Despite the vast scholarship on the conflict between the Egyptian President Jamal Abdil-Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood, very few scholars discussed in detail the role official religious state institutions played in this conflict. My paper explores the relationship between, religion, politics and state institutions in Egypt by focusing on Nasser’s al-Azhar and its role in mobilizing the masses against the Muslim Brotherhood. I reconstruct Nasser’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, arguing that they should not be seen in black-and-white terms but as two faces of the same coin. I argue that they both blurred the lines between politics and religion using Islam and its institutions to confront each other and to compete over people’s imagination. The first part of the paper discusses the transformation in the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Azhar before and after 1952, arguing that they shared a friendly relationship that changed when Nasser came to power. The second part of the paper discusses how Nasser co-opted al-Azhar and used it to combat the Muslim Brotherhood and undermine their religious base. I use articles and caricatures published in al-Azhar’s official magazines, Majllat al-Azhar and Minbar al-Islam, to show how Nasser was presented as the “New Saladin” and a representative of a moderate Islam whereas the Muslim Brothers were deviant Muslims who threatened Islam and the Egyptian society at large. I analyze how Azharis evoked traditional Islamic terms, like Kharijites, to serve modern secular purposes and to shape the Egyptians’ perception of the Muslim Brotherhood. Moreover, I analyze how the Egyptian state used the religious past in order to meet the challenges of modernity. The third part of this paper discusses how historians of the modern Middle East regularly overlook the important role played by the United States and Saudi Arabia in this conflict. I use documents produced by the Eisenhower administration to illustrate how the U.S and Saudi Arabia supported the Muslim Brothers as an Islamic ideological force against Nasser and his official Islam presented by al-Azhar. Finally, unlike earlier scholarship that argues reconciliation between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian state started during the presidency of Sadat, I argue that this rapprochement took place during the later years of Nasser’s presidency by sending Azharis to indoctrinate Brotherhood members while still in prison.