At the Tipping Point? Al-Azhar’s Growing Crisis of Moral Authority

Abstract

Routinely required to lend religious legitimacy to contentious state policies, al-Azhar's moral authority has been under pressure since its nationalization in 1961. This article outlines how Shaykh al-Azhar Ahmad al-Tayyib's recent alliance with President ʿAbd al-Fattah al-Sisi has, however, exposed al-Azhar's moral authority to unprecedented risks. This is for three reasons. First, the tactics used by al-Sisi's government to quell the Muslim Brotherhood have been more extreme than those used by previous regimes. Second, the al-Azhari establishment's defence of these violent tactics has been more unqualified than in the past. Third, current state-led reforms of al-Azhar's curriculum are more controversial than prior efforts along these lines. As I show, these recent developments are not a complete break from the past; rather, they are a natural outcome of incremental shifts that have been occurring within al-Azhar since its nationalization over fifty years ago.

Preaching Politics: How Politicization Undermines Religious Authority in the Middle East

“…Jordanians interviewed by one of the authors suggested that the authority of religious officials in the country subsequently declined because “they cannot talk about anything sensitive” and are seen as only protecting and justifying the government 11 . Likewise, Bano (2018) documents how Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyib of Al-Azhar threatened his institution's religious authority by aligning with Egypt's authoritarian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and then defending the government's extreme violence against opposition forces. Along these lines, Nielsen (2017) writes that Muslim clerics can attract followers by signaling that they are “ideologically independent” from clerics in the state religious establishment, who are tied more closely to the government.…”

Ideals and Interests in Intellectuals’ Political Deliberations

“…Masooda Bano also suggests that contestation over the interpretation of Islam partially got al-Azhar (including al-Tayyib and Gomaa) to take a position against the MB that holds a different interpretation. 43 It is hard to know exactly the content of the "orthodoxy, " or "True Islam" suggested in these accounts, which is necessary to study whether the ʿulamaʾ are really committed to such ideals. What is clear in these accounts is that al-Tayyib and Gomaa share the same version of an Azharite, traditionalist "True Islam. "…”