religion and politics in egypt

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Religion and Politics in Egypt: The Ulema of al-Azhar, Radical Islam, and the State (1952-94)Author(s): Malika ZeghalSource: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Aug., 1999), pp. 371-399Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/176217.

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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 31 (1999), 371-399. Printed in the United States of America

Malika ZeghalRELIGION AND POLITICS IN EGYPT: THEULEMA OF AL-AZHAR, RADICAL ISLAM, ANDTHE STATE (1952-94)

A vast literature has been produced since the 1980s on the emergence of Islamistmovements in the Middle East.' This literature offers different rationales for theemergence of new kinds of foes to the political regimes of the region. Filling thevoid left by the leftist opposition, the Islamist militants appearedaround the 1970sas new political actors. They were expected neither by the state elites, which hadinitiated earlier modernizing political and social reforms,nor by political scientistswho based their research on modernization-theoryhypotheses. The former thoughtthat their reformpolicies toward the religious institution would reinforce their con-trol of the religious sphere, and the latter expected that secularization would ac-company the modernizationof society. The surprise brought by this new politicalphenomenonpushed observersto focus mainly on the Islamists and to overlook therole of the ulema, the specialists of the Islamic law, who were considered entirelysubmittedto the state.This article2 ntendsto supplement hese descriptionsby sheddinglight on the link-age between the structural hangethe rulingelites imposedon al-Azhar,the Egyptianreligiousinstitution,and the transformation f thepoliticalbehaviorof thepeople whobelong to this institution, the ulema. The first part of this paper shows that themodernizationof al-Azhar in 1961 has had unintendedconsequences. The declaredaim of the reform was to integrate the ulema into what was considered to be themodernizingpartof society. Instead,the most importantandpervasive consequenceof the reform was the emergence of a new political behavior among the ulema. Iarguethat if the nationalization of the institution was and remains resentedby mostof the ulema, the shape it took and the questions it raised at thattime had long-termandunexpectedconsequenceson the ulema's social andpolitical identity.The core ofmy argument s the following: the ulema were forced to accommodateto overwhelm-ing changes, but the Nasserist regime, throughits modernizing reform, was alsocompelled to adjustto the ulema's state of mind and to elaboratea reform that wasambiguous in its essence. Therefore, the behavior of al-Azhar'sreligious scholarscannot be seen solely as a response to Nasser'spolicy towardthe Egyptian religious

Malika Zeghal is Research Fellow, CentreNational de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France.

? 1999 Cambridge UniversityPress 0020-7438/99 $9.50

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372 Malika Zeghalinstitution andcannot be describedsolely in terms of submission.By creatinga state-controlledreligious monopoly, the Nasserist regime brought the ulema to heel andforced them into complete political submission duringthe 1960s, but gave them, atthe same time, the instruments or their political emergence in the 1970s. Thus, theregimeof the 1960s played a majorrole in the reshapingof al-Azhar's unction in thepublic spherefor the second half of the 20th century.I relate this political transformation o the educationalchanges which the state im-posed on the Azharites. The introductionof modernsubjects in the Azharitecurric-ulum in 1961 changed the ulema's cognitive environmentby forcing them to dealwith the dichotomyopposing modernandreligious knowledge. Indeed, the modern-ization of al-Azharchallenged its religious nature,an identity that the ulema wouldlater strive to recover by taking part in the political arena. Far from having had anegative effect on the ulema's political vitality, the modernizing process radicallytransformed heir political identity because it inadvertentlyoffered them a politicalforum as well as a basis for the expansion of their educationalinstitution.In effect,as the secondpartof this paperwill show, within the political frameworkof the 1970sand the 1980s, al-Azhar as an institution tried to takepartin the public debates raisedby the emergence of radical Islam. Because the religious arena became more com-petitive, and because the Islamists challenged the legitimacy of al-Azhar, al-Azharre-emergedas a political actorand started nterveningin the public space. Its failureto make its voice heard in the mid-1970s entailed a growing political diversificationwithin the body of the ulema. Peripheralulema emergedand distanced themselvesfrom the official voice of al-Azharthroughtheirpractice of dacwa (the call to reli-gion, especially by preaching)and introduced he differentcolors of Islamisminto al-Azhar.Moreover,the emergenceof violence on theEgyptianscene in the secondhalfof the 1980s led most official ulema to reactivatetheir functions as political brokers.Therefore,al-Azharlost the monolithic and monopolistic nature Nasser had given itandbecame a pluralanddiversifiedbody that is now itself in competitionwith otherreligious entrepreneurs.The idea of a monopoly of al-Azhar on religious interpreta-tion is today questionedeven amongthe most official ulema of al-Azhar,who recog-nize pluralismin religious thought. As Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori argueabout contemporaryIslam, common to contemporaryMuslim politics is a markedfragmentationof authority.The culamano longer have, if they ever did, a monopolyon sacredauthority.Rather,Sufi shaykhs,engineers, professorsof education,medicaldoctors, armyand militia leaders, and otherscompete to speakfor Islam. In the pro-cess, the playing field has become more level, but also more dangerous. 3ndeed, inEgypt, as this paperwill show, the increasing political fragmentationof the corps ofthe ulema, as well as theirincreasingpower, areclosely linked with the emergenceofconflict and violence in the political arena.The two pivotal concepts on which earlierstudies of the ulema have been basedare that of modernization-a process weakening traditional nstitutions-and sec-ularization,which is defined here as the appropriationby the state of the functionstraditionallyperformedby the religious institution.4The behavior of the ulema hasbeen analyzedas a reactionto these externalaggressions, and never as a contributionto social change. The Muslim Brothers,since their inception in 1928, have continu-ally criticized al-Azharand its ulema for theirpolitical and intellectual weaknesses,



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Al-Azharand Radical Islam 373even if individual affinitiesbetween some ulema and Muslim Brothers existed.5Formore than two decades, the Islamist opposition, as well as most political studies onEgypt, have pointed to al-Azhar as an institution that is overly submissive to thegovernmentand unable to play an independent political or religious role. Academicaccounts of the political andintellectual status of the 20th century'sulema have alsofocused on their failure to accommodateto modernity.Considered neither as men ofaction nor as intellectual innovators,the Egyptianulema educated at al-Azhar wereportrayedby historians and social scientists as traditionalactors,unable to deal withsocial change, especially as secularization emerged in Egypt. They have been de-scribed as entrenched in a political and intellectual retreat from the modernizingspheres of society since MuhammadAli's century,and seen as compelled to acceptreluctantlythe timorous changes the reign of Ismacil imposed on their institution.The weakeningof their status as politicalbrokers has been relatedto theirgradualloss of economic andpolitical power duringthe 19thcentury,as describedby DanielCrecelius.6The same patternhas been appliedto the descriptionof the ulema in in-dependent Egypt: The Nasserist regime is considered to have given the ulema a finalblow by nationalizingthe waqfs in 1952, by excluding them from the judicial courtsin 1955, and eventually by reformingal-Azhar itself. In 1972, Crecelius interpretedthe political decline of the ulema in the following way: Unwilling or unable todirect change, or even to make an accommodation to it, they have in the end beenoverwhelmed by change which inexorably penetratedfirst the governmentand therulingelites, then theirown institutions and othersocial groups. 7Actually, the 1961reformof the religious institutionwas not the final blow against the ulema, becauseit did not preclude religious institutions. On the contrary,Nasser'smodernization ofal-Azhar was a way for the ra'ls to controlclosely the religious institution and to ap-propriatereligion, without making it disappearfrom the public sphere. Creceliushimself later qualifiedhis descriptionof the 1961 reformby underliningthe stronglinks between the Nasserist regime and religion.8In the long term, al-Azhar's mod-ernizationhelped the ulema re-emerge on the political and social scene. As a keymoment, this modernizing reform can help understand the currentrelationshipbetween religion and politics in Egypt.AMBIGUITY AND CONSEQUENCES OF AL-AZHAR'S 1961 REFORMIn 1961, the Nasserist regime described itself as literally compelled to force thereligious institutioninto modernizationand reform.9 n order to legitimize the reformof al-Azhar and the control of the ulema'sbody by the state, it represented he ulemato the public as traditionalsocial types who had to be transformedby radical reformto get along with modernsociety. The regime arguedthat the ulema had been unableto modernize their nstitutionby themselves or to acceptthe tentativereforms mposedby the state or a minorityof Azharitereformerssince the 19thcentury.Analyzing al-Azhar and the reaction of its ulema to the reform,scholars took this account at facevalue: the ulema were unable to give an ideological response to this aggression, andwere thereforeproducinga traditional and conservative Islam, focusing on the con-servation of the turdth(Islamicheritage)andlegitimizing the existing political pow-ers. At the end of the 1960s, it seemed obvious that the ulema would not play an active



