Mosque of Al-Azhar

During his tenure as Prime Minister, and later President, Nasser continued the efforts to limit the power of the ulema of al-Azhar and to use its influence to his advantage. In 1952, the waqfs were nationalized and placed under the authority of the newly created Ministry of Religious Endowments, cutting off the ability of the mosque to control its financial affairs.[68][69] He abolished the sharia courts, merging religious courts with the state judicial system in 1955, severely limiting the independence of the ulema.[69] The 1961 reform law, which invalidated an earlier law passed in 1936 that had guaranteed the independence of al-Azhar, gave the President of Egypt the authority to appoint the sheikh al-Azhar, a position first created during Ottoman rule and chosen from and by the ulema since its inception.[70][71] Al-Azhar, which remained a symbol of the Islamic character of both the nation and the state, continued to influence the population while being unable to exert its will over the state. Al-Azhar became increasingly co-opted into the state bureaucracy after the revolution?independence of its curriculum and its function as a mosque ceased.[72] The authority of the ulema were further weakened by the creation of government agencies responsible for providing interpretations of religious laws.[73] While these reforms dramatically curtailed the independence of the ulema, they also had the effect of reestablishing their influence by integrating them further into the state apparatus.[74] The 1961 reform law also provided the ulema with the resources of the state, though the purse strings were outside of their control.[75] While Nasser sought to subjugate the ulema beneath the state, he did not allow more extreme proposals to limit the influence of al-Azhar. One such proposal was made by Taha Hussein in 1955. Hussein sought to dismantle the Azharite primary and secondary educational system and transform the university into a faculty of theology which would be included within the modern, secular, collegiate educational system. The ulema opposed this plan, though Nasser's choice of maintaining al-Azhar's status was due more to personal political considerations, such as the use of al-Azhar to grant legitimacy to the regime, than on the opposition of the ulema.[76]