Chapter 4 The Ulama, Religious Authority, and the State

Abstract

In the years shortly before and after Egypt’s independence from Britain in 1952, the Islamic thinker and preacher Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917–96) launched a scathing attack on the ulama (the religious scholars) of al-Azhar, the most important Sunni religious establishment for Egypt and the broader Sunni Islamic world. For al-Ghazali, the ulama had failed to institute social justice in Egypt. The ulama, he argued, had distorted the texts in order to “serve trivial objectives, avoid clashing with those in power,” and “choose prevailing customs or traditions.”¹ He railed against the failure of the ulama to be politically engaged, being satisfied