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374 Malika Zeghalideological role, refusing to accommodate to the process of modernization: Mod-ernization has been successfully delayed in Egypt by the ulema,but at a terriblepricefor Islamand the ulema. The shaykhshave become completelyisolated from the mod-ernizing segments of society, and their traditionalviews almost totally rejected. 10What Crecelius in 1972 called the capitulationof the ulema to the state ll wasactuallya temporaryandsuperficialsubmissionduringwhich they learned how to bepartof a bureaucracy. f they were unable to producean ideological response to theNasserist revolution,it was not only because they did not have the means to produceany reaction in the field of ideas, but also, and mostly, because the political con-straintssurrounding hem were extremely tight at that time. Deprived of their eco-nomic andpolitical power, the ulema had no choice but to submit to the demands ofthe Nasserist regime, issuing mostly halfhearted, houghat times enthusiastic,fatwas(religious legal opinions) to legitimate its policy. The ideological opposition to thereform,which still existed duringthe 1950s,12as indicatedby the articles writtenbysome ulema in the Majallat al-Azhar, appearsin a sharpcontrast with the politicalsubmission of the religious scholars in the 1960s.In June 1961, the Nasserist regime, just before introducing the socialist laws,transformed al-Azhar with a two-pronged law. First, this reform modernized thecontent of the knowledge transmitted n the institutes and theuniversityof al-Azhar:new subjects such as naturalsciences, mathematics,and geographywere introducedinto the curriculumalongside the religious subjects in the macahid, the institutesthat were to replace the structureof the ancient religious school, the kuttdb.At thelevel of the university, the reform also introducedmodern faculties (such as medi-cine, pharmacy,andengineering), first in Cairo,and later in the big provincialcities,alongside the religious ones (sharica, or Islamic law;13usul al-din, or the founda-tions of religion; and lugha 'arabiyya, or Arabic language). Second, the 1961 lawreorganizedthe administrationof al-Azhar and submittedit entirely to the Egyptianhead of state.The 1961 Nasserist reform was actually much more than the imposition of closecontrol on thereligiousinstitution.By introducingmodernknowledgeanda controlledand state-subsidizedbureaucracy,Nasser could bringthe ulema to heel, without com-pletely annihilatingthem. The revolutionaryregime needed religious legitimacy em-bodied in religious specialists in orderto oppose thepolitical influence of the MuslimBrothers and counterbalance he weight of the Islamic Saudi regime in the Muslimworld. Al-Azhar, with its religious scholars, could fulfill this political need if theinstitutionwas properlyreformed.The Creation of a Religious MonopolyNasser firstput the finishingtouches to the reforms of the 19thcentury by deprivingthe ulema of their economic independenceandby dispossessing them of their udicialpower. He then paradoxically put al-Azhar under his control throughan ambigioustransformation. n order to deprive any other groups or institutions of independentreligious authority,Nasser had to give a monopoly on legitimate religious interpreta-tion to a groupof specialists he could controlby reshapingthem into a bureaucracy.



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Al-Azharand Radical Islam 375He was hence creatinga corps of men of religion (rijal al-din), who-as civil ser-vants receiving regular salaries-had a state-controlledmonopoly on religion andconstituted the authority regarding sacred knowledge. Before startingthis reform,and even as the reformwas carriedout, the regimeproducedan extremely aggressivediscourse against the ulema and the values and behaviors they represented.In the1950s, while destroyingthe waqfs andthe religiousjudicial system, Nasser'sregimelaunched several press campaigns to confront the ulema, denying them any socialstatus as men of religion. In the summer of 1955, for instance,just before the reformof the religious courts, the official press accused Shaykh al-Fil and Shaykh al-Sayf,two religious judges, of having had affairs with female clients. These campaignscontinued in the 1960s, their authorsrefusingto consider the ulema as membersof aprofessionalbody, as shown by Nasser's words: the shaykh does not think of any-thing except the turkey and the food with which he filled his belly. He is no morethan a stooge of reaction, feudalism and capitalism. 14 xpressinghis opposition tothe status of men of religion,or rijalal-din, he continued: from thebeginning,Islamwas a profession of work.The Prophetused to work like everybody else. Islam wasnever a profession.Nonetheless, the 1961 reform paradoxically granted the ulema a professionwhose function was to confer religious legitimacy on the regime's political decisionsand policy implementations,and whose returnswere governmentsalaries and civil-servant status. Al-Azhar passed under the direct control of the president, who ap-pointedthe shaykhof al-Azhar;theAcademyof Islamic Research(majmacal-buhuthal-isldmiyya)was a new denominationfor the LearnedAssembly, orHay'at kibaral-Culamda;modern faculties were added to the religious ones; and the teacher, theprofessor, the imam (prayerleader) and the khatib (preacher)educated at al-Azharbecame civil servantsperforming religious services for a salary.The 1961 law gavea new shapeto thereligiousinstitutes,which stayedunderthejurisdictionof al-Azharitself. In an expandingbureaucracy, he administrative adder diversified and offereda large arrayof professional positions to the ulema. These positions at al-Azharwerethe same as those in modernuniversities, sustainedby a hierarchy.These new bu-reaucraticpositions and statuswere at the time of the reformquite well received bythe shaykhs, especially as the Muslim identityof al-Azhar was reasserted. As one ofthe shaykhs put it in a retrospectiveview of the reform:They said they would create the modernuniversity of al-Azhar. ... If you had taken all thegraduatesof any faculty of the Egyptian university, you would have found that more thanhalf of them were Copts . .. and they had a very good economic situation . .. al-Azhar wasto belong to the Muslims and for me, this was very reassuring.It was a very useful project.In the university of al-Azhar, no Copt would set foot. 15

Therefore,from the beginning, the reform introducedby Nasser was ambiguous:the new law subordinated he ulemato the state moreexplicitly thanbefore,but in ex-change it gave them administrativeresources and erectedfor them a political forum,fromwhich, duringthe Nasseristera,theyhad to content themselves with legitimizingthe regime. The regime publicly criticized the shaykhs but also tried to give to thereformof al-Azharlegitimacy amongthe shaykhs by reasserting ts Muslim identity.



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376 Malika ZeghalReligious and Modern Knowledge: WhichIdentityfor al-Azhar?The ambiguityof the Nasserist reformof al-Azharappearseven more clearly in thefield of education. The Nasseristregimedid not supportTahaHusayn's1955 proposalto make al-Azhardisappear.The idea of the formerMinistryof Education had beento suppressthe kuttabsystem andthe very few Azhariteinstitutesthatexisted at thattime, andto transformal-AzharUniversityinto a faculty of theology that would havebeen included in the frameworkof the modernuniversity.For TahaHusayn,al-Azharwas to be transplanted nto the modernsystem of education,but only as a late spe-cialization that would offercollege andgraduateprograms.Azhariteprimaryand sec-ondaryeducation would disappear,as would the administrationof al-Azhar itself.The ferocious opposition16 of the ulema to this programwas certainlynot the mainreason that the regime gave its preferenceto anotherkind of reform.Rather,Nasser'sregime had alreadyused al-Azhar as a symbol for national independence.The min-bar of the ancientmosque, as a political forum,gave Nasser religious legitimacy andcontinuedto prove its usefulness. Al-Azhar therefore had to remain a national insti-tution. Thus, instead of transplantingreligious education into the modernworld,the solution that was adopted enlargedthe religious institution of educationby add-ing to it a function of transmissionof modernknowledge, fromprimary o higherandfaculty education.From the Mujdwirto the Modern Student of al-AzharOn the eve of the 1961 reform, the students of al-Azhar University specialized inreligious knowledge and came, for the most part, from rural and modest origins.From the time modern institutions were provided for education, the scions of thewealthy Azharite families startedattendingmodern universities. Religious knowl-edge was thus left to those who could not attend modern schools, the mujdwirin,those who literally lived around the al-Azharmosque or its riwdqs in the old centerof Cairo.As children,they attendedthe kuttabs n theirvillages, wherethey learnedthe QurDan y heart. At aroundage 12, they attended al-Azhar in one of its institutesin Cairo, Tanta,or other majorprovincial towns, afterhaving passed an oral exam-ination. The process of modernizingeducationhad startedto lower the Azharite stu-dents'status,because al-Azhar'sreligious curriculumdeprivedthem of access to thejob marketequivalentto that of the studentseducated in modern nstitutions. The stu-dents of al-Azhar resented their lower status, and the 1961 law mentioned that thereformwas aimed at bringing the Azharite students closer to the status of modernstudents,17which was, for the regime, anotherway to legitimize the reformvis-a-visthe ulema. In order to fulfill this purpose, from 1961 on, the religious institutes,which had been createdin 1930, took over the kuttabs. The kuttab was no longer in-tended to be the sole channel of education for the Azharite students: The institutegave modern and religious knowledge at the level of primaryand high school andprepared ts students to enter the religious or modern faculties of al-Azhar. The re-gime unified the Azhariteprimaryand secondaryschools. They became centralizedunder the administrationof the institutes, which formed one of the five institutionsof al-Azhar.



