Author's note: I wrote this paper while a visiting fellow at the Center of International Studies, Princeton University. I thank Rym Brahimi, Carl Brown, Ellis Goldberg, Hédi Kallal, Arang Keshavarzian, Elizabeth Thompson, and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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² During two years of fieldwork in Cairo (1992–93), I conducted biographical interviews with thirtyfive Azharite ulema chosen from a large spectrum of social and professional positions. The Azharite calim is a doctor of the Islamic law who was graduated from al-Azhar University and received the ʿālimiyya, or doctorate. I considered any person who completed his education in the secondary schools (or institutes) of al-Azhar to be an “Azharite.” The attribution of the title of ʿāalim is also a privilege given to those who have attained an important level of knowledge in religious matters. The Azharites I interviewed belong to the administration of al-Azhar or are teachers in the primary and secondary institutes, faculty members, preachers educated at al-Azhar, or students at the university of al-Azhar. They can also have an Azharite education and work in modern universities or in other sectors of society that are not linked to al-Azhar. My interviews focused on the careers of these men of religion from several points of view: geographical, genealogical, religious, professional, and political; see Zeghal, Malika, Gardiens de I'lslam: Les Oulémas d'Al Azhar dans I'Egypte Contemporaine (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 1996).Google Scholar

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⁸ Crecelius, Daniel, “The Course of Secularization in Modern Egypt,” in Islam and Development: Religion and Socio-Political Change, ed. Esposito, John (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

⁹ Shaykh al-Bahi, who represented the regime during the short-lived debates in Parliament on the 1961 reform law, said: “The revolution reformed al-Azhar, because its shaykhs did not want to”: cf. Salāh, Magda, Al-Dawr al-Siyasi lil-Azhar (1952–1981) (Cairo: Markaz al-Buhuth wa-1 Dirasat al-Siyasiyya, 1992), 137.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Crecelius, “Non Ideological Responses,” 208.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² See Zeghal, , Cardiens de I'lslam, 91–126.Google Scholar

¹³ In 1961, the faculty of sharʿa was transformed into the faculty of sharʿa wa-qānūn (Islamic law and modern law).

¹⁴ Crecelius, “Al-Azhar in the Revolution,” 42.

¹⁵ interview with Shaykh Zahir, a retired civil servant from al-Azhar, Cairo, 21 May 1992.

¹⁶ See the articles of Taha Husayn in Al-Jumhūriyya on 21 October 1955 and 6 November 1955 and in Majallat al-Azhar in November 1955. After Taha Husayn suggested unification of the Egyptian system of education through what he called “the second phase” (the first one being the unification of the religious courts), several ulema reacted in the official magazine of al-Azhar. The “Ulema Front,” a group created in the 1940s, opposed Taha Husayn's project, which a shaykh considered as a blueprint for a “modern, American, or French Islam.” The front claimed that religious sciences and Arabic language had to gain space in all kinds of education in Egypt.

¹⁷ Zeghal, , Gardiens de I'lslam, 125–26.Google Scholar

¹⁸ They could get into al-Azhar after having spent a preparatory year studying religious subjects at al-Azhar.

¹⁹ See al-amīriyya, Al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-shuʾūn al-matābiʿ, Al-qānūn raqm 103 li-Sanat 1961 (Cairo: 1986), 33–34.Google Scholar

²⁰ Zeghal, , Gardiens de V'slam, 172.Google Scholar

²¹ The figures for the years 1962–63 and 1972–73 are given by al-Azhar in Al-Azhar taʾrikhuhu wa tatawwiruhu (Cairo: 1983), 329. Figures for the years 1982–83, 1987–88, and 1992–93 were given to me by the administration of the institutes at al-Azhar.Google Scholar

²² Shalabī, Raʾūf, Shaykh al-islām ʿAbd al-Halīm Mahmūd (Kuwait: Dār al-Qalam, 1982), 391–92.Google Scholar

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²⁴ Berque, Jacques, L'Egyple, Impérialisme et Révolution (Paris: Gallimard, 1967).Google Scholar

²⁵ Cf. Table 1.

²⁶ Interview with Shaykh Hamdi, an accountant educated at the faculty of trade at al-Azhar, on 4 May 1992, Cairo.

²⁷ Subkī, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Latīf, Majallat al-Azhar (November 1955): 394–95.Google Scholar

²⁸ Roy, Olivier, “Les Nouveaux Intellectuels islamistes: Essai d'approche philosophique,” in Intellectuels et Militants de Vlslam Contemporain, ed. Kepel, Gilles and Richard, Yann (Paris: Seuil, 1991), 266: “ … disparate et fragmente, jamais ressaisi comme un tout.”Google Scholar

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³⁰ Speech on 23 July 1967, on the occasion of the anniversary of the 1952 revolution.

³¹ Majallat al-Azhar (December 1972).

