Religious endowments, awqaf, are similar to common law trusts where the trustee is the mosque or individual in charge of the waqf and the beneficiary is usually the community as a whole.

For example, Al-Azhar mosque would aid the community through the endowments and remained economically separate via the revenue they earned from the awqaf.

They no longer had their only means of political representation and Al-Azhar's religious influence was manipulated into producing propaganda by the state.

Gamal Abdel Nasser used the newly created propaganda machine of Al-Azhar to “…justify Arab Socialism and his struggle against Israel” (Ibrahim 636).

This process arguably twisted what was once a community-benefitting mosque, into a corrupt political machine;[citation needed] and with the Ministry of Awqaf promoting rationalism rather than supporting the cause of the poor.

[citation needed] In 1977 Jamaat al Muslimin, a guerrilla Islamic group that rose out of the Muslim Brotherhood, killed the former Minister of Awqaf, Muhammad al-Dhahabi, after the arrest of its members.

[1] In 1953 the ministry took control of the Dar al-Kiswa al-Sharifa ("house of the noble kiswa"), an artistic workshop on the al-Khoronfesh street in Cairo.