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Al-Azhar and Radical Islam 377Imposing modernsubjects on the ulema was a way to force them to come to gripswith modernity.Insteadof attendingthe kuttabunder the vigilant eye of the shaykh

and the threatof his Casa stick), the young student of al-Azhar had to learn a blendof religious and modernsubjects in the modern classrooms of the primaryand sec-ondaryinstitutes of al-Azhar. He had to forget the ancient way of receiving knowl-edge, sitting on the floor, listening-in a circle with other students-to the Qur'anthe master was reciting, and repeatingafter him. A new material space was offeredto the Azharite student. He was going to study while sitting on benches, writing ontables, in front of a blackboard.This physical transformationn the way knowledgewas transmittedmeant much more than shifting from the cross-legged to the seatedposition. It was supposed to accompanyrationalizationof knowledge itself. Repeti-tion and memorization would no longer be the only way of learning.Moreover,the reformopened al-Azharto students educatedin the modernsystemof education.After having finishedthe modernsecondaryschool, they could chooseto pursuetheir education at al-Azharby entering one of the threereligious facultiesor by specializing in medicine, engineering, public administration,pharmacy, orother modernsubjects.'8Therefore,after 1961, modern educationwas strangely splitinto two systems-a secular one and a religious one-since the reform createdmodernfaculties inside the religious system of education. The declaredaim was togive the ulema new features that would integratethem into modern society and putan end to the segregation from which they were supposedly suffering. They wouldbe able to exercise a technical profession while teaching religion and participating

in the duties of dacwa. The ulema who supportedthe reform at that time thereforefocused on the reunionof two concepts: din (religion) anddunya (life). The memo-randumof the 1961 law reform19 laimed to want to unite these concepts:[Al-Azhar's]raduates restill . . . menof religion rijdlal-din),and havehardlyanyuse-ful relation o thesciencesof life (dunya). slamdoes notoriginally eparatehe scienceofreligion (din) from the science of life (dunya), because Islam is a social religion .... EveryMuslimhas to be a manof religionanda manof life at the sametime.

Reforming al-Azhar in that way meant bringing it closer to the modern type ofeducation, and pushing the ulema into modern life without questioning their exist-ence, which was vital for the regime. For the Azharites who accepted the alliancewith the socialist regime, the 1961 law intendedto make the process of daCwaeasierby giving the ulema the opportunityto join modernprofessional bodies.Accordingto these ulema, the reformalso intendedto transform he student of al-Azhar into a two-sided person: a religious scholar who was aware of the religiouscreed and who could practice a technical profession that would link him to the peo-ple. In the 1960s, the regime presentedthis new incarnationof the Azharite studentas the means to propagate he dacwa inside andoutside Egypt. ShaykhHamdi,an ac-countanteducatedat the Azharitefaculty of trade,gave me his vision of the reunionof religion (din) and life (dunya):from he moralpointof view,but alsofroma scientificanda religiouspointof view,I mustnotbe topeoplea simpleandordinaryccountant... Onthecontrary,haveto speakaboutreligion,andall thesethings.Tothe extent hatonceI hadenteredal-Azhar hadto becomecompletelydifferent rom whatI was before.We had to becomereal Azharitestudents.



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378 Malika ZeghalAzhari-azhari, hatdoes it mean? t meanssomeonewho callspeopleto turn o God.Then,ourpersonalitymustbe different romwhat t wasbefore[we enteredal-Azhar].20Even if the majorityof the Azharite ulema resented the reformingof al-Azhar,theyentirely agreed with the image of the modern Azharite as the embodiment of anequationof religion (din) with life (dunya).This redefinitionof al-Azhar's unction was for theregimea cautiousway of bring-ing the ulema to heel, without being opposed by the entirebody of the ulema, sinceal-Azhar subsisted as a religious institution and was moreoverexpanding throughtheadditionof modernfaculties andthrough he channel of externaldacwa. Putthis way,the project was a continuation of the former al-Azhar'sreformprogramsand couldbe supportedby reformistulema.By imposingon al-Azhar'ssystemof education suchan ambiguoustransformation,andby introducinga dichotomybetween religious andmodernknowledge into al-Azhar,Nasser put the religious institution into a dilemmathat exists to this day. Al-Azhar must struggle between losing its religious identitywhile expanding and keeping an exclusively religious status and shrinking.THE CHANGING STRUCTURE OF AL-AZHAR: THE POLICY OFEXPANSIONA Fund-Raiser: Shaykh CAbdal-Halim MahmudShaykh'Abd al-HalimMahmud,who was the shaykhof al-Azharbetween 1973 and1978, played a key role in the expansionof al-Azhar.He gave the religious institutionnew featuresby strengtheningts role on thepublic scene, andhe succeeded in openingal-Azharprimaryand secondaryinstitutes to an increasingnumber of students21seeTable1). This was partof whathe himself representedas a whole strategyto bringso-ciety back to Islam.The shaykhalso focused on conciliatingthe Egyptianand Islamicidentities of al-Azhar,an institution that was also the responsibilityof the Islamicworld. In a lettersent to leadersof Arab statesin 1976,22he askedthem to contributefinanciallyto the expansion of al-Azhar,arguingthat it had always fought deviant(munharifa) enets such as socialism, which represented a dangerfor Muslim coun-tries. Officially,Arabcountries answeredwithacontributionof $3 million, two-thirdsof which came from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,23but the actual amountreceived byal-Azhar is certainlylargerthan this figure shows. This strategycame not only as ablessing to a governmentconfrontedwith the consequencesof the democratizationofeducation;it also helped transform he Azharitegroupitself. Al-Azhar was no morethe center of a starthat attracted he ruralyouthto the city of Cairo,as JacquesBerquedescribedit in the end of the 1960s.24In the 1980s, its institutes and faculties weredisseminatedalong the Nile, and their recruitmentwas no longer exclusively rural.During the 1960s, the religious institutesrepresentedvery modest numbers.Fromthe 1970s on, the numberof studentsstudyingin these institutes increasedat an im-portant rate.25Some of the students who failed to be enrolled in modern highschools were accepted at al-Azhar'ssecondaryinstitutes and gained the opportunityto be graduated from a university without having to meet modern universities'higher standards.Those who could not attend modern schools anduniversities werenow grantedaccess to modernprofessions throughthe channel of the institutes andthe modernfaculties at al-Azhar.



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Al-Azhar and Radical Islam 379TABLE 1 Expansion of al-Azhar Schools

Number NumberYear of Institutes of Students1962-63 212 64,3901972-73 1,265 89,7441982-83 1,273 302,0441987-88 2,053 517,9681992-93 3,161 966,629

The Appraisal of the Reform: From Tatwir (Evolution) to Tadmir(Destruction)The merging of religion and life, which was supposed to stem from the tatwir of al-Azhar, is seen today by most of the ulema as a failure. Instead of fostering a closeinteraction, the modernization of al-Azhar merely resulted in a juxtaposition ofthese two spheres, which failed to become integrated. Giving its students a mixedreligious and modern knowledge-which is impossible to assimilate, according tomost of the teachers at al-Azhar-al-Azhar transformed them into self-taught ulemawho no longer knew the Qur'an by heart.

Shaykh Hamdi gave me the following picture of the tatwir: al-Azhar was put intothis situation by the planners. The tatwir of al-Azhar was its destruction (tadmir).When Shaykh CAbd al-Halim Mahmud decided to restore al-Azhar's greatness byopening an important number of institutes to an important part of the people, this wasvery well conceived. But the implementation of this idea was not very useful.... Astudent from al-Azhar receives religious knowledge along with scientific knowledge.And this is more difficult. How can one who failed in learning scientific knowledgehope to succeed when religious knowledge is added? 26This appraisal sounds like anecho of the criticism that the reform projects received in the 1950s from the conser-vative circles of al-Azhar, such as the Ulema's Front:They shout that ... the Calim of al-Azhar] has to be a doctor, or an engineer, or somethinglike that.... There is no skillful doctor who could be at the same time a specialized Islamic'clim. There is no 'dlim who could assimilate the principles of engineering while having ageneral view on Islamic studies.27

This exposure of the Azharite students to a combination of modern and religiousknowledge helped produce in al-Azhar a parallelism of conditions with modern uni-versities, which can explain in part why Islamist tendencies emerged among its ulema.The analysis of the social and educational background of the Islamist militants inEgypt and elsewhere in the Sunni Muslim world has so far opposed the young andmodern-educated new Islamist intellectuals to the religious literati. The latter's intel-lectual sphere is considered as homogeneous, consisting of a rather complete knowl-edge of the religious sources acquired over a long period of time by scholars who werespecializing entirely in this subject. The former's cognitive environment consists ofa universe of odds and ends. They have mostly been educated in modern institutions



