The history of the establishment of the Al-Azhar Mosque dates back to the year 970 by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Muizz Li-Din Allah.

[13] Al-Azhar now maintains a modernist position, advocating "Wasatiyya" (centrism), a reaction against the extreme textualism of many Wahhabi Salafi ideologues.

Wasatiyya covers a range of thinkers, some of whom are liberal intellectuals with religious inclinations, preachers such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and many members of the Muslim Brotherhood since the 2013 coup.

Al-Azhar, led by its current Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayeb—who was appointed by President Mubarak and previously affiliated with his loyalist National Democratic Party[14]—has taken a stance against the Brotherhood.

[15] The nineteenth and current Grand Mufti of Egypt and Al Azhar scholar, is Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam.