At al-Azhar mosque, struggle over Islam roils a revered Egyptian institution

04.03.2012

They came by the thousands, pouring through the ancient stone archways and into the gleaming white marble courtyard of al-Azhar mosque. The faithful had come to pray, to hear a thundering sermon from a leader of Hamas and to witness a rebirth.

Co-opted for decades by irreligious and autocratic Egyptian governments, al-Azhar was retaking its rightful place as the world’s leading voice of Sunni Islam, worshipers said. The presence of a once-banned Hamas preacher willing to speak incendiary truths was proof that the millennium-old mosque and university that bear the al-Azhar name had finally been set free.

“Before, al-Azhar was covered by dust,” said Yasser Abdel Monen, 32, beaming in the shadow of the building’s towering minarets. “Now we have removed the dust to show what it is truly made of.”

But to others, that Friday sermon late last month was proof of something more ominous: the perverse outcome of a revolution built on a thirst for freedom but overtaken by a hunger for hard-line religious dogma.

More than a year after an uprising that deposed longtime president Hosni Mubarak, just about everything in Egypt feels up for grabs. Yet the struggle for the soul of al-Azhar carries a special resonance here and across the Islamic world. At a time when the Middle East boils with debate over the proper role of religion in public life, al-Azhar is poised to wield vast influence over how political Islam is implemented regionwide.

Now, forces from across Egypt’s political and religious spectrum — including a group preaching a puritanical, Saudi-style doctrine of Islam — are maneuvering to influence al-Azhar.