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380 Malika Zeghalof knowledge and mix their modernknowledge with the religious sciences they ac-quiredwithoutbelonging to any official Islamic institution.Moreover,as Olivier Royputsit, thereferences of thenew Islamistintellectuals are disparateandfragmentary,never seized as a whole. 28This opposition between religious scholars and Islamistmilitantsputs in contrasttwo cognitive universes. The concept of bricolage is thusused by Roy to describe the open and fragmentedintellectual constructions of theIslamists'protest,as opposedto the closed andmemory-basedworld of the ulema. Thenotion of bricolage defines a kind of intellectual productionin which the originalmaterial used for these intellectual constructionsis heterogeneous.Bricolage refersthereforeto tinkeringwith differentsorts of knowledge, being ajack-of-all tradesandmasterof none. This oppositionbetween two cognitive worlds functionsas thelogicalextension of the difference between two social ideal types: the Calimlinked to an in-stitution,who does not questionthe political regime and comes from a rural ocation,versus the young, recently urbanizedIslamist militant educatedat modern universi-ties. The situation of the 1970s actuallyreflected this dichotomy.Even if the ulematried to recover their function of nasiha (advice) towardthe state,theywerepoliticallyrestrainedby the limits imposed by the regime.Al-Azhar was clearlydistant from thetenets of the members of the violent Islamic groupswho were educated in modern n-stitutions and sought to overthrowa regime they considered as non-Islamic.Yet the modernizationof knowledge at al-Azharwas already blurringthe frontiersdrawn not only by public opinion, but also by social scientists, between the Islamistsand the ulema. The introductionof modernknowledge gave the younger ulema theopportunityto enter the world of bricolage, by mixing religious and modernknowl-edge. The transformationof their educationalbackgroundtransformed he religiousscholars into intellectuals who had the same references and vocabulary as their Is-lamist colleagues educatedin modern universities. This phenomenon broughtabout,among the ulema of al-Azhar, the emergence of Islamist tendencies that becamesocially and politically visible in the 1980s.THE EMERGENCE OF THE ULEMA IN THE POLITICAL ARENA:THE 1970SThe changes introducedat the educational level are not the only reason for the polit-ical transformationof al-Azhar.The loosening, under Anwar Sadat, of the politicalconstraintsNasser imposed on al-Azhar also played a significantrole. Both Nasser'sand Sadat'sregimesused religionto achieve political goals and included it in the con-struction of theirpolitical legitimacy. However, they did not use religion in the sameway. Nasser heavily controlled the religious institutionandinstitutionalizedthe dom-ination the state could exercise over al-Azhar. He could therefore use Islam-as in-terpretedby the Azharite ulema-to legitimize the socialist options of the regime.Once the Muslim Brotherswererepressedandjailed-with the officialblessing of al-Azhar-and once Nasser firmly imposed his controlover al-Azhar in 1961, he couldrely heavily on the ideology of Arabsocialism without fearof any interferencefromthe ulema.Sadat'srelationshipwith al-Azhar has to be understoodin quite a differentpolit-ical context. He put himself in much greaterdebt to religious legitimacy: he moved



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Al-Azharand Radical Islam 381away from Arab socialism and liberalized the political arenain orderto get rid ofthe leftist Nasserist wing. He thereforegave the ulema a relatively more open spacefor expression and diversification that mobilized them to break out of the rigidframework offered by state institutions. Already well armed with the monopolisticposition Nasser had offered them, the ulema took advantageof the political liberal-ization initiatedby Sadat, especially by creatingand taking part in Islamic associa-tions. As early as 1967, the ulema tried to give religion more significance in publiclife. But they were not alone in this endeavor. Their re-emergence in the publicspherecoincided chronologically with the emergence of political Islam, which wasalso a productof the political liberalizationSadat started in the 1970s.The TawbaIn the aftermathof defeat in the 1967 war, the ulema of al-Azhar raised the notionof repentance (tawba): the naksa (defeat) gave them the opportunityto verbalizepublicly the idea of a returnto religion and a reactivation of religious collectivememory.From this time on, the ulema gained the opportunity o transform heir dis-courses publicly fromone of references to Arab socialism into one of the supremacyof Islam. Indeed, defeat, like victory, had to be interpretedas lessons sent by God.At the end of 1967,ShaykhCAbd l-Latif Subki wrote: Godgives our enemies theirvictory not because He does not love us, but in orderto engulf them in their impiety.Their victory is our cure and His rebuke for demeaning ourselves.... Now we areable to realize what we had left behind and remember what we had forgotten. 29This representationof defeat as punishmentfrom God and an opportunityto repentwas not so different from the statements Nasser himself gave at that time. On 23July 1967, the Egyptian president addressed the crisis underminingthe regime as alesson sent by God to the nation in order to purify t.30TheAnti-Leftist CampaignUsing al-Azhar as Nasser had done, Sadat saw the official ulema as a way to get ridof the leftist opposition. Just as al-Azharhad officially conciliated Islam and social-ism duringthe 1960s throughthe voice of its official ulema, the institution found it-self ten years latergiving legitimacy to the new political and economic orientationsof Sadat'sregime. After the 1972 student demonstrations,the shaykh of al-Azhar,MuhammadFahham,described the leftist youth as unbelievers and implicitly pro-posed thatthey follow a patternof conversion3l to Muslim practice andrepentance.In 1975, Sadat used the earlierfatwas of Shaykh CAbdal-Halim Mahmud againstcommunists to launch his anti-leftist campaignin the media. Thesefatwds used themechanismof takfir,an accusation of impiety that was used in the same period in amore extensive way by radical Islamists who did not receive their education at al-Azhar. Shaykh CAbdal-Halim Mahmudwrote: communism is impiety (kufr) andthose who supportit have no faith. 32Radical Islamic groups daredto exclude thesovereignfromthe communityof thebelievers33-that is, to pronouncetakfiragainsthim and therefore sentence him to death. CAbd l-HalimMahmud did not fear to useit against Egyptian communistsin order to answerthe needs of the regime.



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382 Malika ZeghalThe 1970s were an opportunity,even for the ulema who supportedwith enthusi-asm the Nasserist ideology in the 1960s, to shift their discourse from the veneer of

Arab nationalism and socialism to an internal reform of society throughwhat theydescribed as a return o religion. Shaykhal-Bahi, who implementedthe universityof al-Azhar'sreform,wrote in 1979 thatthe July 1952 revolutionhad triggereda re-ligious emptiness (farigh dini) and haddestroyed religion in the same way as the en-terprise of colonization. Under Nasser's regime, Arab nationalism replaced Islam,while the history of the Arabs is actually the history of Islam among the Arabs, 34he continued.The Islamist Movements:A New Challenge to the Official al-Azhar?The 1970s also offeredthe ulema a new political frame of action: duringthis periodof economic andpolitical liberalization,new movements-those of radicalIslamappearedon the political scene. Educated in modern institutions, their members,who were new interpretersof the Qur'an and the sunna, integratedthe Islamic vo-cabularyinto theirpolitical claims andrejectedthe head of the Egyptian stateby de-nying him his Muslim characterand describinghim as a pre-Islamicruler;that is, arulerbelonging to the Jihiliyya, the period of ignorance. The members of radicalIslamic groups accused the ulema of being absent from these political innovationsand denounced them for being unable to give more than an official interpretationofIslam that answered the needs of those in power.

Breakingthe religious monopoly of al-Azhar,militantIslam-encouraged in thefirst place by Sadat's policy-pushed the religious institution into the politicalarena,to takepartin the public debates raisedby this new kind of political behavior.CAbd l-HalimMahmudgave al-Azhar a new style by attemptingto deal with thesenew religious interpretersandby tryingto be the maininterlocutorof militantIslam,denying the militaryregime this role. Al-Azhar had started ts own attemptsto bringEgyptian society back to Islam in 1967, before Islamist militants appearedon thepublic scene. But the emergence of radical Islam also pushed the regime and al-Azhar against each other in a game thatopposed threemajoractorswhose positionswere closely intertwined,albeit difficult at times to distinguish clearly as three po-sitions: those in political power; the Islamists; and al-Azhar, as represented by itsshaykh, CAbd l-Halim Mahmud.Shaykh'Abd al-HalimMahmudgave the most strikingexample of how the ulemaof al-Azharused theirbureaucraticpositions in orderto gainmorepolitical influence.From 1969, he created several committees in the Academy of Islamic Research inorder to codify the shari'a law. He also continuouslycalled for the applicationof Is-lamic law and used the Parliamentas his main agent for change by trying to push itsmembers into discussing the matter.His determinationhelped produce several textson the hudud, or Islamic penalties, and a project for an Islamic constitution.35Theofficialvoice of al-Azhar tookpart n claimsraisedby modern-educatedprofessionalsas Islamic law became subject to debates in Parliament.Reviving their traditionalfunction as advisers to the sovereign, the ulema did notsee this activity as an attemptto take power by participating n a democraticdebate,nor did they see it as an attemptto reform individuals gradually.They perceived it