³² Mahmūd, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Halīm, Fatāwā ʿan al-shuyāʿiyya (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1990), 9.Google Scholar

³³ Kepel, Gilles, Le Prophète et le Pharaon (Paris: La Découverte, 1984).Google Scholar

³⁴ al-Bahī, Muhammad, Mushkilat al-mujtamaʿīt al-islāmiyya al-muʿāsara, wa al-firāgh min al-islām (Cairo: Maktabat Wahba, 1979).Google Scholar

³⁵ This text was published by the Majallat al-Azhar in 1979.Google Scholar

³⁶ al-Tayr, Mustafā,“ “Al-maʿsiya la tukaffir sāhibahā” (Disobedience Does Not Make One Impious), Majallat al-Azhar (02 1977), 224–30.Google Scholar

³⁷ Zeghal, , Gardiens de I'Islam, 381–88.Google Scholar

³⁸ ʿAli cAbd al-Azim, Mashlkhat al-Azhar, 396.

³⁹ lnterview with a 50-year-old Nasserist shaykh who belongs today to the leftist opposition, 12 June 1992.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Quoted in Muhammad al-Tawīl, Al-ikhwān ft ʾl-barlamān (Cairo: Al-Maktab al-Misri al-Hadīth, 1992), 115.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Shaykhs Shaʾrawi, Muhammad al-Ghazali, ʿAbd al-Hamid Kishk, three famous Azharite preachers, and Sayyid Rizq al-Tawil, president of the Islamic association of Daʿwat al-Haqq, were part of this committee: Rūz al-Yūsuf, 19 April 1993. The other half of the committee consisted of modern-educated people, mainly university professors.

⁴² The chronologies published in Maghreb-Machrek (1995) and Ègypte-Monde Arabe (1995) give details of this debate.Google Scholar

⁴³ Zeghal, Gardiens de I'lslam, 328–37.

⁴⁴ lbid., 337–58.

⁴⁵ Al Farīda al-ghīʾiba (The Absent Obligation), this obligation being the jihad.

⁴⁶ Quoted by Gilles Kepel, “L'Egypte d'aujourd'hui: mouvement islamiste et tradition savante,” in Annales ESC, no. 4 (1984).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ ʿAziz, ʾAbd al Ghaffār, Man qatala Faraj Fmacr;da? (Cairo: Dar al-lʿlām al Dawlī, 1992), 112.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Cf. Majallat al-Azhar (February-March 1986), 854.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Al-Nūr, 18 December 1996.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Al-Wafd, 17 August 1994, and Al-Ahram, 11 August 1994.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Al-ʿArabi, 5 May 1996.Google Scholar

⁵² Rūz al-Yūsuf, 23 March 1998.Google Scholar

⁵³ Al-liwāʾ al-islāmi, 27 June 1996.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ For instance, ʾAbd al-Ghaffār ʾAziz, “Man Yanqud al-Azhar min mihnatihi?” al-Wafd, 26 March 1987. Also, in 1987, some ulema decided to create a private center for religious studies, within al-Azhar, that would have transmitted religious knowledge independently from the state. The government immediately stopped the project: cf. Al-Nūr, 16 December 1987.

⁵⁵ Elements of ʾUmar ʾAbd al-Rahman's biography can be found in al-Rahmān, ʾUmar ʾAbd, Kalimat Haqq (Cairo: Dar al-Iʾtisam, 1987).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ The dissertation was on “the opponents of the Qurʾan as depicted in the sūrat al-Tawba of the Qurʾan.”

⁵⁷ See Kepel, Gilles, The Prophet and Pharaoh. Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).Google Scholar

⁵⁸ The sources on which to base an understanding of the religious and political thought of ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Rahman are of very different natures, which adds to the elusiveness of the character. His defense at his trial in Egypt provides us with a theoretical justification of the assassination of Sadat (published in Kalimat). Interviews he gave to the media in Egypt and later in the United States are numerous and sometimes contradictory.

⁵⁹ Wall Street Journal, 22 September 1995, 1.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See the New York Times, 18 January 1996, 1. The article reports that the shaykh delivered “a 100- minute speech in which he castigated the United States as an ‘enemy of Islam’ and cast himself as a victim of an ‘unlawful trial.’”

⁶¹ ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Rahmān, Kalimat, 40–41.

⁶² Ibid., 79.

⁶³ Ibid., 47.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 110, 159.

⁶⁵ “Doubts About Jihad,” ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Rahman, audiotape no. 40.

⁶⁶ “On the Inevitability of Jihad for the Solution of Our Problems and for the Frightening of the Enemies of God,”Conference on Solidarity with Bosnia-Herzegovina,16 January 1993, videotape.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Chris Eccel developed the notion of “division of labor” in “Alim and Mujahid in Egypt: Orthodoxy Versus Subculture, or Division of Labor?” Muslim World 85 (07 1988): 189–208.Google Scholar