Islam in Egypt
Under the Ottoman Empire, the public and political roles of the ulama (i.e., Muslim religious scholars) were reinforced, in an effective continuation of the policies of the Mamluk Sultanate.
[8] During the 19th and 20th centuries, successive governments made extensive efforts to limit the role of the ulama in public life, and religious institutions were increasingly brought under closer levels of state control.
Their trade and diplomatic ties extended all the way to China and its Song dynasty, which eventually determined the economic course of Egypt during the High Middle Ages.
Although Muslims agreed on the faith's basic tenets, the country's various social groups and classes applied Islam differently in their daily lives.
The literate theologians of Al-Azhar University generally rejected the version of Islam practiced by illiterate religious preachers and peasants in the countryside.
Most upper- and upper-middle-class Muslims believed either that religious expression was a private matter for each individual or that Islam should play a more dominant role in public life.
[citation needed] Orthodox ulama or "the religious establishment" found themselves in a difficult position during the wave of Islamic activism that swept through Egypt in the 1970s and 1980s.
Most Ulama, including those of Al-Azhar University, are employees of the Egyptian state who "recognize the regime’s primacy, support its stability, and legitimize its policies".
After 1974, for example, many al-Azhar ulama, who had acquiesced to family planning initiatives in the 1960s, openly criticized government efforts at population control.
Egypt's largely uneducated urban and rural lower classes are intensely devoted to Islam, but they usually lack a thorough knowledge of the religion.
Popular religion include a variety of unorthodox practices, such as veneration of saints, recourse to charms and amulets, and belief in the influence of evil spirits.
[24] The devotions of many Sufi orders center on various forms of the dhikr, a ceremony at which music, body movements, and chants induce a state of ecstatic trance in the disciples.
[23] It has also benefited from some of the $70 billion spent by Saudi Arabia to promote "Wahhabi" ideology worldwide through mosques, schools and books, that is similar or "virtually identical to Salafi beliefs and with which Sufis have had difficulty competing.
[32][33][34] During the early 20th century, the ideas of Egyptian Quranists like Muhammad Tawfiq Sidqi (1881–1920) are thought to have grown out of Salafism – specifically a rejection of taqlid.
In June 2013 a mob of several hundred, including Muslim brotherhood members, attacked a house in the village of Abu Musallim near Cairo, dragging four Shia worshipers through the street before lynching them.
[14] In 2015, the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments initiated a campaign to remove any books authored by Salafi scholars from all mosques in Egypt.
After World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood acquired a reputation as a radical group prepared to use violence to achieve its religious goals.
[62] Muslims tended to view the humiliating experience as the culmination of 150 years of foreign intrusion and an affront to their vision of a true Islamic community.
On university campuses, for example, Sadat initially viewed the rise of Islamic associations (Gama'at Islamiya) as a counterbalance to leftist influence among students.
At Asyut University, which was the scene of some of the most intense clashes between Islamists and their opponents (including security forces, secularists, and Copts), the president and other top administrators—who were Islamists—supported Gama'at Islamiya demands to end mixed-sex classes and to reduce total female enrollment.
[61] Public opinion in Egypt supported political Islam to some extent, one poll in the mid-1980s found 96% of Egyptian Muslims favoring the application of the Sharia.
The Islamists created their own alternative network of social and economic institutions through which members could work, study, and receive medical treatment in an Islamic environment.
Indeed, they viewed atheistic communism, Jewish Zionism, and Western "Crusader-minded" Christianity as their main enemies, which were responsible for the decadence that led to foreign domination and defeat by Zionists.
Most activists were university students or recent graduates; they included rural-urban migrants and urban middle-class youth whose fathers were middle-level government employees or professionals.
In deference to their increasing influence, the Ministry of Justice in 1977 published a draft law making apostasy by a Muslim a capital offense and proposing traditional Islamic punishments for crimes, such as stoning for adultery and amputation of a hand for theft.
[64] By the beginning of the 21st century, only the Gama'at Islamiya leaders who were in prison after the assassination of Sadat were released after several books they wrote and interviews showed that they revised their points of view and changed the radical tone of their speeches.
However, since the Government does not consider the practice of Christianity or Judaism to conflict with Shari'a, for the most part members of the non-Muslim minority worship without legal harassment and may maintain links with coreligionists in other countries.
In addition Interior Ministry regulations issued in 1934 specify a set of 10 conditions that the Government must consider prior to issuance of a presidential decree permitting construction of a church.
The practical impact of the decree has been to facilitate significantly church repairs; however, Christians report that local permits still are subject to security authorities' approval.
In January 2000, the Parliament passed a new Personal Status Law that made it easier for a Muslim woman to obtain a divorce without her husband's consent, provided that she is willing to forgo alimony and the return of her dowry.