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Al-Azharand Radical Islam 383as an effort to cast society in the mold of divine law by directly imposing the rule ofGod on Earth and enforcing a law that had been re-composed by the ulema them-selves. Shaykh CAbd l-Halim Mahmudspoke of the enforcement of the sharicaasa matterof urgentconcern in a letter sent to the presidentof Parliament n 1976: Is-lam is not an issue to be considered or put at the mercy of discussion in the name ofdemocracy.... No ijtihddis allowed to any human if a sharCitext (a legal text de-riving from revelation) exists. For the first time, the shaykh of al-Azhar dared toclaim, from the Parliament,direct applicationof Islamic law.Todaythis claim continues to confrontbarriers.This shows that the ulema can nolonger claim to be the unique specialists of Islamicfiqh. This task has been under-taken in greatpart by modernscholars who were educated or are teaching at modernuniversities.The draftof an Islamic constitutionpublished by ShaykhCAbd l-HalimMahmud is an example of the difficulties the ulema had to face: modern lawyershelped them draft the project, which was very precise on the hudud and remainedvague in terms of political organization.The ulema were no longer the sole special-ists in Islamic law andwere obliged tojoin forces with modernprofessionals in whatwas formerlytheir very field of specialization. They had to use a bricolage type ofintellectual construction because they mixed their religious expertise with theknowledge they had acquiredor borrowed on modern law.Al-Azhar Confrontsthe RegimeIn the 1970s, the ulema demanded from the governmentthe transformationof theEgyptian legal system. But the regime was not ready to comply with all their de-mandsin this regard.Moreover,it was out of the question for Sadatto let the ulemaplay a major political role. In July 1974, the Egyptian president published a decreechallenging the authorityof the shaykh of al-Azhar, giving all his powers to theMinistryof Waqfs. In April, an armedgroup from the Military Academy had triedto seize power, and the regime-shaken by this coup attempt-was thus trying tokeep al-Azharunder control. In protestagainstthe decree of July 1974, ShaykhCAbdal-Halim Mahmud handed in his resignationand demanded-by a strangeirony offate-that the 1961 law be applied:the shaykh of al-Azhar had to have the rank ofminister and depend only on the president.He could not accept being placed underthe control of the Ministryof Waqfs, which was not partof al-Azhar.This first crisis ended with the withdrawal of the decree. Shaykh CAbd l HalimMahmudremained at the head of al-Azhar. But a second majorcrisis followed threeyears later, bringing about the entire submission of the shaykh of al-Azhar to thestate. In July 1977, the Takfirwa Hijra group kidnappedand assassinated ShaykhDhahabi,a former minister of waqfs. A set of political positions crystallized aroundthis event: because he had submittedto the regime, Shaykh Dhahabi had become avictim of the opposition between the Islamist militants and the regime. This eventpointed to the ulema as the religious spokesmen for the regime, as opposed to theyoung militants who acted as interpretersof the religious texts without any formalreligious education or official religious status. Even before the jamOaaTakfir waHijrabecame famous for that violent action, the Majallat al-Azhar36 ad already op-posed the group'stenets. The Azharite magazine had described the Takfirwa Hijra



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384 Malika Zeghalgroupas khawarij,whose goal was tafrlq andfitna-namely, dissension. More thansimply rejectingthis thought,the magazineused it to put forwardthe demand for theimplementationof the sharica.While ShukriMustafa,the leader of thejama'a, gavea minimal definition of the Muslim community by excluding from it most of Egyp-tian society, al-Azhar defined the entire Muslim community by its necessary sub-mission to the Islamic law:Thesetenderfeetthemembers f TakfirwaHijra]do not see that he entireumma trives ocome back to God'sbook and to the sunnaof His prophet, nd will notbe satisfiedbutbythereignof Allah.Theydo not see thatthis ummahas inherited foreign egislation romthe odious[eraof] colonization.... The ruledandtherulersarepreparinghe atmospherefor theapplication f the commandmentsf the sharica.Religious change could occur only without violence and without accusing society orthe ruler of belonging to thejahiliyya. The Muslim community,rather than shrink-ing throughthe mechanism of takfir,had to be, for the ulema, as large as possible.After the assassination of ShaykhDhahabi,the shaykhof al-Azhartook part n thecampaignlaunchedby the officialpress againstthejamdCa, opposing the use of takfiragainst Muslims. The official ulema were indeed supportingthe regime, as they haddone under Nasser. But something changed in the way that they now intervened inthe public arena.They expressed themselves in this matter much more thanthey didin the 1950s and the 1960s. When they had to supportNasser against the MuslimBrothers, their statementswere extremely short, wrappedin a few sentences, as ifthey only halfheartedlycriticizedthe Muslim Brothers.From the 1970s on, the state-ments of the officialulemaagainstradicalIslamwould be much more developed andfinely shadedthanthey had been duringthe Nasser era. This participation n the po-litical debate nevertheless had a limit, which was set by the military regime on theoccasion of the trial of ShukriMustafa.With the political survival of the regime atstake,al-Azharcould not be given complete freedomto maneuver.The militarycourtwas asking al-Azhar for its support,and the reputationof CAbd l-Halim Mahmud asa bold Cdlimwho had not feared, threeyears earlier,to confront Sadat'sregime alsoencouraged the defense to ask for his testimony. The military court, which wouldhave been embarrassedto see the shaykh of al-Azhar testify on the side of the de-fense, turneddown the request.Avoiding any interactionwith Shaykh'Abd al-HalimMahmud,circumventingthe very center of al-Azharembodiedby its greatimam,thecourt addressedsome ulema of the universityof al-Azharandtwo formerministersof waqfs, who requesteddirect access to the thought of the members of TakfirwaHijra.Dissatisfied with their answers, the court included in its verdict a harsh criti-cism of the ulema, disappointed as it was by theirobstructionto justice.37 ShaykhCAbd l-Halim Mahmud,who had been cast aside in the debate, reactedby writinga statementthatfailed to be publishedby the Egyptianpress. He called for a dialoguewith the membersof Takfirwa Hijrain orderto confrontthoughtwith thought. 38The shaykhaccusedthe regime of having given a false image of the ulema'sattitude,and the militarycourt of being ignorantaboutreligion.The emergence of moderneducated Islamist militants in the sphere of religiousdiscourse pushed the ulema into political action. Nevertheless, al-Azhar could notget to the very center of the political arena.Indeed, both the Egyptian state and the



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Al-Azhar and Radical Islam 385Islamist grouptriedto monopolize what the ulema of al-Azhar would have liked tosee as their domaine reserve. The reactionof CAbd l-Halim Mahmud was to claimto be the legitimate religious interpreterof what had happened on the politicalscene, but the military regime immediately silenced the shaykh. Pushed by theemergence of radical Islam to intervene on the political level and silenced by thestate, al-Azhar as an official institution had to submit and stop intervening in polit-ical affairs.THE ULEMA, POLITICAL VIOLENCE, AND COERCIONAfter the assassination of President Sadat by members of the Jihad, the politicalstage did not witness major violent events until 1986. It was not that the threat ofradical Islam had disappeared,but the regime severely repressedthe movement andimprisoned its members. The members of radical Islamic groups kept denigratingal-Azhar and its ulema. Husni Mubarak, n March 1982, hadput at its head a shaykhwhom he perceived as a quietist C'lim,Gad al-Haqq,a former Mufti and minister ofwaqfs, who was alreadywell awareof how to answer the needs of the regime. Sev-eral shaykhs appearedon television to contradict the thought of the jam'adt andtried to move the conflict away from the sphere of violence into the sphere of dis-course by bringing the issue before the public throughthe media. The governmentlaunched a new review to counter-balancethe Islamist press: al-LiwdDal-Isldmi wasto give an official andquietist interpretation f Islam with the help of numerousule-ma of al-Azhar.The regime finally organized in 1983 the celebration of al-Azhar'smillennium-the real date of the millenniumbeing 1979-with great ceremony, af-ter this event hadbeen postponed several times. Moreover,some of the ulema were,underthe controlof the Ministryof Interior,visiting the imprisonedmembersof thejamdcat, seeking to correct heirreligious thought.The regime itself propelledal-Azhar into the public sphereas a shield protectingsociety from the violence of mil-itant Islam. Al-Azhar took advantageof this situation: it agreed to criticize violentradical Islam and gained more leverage over Mubarak'sgovernment.The religiousinstitutionpushed Mubarak'sregime to accept an increasingIslamicization of soci-ety. The governmentneeded al-Azharto legitimate its fight againstradicalIslamism,and was thereforeforced to accept such a bargain.This enterprisenevertheless pointed to the fact that, as one shaykh puts it:Theshaykh, he shaykhof al-Azhar,andthe mufti,or any shaykhhavingan officialposi-tion,whopreaches gainst hejama'at,oragainst hisyouth.... How does thisyouthcon-sider hem?As the civil servants f theregime.Theythink heyexpress hethoughtof theregime.Theirwordsareonly receivedwith doubtandsuspicion.... [Theregime]shouldgive morespace. 39

While Mubarak'sregime clearly associated al-Azhar with its anti-Islamist cam-paign, some ulema refused to participate in this enterprise. While al-Azhar wasofficially supportingthe regime in its campaigns against violent political Islam, notonly with the help of the official shaykhsbut also by using popularshaykhs such asGhazali and Sha'rawi, other ulema explicitly withdrew from the bulk of al-Azhar'spolitical tendencies. The head of al-Azharsubmittedto the demands of the regime,



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386 Malika Zeghalin contrastto the political behavior of the formershaykhof al-Azhar CAbd l-HalimMahmud, and the protest came this time from the lesser official shaykhs who hadbeen building theirpopularityout of the control of the state since the 1970s throughthe channel of dacwa. Shaykhs Kishk, Mahallawi, and Salah Abu Ismacil wereamong those who did not take part in the qawcfil, or convoys, that were sent todifferenttowns to start a dialogue with the Islamist youth. They were from the pe-ripheryof al-Azhar: educated in the Azharite institution, they did not have impor-tant positions as civil servants, but specialized in preaching. Their professionalcareers had developed mostly outside al-Azhar'sadministration, n private mosques,classes (at al-Azharor otheruniversities), and in Islamic associations. Even thoughthey never lost theirAzharite statusandidentity,the public never perceived them assupportingthe official ulema at the top of al-Azhar's administration.

