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.

"The Rise of Lay Religious Authority in 1970's Egypt: The Case of Dr. Mustafa Mahmud" examines Mahmud's rise to prominence in Egypt during this period of tumultuous religious and political debate. It argues that Mahmud's ascent as a prominent lay religious intellectual and critic of both Leftists and violent Islamists in Egypt during this period reveals larger changes in the influence of lay-trained intellectuals. Mahmud serves as a model of the way in which such intellectual draw both on previously "traditional" models of authority as well as the authority of the "modern" Sciences to make their case within a deregulated religious marketplace. This paper draws draws on anthropological scholarship on the construction of religious authority in analyzing the 27 books which Mustafa Mahmud published during this period. It first places him in a larger religious and historical context, tracing how the underlying premises of religious and secular authority developed in Egypt during the 20th century. In this vein, it examines how religious debate spread outside of al-Azhar, as well as the rise of the modern sciences as another important source of intellectual and social authority. It then examines how Mahmud fits into the larger trends of decentralization of religious authority by examining his claim to not only scientific authority but also traditional ideas of knowledge such as Sufi Ma'rifa as well as to traditional literary genres of the Ulama such as the Tafsir and the Sirra Nabawiyya. It finally examines how Mahmud's claims to religious authority based on Modern Science and Sufism manifested themselves in his engagement with the claims of Egyptian Leftists (both Marxist and Nasserist) and violent Islamists during the 1970's. In conclusion, I seek to illustrate both the importance and tenuous nature of lay religious authority during the 1970's by examining both Mustafa Mahmud's claim to such authority and the intellectual premises on which his indictment of Leftists and violent Islamists during this period pivoted. In doing so, I hope to contribute to the scholarly debate on lay and traditional religious authority in Egypt by explaining how lay religious authority, while challenging traditional forms of authority, ultimately recognizes their continued relevance.

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a surge in intellectual life in the Arab world, which one prominent Arab intellectual, Abdullah Laroui, goes so far as calling a "second nahda" (renaissance). Thinkers from different parts of the Arab world wrote prolifically, analyzing the political, religious, and social problems of their time. They addressed questions, such as: Why are the Arabs continuing to regress? What is the role of the political and religious authorities in this regression? How is the Arab reading of Islamic history contributing to the decay? The critique of religious and political authorities, often intertwined, has been a subject of much serious scholarship. This paper will focus on the intellectual contribution of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943-2010). Abu Zayd was a well-versed scholar of Islam who offers original ijtihad (independent reasoning) in Quranic Studies. His linguistic, cultural and historic contextual analysis of the sacred text deconstructs orthodox interpretations of Islam and undermines religious authority in the contemporary Arab world. Despite his significance, he has not received the scholarly attention that his work warrants. His scholarship has the potential to lead to genuine religious, social and political reform in the Muslim world.

For most of Islam's history, the ulema have been trained in study circles rather than in formal institutions, the traditional madrasa being a mere "place for teaching" rather than the equivalent of Middle Ages Europe's colleges. From the late nineteenth century on, reformist ideas and the need to cope with social and cultural change have led to the creation of modern, formal institutions dedicated to the training of Muslim scholars. According to a common assumption, this development, which Dale Eickelman has termed the "great transformation" of Muslim religious teaching, has "freed" the transmission of knowledge from the yoke of the master-disciple relationship. As a result, exoteric religious authority, which was formerly concentrated in the hands of a handful of ulema, could now be claimed by the increasingly numerous graduates of the new institutes and universities. In this paper, I argue that previous accounts have overestimated the extent of the changes brought about by the modernization of Muslim religious teaching. In contemporary Syria, at least, being recognized as the disciple of a famous master is still a prerequisite for occupying the highest levels of the local clergy. This is in part because private Sharia institutes run by informal networks are the real locus of religious authority in the country. Therefore, climbing the rungs of the religious hierarchy requires one to become part of these networks, which can only be done by selecting a master, often in both exoteric and esoteric-that is, Sufi-matters. Establishing authority through attending only state-owned institutions is exceptional; students at these schools need to have both a formal education and an association with one of the traditional study groups run by famous Muslim scholars. Even more revealing, however, is the fact that some of today's most prominent Syrian ulema do not possess a formal degree in Sharia, as they have been trained exclusively in study circles. Such figures are not the remnants of a vanishing tradition, but the-relatively young-spearheads of networks that view the antediluvian method of teaching as the most capable to face the challenges of modernity. Thanks to its flexibility, this method has allowed Syrian ulema to co-opt graduates of secular faculties (engineers, lawyers, physicians), that is, the very social category that has been identified by many social scientists as the foremost threat to the ulema's religious authority.