of Islamic learning. The pope’s visit took on added significance with Al-Azhar standing accused of promoting the kind of ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim Islam that potentially creates an environment conducive to breeding extremism. The pope’s visit came as Al-Azhar, long a preserve of Egyptian government and ultra-conservative Saudi religious influence, had become a battleground for broader regional struggles to harness Islam in support of autocracy. At the same time, Al-Azhar was struggling to compete with institutions of Islamic learning in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan as well at prestigious Western universities. The battleground’s lay of the land has changed in recent years with the United Arab Emirates as a new entrant, a sharper Saudi focus on the kind of ultra-conservatism it seeks to promote, and Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s efforts since 2015 to impose control and force Al-Azhar to revise its allegedly conservative and antiquated curriculum that critics charge informs extremism.
The traditional Islamic movement Al-Azhar in Egypt
2022
Al-Azhar has always been one of the most important Islamic sources for centuries, and it was the Al-Azhar Mosque in Egypt that represented the Islamic Da'wah and Islamic political action independent of the rulers in the era of the Mamluks and the Ottomans, and until the beginning of the era of “Muhammad Ali” during whose reign the movement of Al-Azhar began to be restricted and stripped of its political influence in several stages ended as it is now. As a result, some Al-Azhar scholars began to think about moving away from the restrictions that surrounded the Al-Azhar Mosque. Since then, Al-Azhar has continued to produce religious cadres for Islamic movements or for many Islamic movements at a very high and distinguished level of knowledge in Islamic sciences. The important role that Al-Azhar still plays in a number of major contemporary Islamic movements will appear in the pages of this book.
In the modern world, it seems that Muslim societies are not capable to achieve any kind of stabilization or balance, be it in the social, political or economic. The representatives of different ideologies, although appear to be hostile to one another and engaged in a perpetual conflictual relation, in reality share the same inadequacy and attitude while imposing their ideologies to the members of their societies. This sort of imposition seems to be extremely dangerous for the political stability of their respective countries, leading them to a long chain of disasters. In this context, Turkey, Iran and Egypt -three countries endowed with a certain degree of modern standards’ constitutional tradition- must be taken as study cases, while the causes of these disasters and the way out of them should be subject to serious evaluation and study. In the present book, Alaa al-Din Arafat examines Egypt’s recent history and gives a portrait of what different ideologies, from secular to Islamist, offered and presented to Egyptian society.