Therefore, in the mid-1980s, a periphery set itself apartfrom the center of theAzharite institutions. The shaykhof al-Azhar and the presidentof the university ofal-Azhar,both of them appointed by the presidentof the republic,are at the head ofthis center, and thereforeare supposed to follow the demands of those in power andto agree officially with their policy. Around them gather numerous Azharites whobelong to the administration,work directly for the shaykh of al-Azhar, or hold im-portant positions in the Azharite university.However, under certain circumstances,conflicts can arise between the shaykh of al-Azhar and the regime, as the exampleof Gad al-Haqqwill show.The peripheryis much more diversified politically. Peripheralulema usually be-long to Islamic associations that specialize in the dacwa (such as the Jam'iyyashar'iyya and Dacwatal-Haqq).They generally show affinitieswith the ideology ofthe Muslim Brothers,but they are scatteredthroughout he structureof the religiousinstitution and are not sociologically homogeneous. Those who are most visiblespeak throughthe media, and some of them are famous among the public, such asShaykh CAbd l-Hamid Kishk and Shaykh Muhammadal-Ghazali. They have theiraudience among the ulema and Azharite students andessentially transmittheir ideasthroughtheirteaching and theirpreaching.It is difficultto come up with figures,butas the rest of this paperwill show, these peripheralulema appearedas strongpolit-ical actors on several occasions in the mid-1980s and in the 1990s, showing theirinvolvement in public debates, their affinities with moderate Islamists and, evensometimes their sympathies toward radical Islamists. They usually do not belongformally to political parties, but form small, informal, and flexible groups that arevisible throughtheir public statements. Those ulema who belong to the peripheryandpublicly disagree with the center are often sent away by the head of al-Azhartosome provincial Azharite faculty or abroad as visiting professors. This is why thegroups they form are often short-lived, even though they sometimes re-emerge un-der new denominations.

Peripheralulema emergedpublicly in the 1980s as a consequence of two factors.One was the reform of al-Azharby Nasser. The 1961 law led to the expansion of theinstitution,to its transformation nto a political forum, and to a monopoly on the in-terpretationof the sacred. Therefore, it offered the ulema the basis for a powerfulposition in Egyptian society. The modernizationof knowledge within al-Azhar alsogave the ulema the opportunityto take over the language spoken by the Islamists,



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Al-Azharand Radical Islam 387who themselves typically received a mixed religious and modern education. Hence,this modernization enabled the Azharites to take partin the strugglefor control overIslamic references and symbols.The second factor was the relative liberalizationby Sadatof the political arenainthe 1970s, which led to increasing competition among a greatdiversity of religiousentrepreneurs. n the metaphorof the marketplace,Sadat deregulatedthe marketofreligious goods. As a consequence, al-Azharlost its monopoly status. For the reli-gious institution,the only way to survive in a competitiveenvironmentwas to diver-sify its supply of religious goods in order to keep obeying the state as well as tocompete efficiently on the religious market. For this reason, the shaykhsof al-Azharnever really tried to destroy the peripheralulema, who helped diversify the ideasproducedwithin al-Azhar.

The Implementationof Sharia: The First Political Opportunityorthe Peripheral UlemaRejectingthe officialpreachingagainstthejamacdt,theperipheralulemafound, in theissue of the implementationof the sharica,one of the firstbases of their discontent. Inthe mid-1970s the announcementof a progressivelaw on family matters-challeng-ing the principles of the sharicalaw and inspired by Jihane Sadat, the president'swife-raised the wrath of several ulema, who fiercely opposed it in the streets andthe media. To their disappointment,and despite all the efforts by al-Azhar to pushthe regimeinto implementingthe sharica, he Parliamentadoptedthe Jihane aw in1979, shortly after CAbd l-Halim Mahmud's death. It contributed-along with thepeace treatywith Israel, which the shaykhof al-Azharsupportedthrougha fatwa-to keeping them apartfrom the official al-Azhar. The modification of the constitu-tion in 1980, stating that the sharicawas the unique source of Egyptian legislation,was for them a superficialmove. The ulema realized that the regime was makingpromises without implementing them. When the Muslim Brothers entered Parlia-ment in 1984, peripheralulema inside and outside the legislature supportedtheirclaims in favor of the applicationof the sharica.For instance, Shaykh 'Atiyya Saqr,an Azharite memberof Parliamentand of the rulingNational Party,thanked God inan address to Parliament hatEgypt was applyinga partof the shari'a and continuedas follows:We wantmore andmore,becausethe believer,whenstrong, s betterandmore oved byGodthana weakbeliever.... We have beenasking or a hundred earsormoreof ourhis-toryto come back to the Islamicsharica, ndwe havebeensayingthat theQur'ans ourconstitution. We werewearingclothesmadewithnaturalabrics hatfittedourbodies,be-causeHe who has createdourbodywithhis power s the one whodressedus with His wis-dom.We refused o wearthese clothesandwe wore ndustrial abricsmadewith chemicalsthatgaveus allergies.40

The liberalization led by Sadat in the middle of the 1970s and the political par-ticipation of the Muslim Brothersgave the peripheralulema the opportunityto getinvolved in public debates on the function of Islamic law in the Egyptian societyand to reappropriatehe language usually spoken by the Muslim Brothers.



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388 Malika ZeghalThe Ulema and Political ViolenceThe disappointmentof the peripheralulemaregarding he regime'spolicy on Islamiclaw, combined with the emergence of a long and continuous cycle of political vio-lence since 1986, caused them to distance themselves from the state. Opposing therepression practiced by the regime against the Islamist militants, they tried to re-cover in the second half of the 1980s their former status of political brokersbymediatingbetween the militantsof radicalIslam and the governmentin order to pro-mote social peace. As in July 1977, it was as if the emergence of a violent confron-tation between these two actors made the ulema rediscover political participationand protest. Al-Azhar's religious scholars split into various positions across thepolitical spectrum. This fragmentationwas all the easier because Mubarak had,since the beginning of the 1980s, used the ulema to oppose violence and had giventhem an importantforum in which to express themselves. Not only did this partici-pation take differentshapes,but it also involved both the center and the peripheryofal-Azhar.The following examples illustrate this new behavior among the ulema, aswell as the great diversity of positions within the Azharite institution.In January1989, Shaykh Shacrawiwas at the head of a group of ulema who de-cided to oppose the use of violence by thejamdCat.He joined forces with peripheralshaykhs such as Shaykh Ghazali. In April 1993, the same experimentwas repeatedby a largernumberof ulema, who organizedthemselves into a Mediation Commit-tee made up of independentulema. They published a statementin the media inwhich they rejectednot only the violent actions of thejamda't, but also theirrepres-sion by the regime. They asked the governmentto release the Islamist prisonersandto negotiate with the members of radical Islam, and they offered to be the politicalmediators in these negotiations. They representedthemselves as the third party(al-tdaifa al-thalitha) between radical Islam and the regime. Twenty personalitiessigned this statement,of whom ten were Azharite ulema.4' Shortly after the state-ment became public, the government put an end to the committee and its demandsand dismissed the minister of the interior,CAbd l-Halim Musa, who supportedandparticipated n the ulema'sproject.From 1989 on, the shaykhof al-Azharhimself took some distance from the viewsexpressedby the mufti of the republic,who reflectedthe positions of the regime. Heopposed the mufti'sfatwa legitimizing intereston stocks; he let the Academy of Is-lamic Research's civil servants exercise their censorship against secularist thought;and he pronouncedconservative fatwas regardingthe status of women. The shaykhof al-Azhar started a war against secularism, on the one hand, and against Dar al-Ifta3,on the other,opposing the government-backedatwas of the mufti with his ownfatwas. This war ended only with the death of Shaykh Gad al-Haqqin March 1996and the appointmentof the former mufti, Shaykh MuhammadSayyid Tantawi, asthe head of al-Azhar.Fromthe end of the 1980s to his death,the shaykhof al-Azharworked at disconnectingthe center of his institutionfrom the regimeby allying him-self with partof the peripheryof al-Azhar. In this regard,the most important atwaspublishedby Shaykh Gad al-Haqqrevolved around the question of the relationshipbetween Egypt and Israel. At the end of 1994, a controversyabout the Palestiniansuicide operations launched against Israel put the mufti and the head of al-Azhar



