The immediate wake of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution witnessed the precipitous rise to prominence of Islamist actors on Egypt’s political scene, culminating in the presidential election of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Mohamed Morsi. Nevertheless, after only a year in power, popular discontent with Morsi led to his removal by the Egyptian military. Morsi’s overthrow was endorsed not only by his secularist and liberal opponents, but also by a number of prominent Egyptian religious thinkers and leaders, most notably former Grand Mufti Ali Jum‘a and the prominent Salafi scholar and activist Yasir Burhami. Given the recent character of these events, they have only just begun to attract scholarly attention. The proposed presentation will contribute to such efforts by examining the Islamic legal arguments used by Jum‘a and Burhami to justify the coup and to excuse the subsequent forceful dispersal of Islamist protesters. To do so, the presentation will analyze relevant fatwas, written statements, and televised interviews offered by both figures. Although the proposed presentation will explore the way in which Jum‘a’s and Burhami’s views are shaped by considerations of political expediency, it does not simply reduce them to such considerations. Rather the presentation will seek to demonstrate that if the legal arguments put forth by Jum‘a and Burhami have found acceptance among broad sectors of the Egyptian population, this is because their logic resonates with widely shared assumptions about political life inherited from the Mubarak era, and actively cultivated by proponents of the pre-revolutionary regime. Such assumptions include a tendency to frame political disagreements not as a natural feature of peaceful democratic political life, but rather as civil strife (or “fitna”) pitting the forces of stability (i.e., the military) against the forces of chaos and bloodshed (i.e., religious terrorists). The proposed presentation will show how the religious texts and fiqh maxims cited by Jum‘a and Burhami both reflect and re-entrench such a perspective on political life. By reproducing this zero-sum discourse, such figures use their authority to counter efforts by Morsi supporters (and some secular activists) to frame political dissent in terms other than violent civil discord. By examining the opinions of Jum‘a and Burhami, the presentation will not only provide insight into ongoing religious debates about political legitimacy in Egypt, but will also show how such debates relate to widely shared assumptions about political life that continue to exert great influence in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.