This paper argues that the hybridized education provided by Dar al-'Ulum was a key factor in the ability of some of its students - Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and Taki al-Din al-Nabhani - to establish themselves as leaders of major religious movements. Dar al-'Ulum, an Egyptian higher government school between 1872 and 1946, accepted students strong in the religious sciences (often from al-Azhar) and prepared them to teach Arabic in government schools by putting them through advanced coursework in traditionally-taught Arabic and Islamic sciences and introductory classes in new, modern subjects. The school was not only a bridge between the longstanding religious and new civil school systems, but also a hybridized institution suspended between two contrasting categories of education, knowledge and social belonging, the 'modern' and the religious. Both the institution and its graduates - often called Dar 'Amis - were caught in the middle of these two categories, a position that enabled individual graduates to play significant roles in the modernization of Arabic and Islam. Due to their education, Dar 'Amis could exert both social and religious authority in a rapidly-modernizing, early twentieth-century Egypt. In this period, the social influence of the ulama - the only other group with significant exoteric religious authority - was declining. Dar al-'Ulum students were initially classed as shaykhs, but fought in 1926 for the right to be considered socially modern effendis. In contrast to the ulama, Dar 'Amis appeared modern, were sympathetic to modern ideas and ways of life, and had professional careers outside of the world of Islamic scholarship. But they could still claim religious authority because they had spent years studying traditional Islamic and Arabic sciences. This combination of religious knowledge and social influence enabled a handful of Dar 'Amis to emerge as a new type of religious leader: one that was explicitly modern, yet also religious. They were neither ulama nor lay intellectuals, but instead represent a crucial intermediate step in the expansion of religious authority from professional religious specialists to the laity. Al-Banna, Qutb and al-Nabhani used their religious and social authority to build major socio-political movements that continue to spread new religious ideas and practices today: the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb al-Tahrir. This paper links a detailed account of the education of these individuals with their rise as religious leaders, examining the construction of their social and religious authority and the innovative ways in which they built movements that were both modern and religious.