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Al-Azharand Radical Islam 389into opposition. In a fatwa, the shaykhof al-Azharconsidered these kamikazes mar-tyrs (shuhada'), hence legitimizing the use of violence. The mufti, however, an-swered this statementby stating thathe would be ready to visit Israel in the future,and refusedto recognize the kamikazesas martyrs.In this war of fatwas, the shaykhof al-Azhar implicitly recognized the legitimacy of an opposition to the politicalpower originatingfrom the ulema.42This new behavior was the result of a tacit bargainbetween the head of al-Azharand the regime:after 1992, the level of violence between the radical Islamistgroupsand the securityforces increased.The shaykhof al-Azharkept cooperatingwith thestate by condemningradicaland violent Islamism in exchange for more freedom ofspeech. However, the debate about Israel proved to Mubarak'sregime that the verycenterof al-Azhar had gone too far.Eventually,the appointmentof ShaykhTantawias the head of al-Azhar in 1996 reconciled the center of al-Azhar with the regime.The more violent the conflict between the state and radical Islamists grew, themore leverage al-Azhargained on the regime, and the more diverse andpowerful al-Azharappearedon the political scene. The arrayof political positions from the sec-ond half of the 1980s on rangedfrom the mufti's statementsreflectingthe regime'spolicy; to the shaykhof al-Azhar's atwas;to the circles of the Nadwatal-Ulema,cre-ated in the beginning of the 1990s to confrontsecularintellectuals;43o the Ulema'sFront;and to the preachingof the Azharite Shaykh CUmarCAbdal-Rahman,44whoinspired the violent actions of the jamaca isldmiyya. In very different ways, politicalIslam and its bricolage entered the ulema'sworld,as the examples of the Nadwat al-Ulema, the Ulema'sFront,and CUmarAbd al-Rahmanwill show.The Nadwat al-'ulama' and the Ulema's Front: A Fight AgainstSecularismIn June 1992, the Islamist newspaperal-Nur published a statementby twelve pro-fessors from the faculty of Dacwaat al-Azhar andtwelve professorsfromCairo Uni-versity, all of them united in an ulema'sconference, or nadwat al-'ulama3. Theyasked Mubarak to banish FarajFuda'spolitical party, Hizb al-Mustaqbal.Fuda, asecularistpolitical writer,was continuously attackingthe Islamists and campaignedfor the separationof politics and religion in Egypt. A few days after the Nadwa'sstatement was published, two Islamist militants, allegedly belonging to a radicalgroup, assassinated Fuda. Secularist thinkers accused the Nadwa's ulema of havingpushed, by publishing theirstatement,radicalmilitants to assassinatethe writer,andof being the accomplices of violent radical Islam. Shaykh CAbd l-Ghaffar Aziz, aprofessorin the faculty of dacwa and presidentof the Nadwa answered these accu-sations in a pamphlet,in which he denied the responsibilityof the Nadwa andlegit-imized the takfirof the apostate (murtadd), using the very quotationof Ibn Kathir(1300-73) that CAbdal-Salam Faraj, an electrical engineer and one of the leaders ofthe Jihad group, had used more than ten years earlier in al-Farlda al-ghdciba, hiswritten justification for the assassination of Sadat:45God rejects all that lies outside His law; He is the Universal Arbiter of all good, and He whoprohibitsall evil. He has done away with all private opinions, with whim, with arbitrariness,with all that is characteristicof men who base themselves not on thesharicabut, like the people



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390 Malika Zeghalof jahiliyya,governaccordingo theirpleasure,n ignorance, rrather,n the manner f theTartars,ccordingo thepolicyof theprince al-siyasaal-malikiyya). hisexpression efersto theirprince,ChingizKhan, or he gavethemtheyasa, which s a code assemblingawsborrowedrom heJews,Christians,Muslims,andothers,apartrommanyother aws issueddirectlyof his ownconceptsandhis own whim.46

CAbd l-GhaffarcAziz did not quote the rest of the paragraphwhich 'Abd al-SalamFarajused to legitimize the takfirof Sadat:Itis impiety o allegethatsuch a systemof lawis thebasis of a governmentoundedon theQur'anand he sunnaof theProphet;t is imperativeo combat he infideluntilhe is broughtto govern n accordancewiththeinjunctions f God andHisProphet,romwhichone mustnotdepart, venin the slightest.

The ideology of the Nadwa shows affinities with the thought expressed by CAbdal-Salam Faraj,without showing the same radicalism. The president of the Nadwaconstructedhis pamphlet n the same style as al-Farlda al-ghdaiba,that of bricolage,mixing Qur'anicreferences,quotationsof Ibn Kathir and IbnTaymiyya,and articlespublished in the newspapersabout the debate between Fuda and his detractors.TheNadwa reappropriatedIbn Kathir's references in order to show that Fuda was aheretic and an apostate,and that he shouldhave been killed aftera trial if he had notrepented.47The Nadwa's ulema did not pose the question of the apostasy of theprince, but stated that secularist intellectuals, who publicly showed their deviancefrom the Islamic norms, were apostates. The Nadwa disappearedfrom the publicarenashortly after the scandal provoked by the assassination of Fuda.The striking aspect of the Nadwa lies in the fact that this groupof ulema was notalone in condemningFuda.Actually, in the 1980s, the magazine of al-Azhar had al-ready published a condemnationof his writings.48Even if he did not publicly con-demn Fuda, the shaykh of al-Azhar let the magazine, which he was supposed tocontrol, publish this condemnation.Moreover, although the Nadwa was short-lived, several of its members reap-pearedlater in a new group, the Ulema's Front.The Ulema's Frontwas born for thefirst time in 1946 among conservative Azharite ulema who fought secularism andsecularist thinkers such as Taha Husayn and Ahmad Muhammad Khalaf Allah.49They had affinities with the Muslim Brothers and continued their attacks againstsecularist writers until the 1960s, when they stopped interveningpublicly and wereobliged to submit to the Nasserist regime.The front reappeared n 1992, in the very middle of the debate provokedby thedeath of Fuda. Shaykh Gad al-Haqqhimself initiated the front'srevival by askingsome ulema to re-create the group as a defense of Islam against secularism. Theygave the fronta democraticstructure, ts leadersbeing elected by the members.Mu-hammad al-SaCdiFarhud,former president of the university of al-Azhar, becamepresidentof the front, which fought its first battle against the United Nations Inter-national Conference on Populationand Development, which took place in Cairo inSeptember1994. The front echoed the protestsof the Muslim Brothersagainsta con-ference they both perceived as anti-Islamic,especially in its platformon sexual rela-tionshipsandabortionrights.Once again, the front was not alone in its condemnationof the conference:Gadal-Haqqhimself andthe members of the Academyof Islamic



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Al-Azhar and Radical Islam 391Research also condemned a conference that was supposedto give to Mubarak'sgov-ernment ncreasing legitimacy in the developing world.50

In 1995, the frontbecame moreradicalafternew elections broughta new president,MuhammadAbd al Muncim al-Birri, a former member of the Nadwat al-'ulama'.YahyaIsma'il, a professorin the facultyof theology, becamethe secretary-generalofthe front.With almost five hundredmembers, the frontbecame extremely visible inthe public arena and sent its statementsby fax to the majorArab news agencies. Itpursued its battle against secularism by actively participatingin the criticism andthe takfir directed at Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, a professor at Cairo University whobecame the targetof all the Egyptian Islamist tendencies.51Once again, peripheralulema allied with non-AzhariteIslamist intellectuals and militants againstwhat theyperceived as a behavior of opposition to Islam. After Shaykh Gad al-Haqqdied in1996, the front opposed directly the new head of al-Azhar, Shaykh Tantawi, who,accordingto them, cooperatedtoo closely with the regime.The front'sulema focusedon Tantawi'sapproval of the Egyptian administration'srelationship with Israel.52They also put into question the legitimacy of the Ministryof Waqf, which, in April1996, decided to reactivate the regulation and the close control by the state overpreachers.53The Ministryof Waqf had decided to forbid non-Azharitesto preachinEgyptian mosques in order to put an end to the influence of Islamists throughpreaching. By criticizing this law, the peripheralulema expressed theiropposition toan Azharitemonopolyon religious interpretation nd condemnedthe state'sregulationof the religious sphere. They questioned the 1961 law, arguingthat the moderniza-tion of knowledge at al-Azhar had led to an educational failure. According to them,al-Azhar should be independent from the regime and should exclusively transmitreligious knowledge.54The religious institution did not seek to exclude these peripheralulema, since theynever questioned the very legitimacy of Mubarak'sregime. However, one Azharite'alim, 'Umar CAbd l-Rahman, ost his official status as an Azharite after he clearlycondemned the Egyptianregime. Because of his explicit alliance with violent polit-ical Islam, he is rejected today by both the regime and the Azharite institution.CUmar CAbdal-Rahman: An Azharite at the Extreme PeripheryFrom the very beginning of his intellectual itinerary,Shaykh 'Umar 'Abd al-Rah-man took the classic pathtraditionallyfollowed by young Azharites.55Born in 1938in a village of the delta in northernEgypt, this blind child from ruraland poor ori-gins was put by his family in the hands of a shaykh andunderthe discipline of thekuttab,where he learned the Qur'anby heartat a very young age. When it was timefor him to go to university at al-Azhar, he was twenty-two; this was also one yearbefore Nasser launched the 1961 reformof al-Azhar.In 1965, 'Abd al-Rahman was graduatedfrom the faculty of theology in Cairo(kulliyat usul al-din), and was then appointed imam and preacherin a mosque inFayyoum. He used his function of preacherto criticize the politics of Nasser, com-paringhim, in his sermons,to pharaoh.His ideas at thattime were influenced in partby the thought of the Muslim Brothers, and particularlyby reading Sayyid Qutb.However, he never officially belonged to their movement. The 1967 defeat had an



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392 MalikaZeghalimportanteffect on him, as it made him stand more aloof than before from the re-gime. In 1970, from the pulpit on which he was preaching, 'Umar CAbd l-Rahmanforbade Muslims to pray on the grave of the deceased President Nasser. Forhavinggiven this fatwa, he was excluded from the university at al-Azhar, where he hadbeen appointedinstructor,and was imprisonedin October 1970. He was released inJune 1971, and almost a year later he obtained his Calimiyya56from the faculty oftheology, defended secretly in frontof ajury of threeprofessorsfromal-Azhar,whoagreedto supportthis outcast scholar. At this time, Shaykh CUmarAbd al-Rahmancreated for himself a double personality: on the one hand, he was an calim whocould-with all the legitimacy conferredby his religious career-interpret the reli-gious texts; on the other,he had alreadyproved to be a serious political opponenttothe regime.

