In recent years, due in part to the broad dissemination of materials over social media and in part to the growing reach of terrorist groups applying literal readings of the scriptures, the voices speaking against religious intolerance in Islamic texts have been multiplying and gaining traction. Public intellectuals argue that students of al-Azhar who are joining terrorist groups such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State are merely practicing what is preached in the classroom, for the arguments of such terrorist groups are anchored in the texts that unequivocally incite violence and hatred. In May 2015, the president of al-Azhar, Abdul Hai Azab, conceded that some of its texts might indeed incite violence and announced that the university is taking steps to change its curriculum. My presentation will analyze the arguments of three prominent public intellectuals. The first case study is Islam al-Bihiri, the anchor of a television show dedicated to questioning the morality and authority of key traditional Islamic texts, including revered collections of hadith. My second case study is Muhammad Abdullah Nasr, himself a graduate of al-Azhar himself who has become a public figure and who frequently appears on both traditional media outlets and social media to expose the violence and intolerance in the texts that he was taught and that contain incitement to violence and intolerance. Finally, I analyze the YouTube channel of Ahmad Harqan, a former extremist who, though well versed in both Islamic history and thought (he knows the Qur’an by heart), became an atheist and an ardent preacher of secularism. These public intellectuals represent a much wider movement that is growing in numbers and influence. Evident in this historic change is the inability of scholars representing the religious establishment to control the narratives. Not only has the religious establishment lost its monopoly over their audiences, but they now have to compete with multiple platforms, including social media.