Do Islamic universities in the Muslim world like al-Azhar produce Islamic scholars?
1 Answer
The questionable role and quality of Muslim intellectuals, many of whom demand submission as 'inheritors of the prophet', requires a review of the modern universities whose products they are. Al-Azhar used to be and to some extents is a respected source of scholarship and guidance for the Muslim world. The rebel Muhammad ‘Ali, who ruled Egypt from 1805 to 1848, laid the modern groundwork for manipulation of the university by forcibly nationalizing 623,000 acres of land that had been endowed to mosques in order to gain additional state revenue. Adopting this model over a century later, President Gamal Abdel Nasser not only placed all endowed land under the control of a Ministry of Religious Endowments, but added to al-Azhar University’s unique Islamic model European-style degrees and salaries for professors and imams, in effect making them government employees. Nasser also made Grand Sheikh appointments as a right of the president, abandoning the university’s system of internal election. By 1963 al-Azhar was a state institution, allowing the president to remove or discredit his opponents and their views at will... whilst producing a conveyor belt of scholars parroting state ideology.
The questionable role and quality of Muslim intellectuals, many of whom demand submission as 'inheritors of the prophet', requires a review of the modern universities whose products they are. Al-Azhar used to be and to some extents is a respected source of scholarship and guidance for the Muslim world. The rebel Muhammad ‘Ali, who ruled Egypt from 1805 to 1848, laid the modern groundwork for manipulation of the university by forcibly nationalizing 623,000 acres of land that had been endowed to mosques in order to gain additional state revenue. Adopting this model over a century later, President Gamal Abdel Nasser not only placed all endowed land under the control of a Ministry of Religious Endowments, but added to al-Azhar University’s unique Islamic model European-style degrees and salaries for professors and imams, in effect making them government employees. Nasser also made Grand Sheikh appointments as a right of the president, abandoning the university’s system of internal election. By 1963 al-Azhar was a state institution, allowing the president to remove or discredit his opponents and their views at will... whilst producing a conveyor belt of scholars parroting state ideology.