Armed with his doctorate and after al-Azhar reintegratedhim, he taught from1973 to 1977 at the faculty of theology in the southernEgyptiantown of Asyut, thentraveled to Saudi Arabia to teach at the faculty of women in Riyadh for four years.In Asyut, he mixed with the members of what laterbecame the most violent Islamistgroups in Egypt. These groups, called in the 1970s the jamdCdt sldmiyya, startedthen as very popularstudentorganizationsin modern universities. The groupthat af-terward took the name of the JamaCaslamiyya (the Islamic group )was focusingat the time on installing moral and social ethics in the university,such as separationbetween men and women, prohibitionof theaterand music-basically, a whole setof rules that they considered Islamic. 57In 1979, when CUmarCAbdal-Rahman was in Riyadh, CAbdal-Salam Faraj,anelectrical engineer, created the Jihad group in Cairo. The young members of theJamaCaslamiyya mergedwith the new organization. By then, the Jama'aIslamiyyahad begun to advocate direct and violent confrontationagainst the regime, expand-ing its political activities outside the university, and startedpreparing-along withthe Jihadgroup-the plan to kill Sadat.One year later, in 1980, ShaykhCUmarCAbd l-Rahmanreturned o Egypt. At therequestof the militants,the Azharite cleric and teacherbecame the spiritual eader ofthe young Islamists of the Jihad and the JamacaIslamiyya. The al-Azhar-educatedshaykh,now older than40, was thereforemixing with the modern educated Islamist

youthof Asyut andCairo.He offeredreligious legitimacy andexpertiseto the group'sactivities, after some hesitation,as reported aterin some of the testimonyat his firsttrial in Egypt in the early 1980s. Indeed, he was arrestedafter Sadat's assassinationand sat among the defendantsduringthe trial against the murderersof the Egyptianpresident.It was quite unusual for al-Azhar to have, among its ulema, a man accusedof conspiracyagainstthe regime. Lackingproof that the shaykh might have issued afatwa to authorize the killing of Sadat, and probably willing to reintegratehim intothe body of ulema in return or more quietistbehavior, the regime, throughthe ver-dict of the militarycourt, concluded that the shaykh was innocent. 'Umar CAbd l-Rahmanwas eventually consideredby the prosecutionas a religious cleric, an Cdlimwho hadthe legitimacy to interpret he Qur'anand the traditions,and not as an amir,or a political leader. He did not even write a textjustifying the assassination of Sadat.Ironically,this task was performedby Faraj.CUmarCAbd l-Rahman'sopinions wereusually given orally, which protectedhim politically. He was therefore released in



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Al-Azharand Radical Islam 3931984, but at that time, his function in both radical groups was questioned. Was hisrole that of religious intellectual or political leader? If the answeris not yet clear tothe distantobserver,58t was not thenfor the militantsof the Jihadand the Jama'aIs-lamiyya, since these groups confrontedeach other in 1984 about the status and thefunctions of CUmarAbdal-Rahman.At the center of this oppositionlies the questionof imdratal-darir, a controversyaroundthe political status of a blind theologian-who is unable and unprepared o fight-among a groupof armed Islamist militants.The Jihadgroup,based in Cairo, thoughtthat the statusof amir was a militaryone,and thereforecould not acceptanyphysical handicap n the personwho embodied thetitle. 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman,as a blind person,could not fulfill this function, whichhad to be carriedout by militants who were specializedin militaryand technicalpro-fessions. The cleric was thus sent backby the Jihadgroupto his traditionalspecialty,interpretationof the texts, while the sphere of political strategy and action was re-served for the men who possessed modernexpertise. The JamacaIslamiyya, basedmainly in Asyut, and having a much more elusive set of political strategies, chose'Umar 'Abd al-Rahmanas its spiritual eader.The question of the characteristics of the leader is not only a technical contro-versy. It also reveals a cluster of differences between the two Islamic groups andtells us more about the political personalityof Shaykh cUmarCAbd l-Rahman,whofrom 1984 on has been associated with the JamacaIslamiyya.In 1984, the two groups separatedon the basis of their political differences, car-rying two different strategies. The Jihad group, which did not confer any politicalauthorityon Shaykh 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman,did not participate n violent activitiesuntil August 1993. The group preferred o preparesecretly its strategyto overthrowthe regime and seize power, trying to recruit its militants from the Egyptian armyand the state apparatus.The JamacaIslamiyya, on the contrary-under the spiritualleadershipof the shaykh-did not show a clear andunifiedstrategyor a sense of po-litical organization. Several amirs were geographically dispersed and led groupsthat acted more or less independentlyfrom each other in their violent confrontationwith the state. After a cycle of violent confrontations between the Jamaca slamiyyaand the security forces, Shaykh 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman was arrestedin 1989, butwas released soon thereafter.He traveledto Mecca on a pilgrimage in January1990and took the opportunity o go to Sudan;from there,he traveledto the United Statesin July 1990, where he pursuedhis preachingactivities. In his sermons, he contin-ued to criticize the Egyptianregime andthe ulema who submittedto it, and focusedon American policy vis-a-vis Mubarak'sgovernment. The World Trade Centerbombing on 26 February1993 broughtthe characterof the shaykh to the fore: hewas accused by the American governmentof leading, with nine co-defendants, anIslamic war of urbanterrorismagainstthe United States. 59He was eventually con-victed of conspiracy for his role in assassination and bombing plots in the UnitedStates andEgypt aftera trialthat lasted almost nine months. On 17 January1996, hewas sentenced to life in prison.60

Although elusive, Shaykh 'Umar CAbd l-Rahman's enets focus on two predomi-nant themes. Criticismof the Egyptianstate and the descriptionof the ideal form ofgovernment n Islam. Aroundthese topics clustera series of othersubjectsthat relateto the question of the genuine Islamic ruler,such as internalmatters in politics (the



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Al-Azharand Radical Islam 395that he who leaves his job duringthe day in order to go to the mosque has performedjihad. And he who listens to a religious lecture has performed ihad. What is this?This is distortion to the subjectof jihad. Praying, listening,jihad? Why don'twe callthings by theirpropernames?Why not? A call is a call, andjihad is jihad. 65Also,whoever stands against Islam is a targetof jihad. As 'Umar CAbd l-Rahmanput itduringa conference on solidaritywith Bosnia:66 When we abandoned thejihad forthe sake of God ... what has become of us? We saw our enemies surroundingus inall the Muslim lands: in the Philippines . . . in Kashmir, in India, in Afghanistan, inPalestine, in Yugoslavia, in Sudan.... They tried to terminate Islam.... There aretwo main enemies: the enemy who is at the forefront of the work against Islam isAmerica and the allies. Then CUmar Abd al-Rahman described the second enemy,saying: and the other enemies are the rulers of the Muslims.... They do not helpthe Muslims, andthey do not provide them with money and weapons. The presidentof the Egyptianregime says, 'We should not look at the problemof Bosnia as a Mus-lim problem but as an internal problem among groups and factions in the samecountry,'and thus he looks at it in a bad manner,which is as far as it can possiblybe from Islam. The shaykh added in the same sermon: This criminal Tito, thisTito ... andNehru, and Jamal [Nasser]-this criminaltrinitywas exterminatingtheMuslims. For CUmarCAbd l-Rahman, ihad has to fight socialism, secularism, andnationalism,three standards hat were raised by Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s thatshould, in his eyes, be replaced by the notion of a Muslim community (umma).For'Umar CAbd l-Rahman, jtihadhas a moreintellectualmeaning:it is the effortto understand and interpretthe religious texts, and more specifically to give a re-sponse to a questionthat is not clearly answeredby the QurDan nd the traditions.Inthis regard, he does not contradict common Islamic thought. The mujtahidis the'alim; he is not

religion and politics in egypt

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