Ismailis in Egypt

Islam is the dominant religion in Egypt (Arabic: مِصر‎, romanized: Miṣr) with around an estimated 90.3% of the population. Almost the entirety of Egypt's Muslims are Sunnis, with a very small minority of Shia. Islam has been recognized as the state religion since 1980. Since there has been no religious census, the actual percentage of Muslims is not known: the percentage of Christians are estimated to be between 5 and 15%.

Prior to Napoleon's invasion in 1798, almost all of Egypt's educational, legal, public health, and social welfare issues were in the hands of religious functionaries. Ottoman rule reinforced the public and political roles of the ulama (religious scholars), as Mamluk rule had done before the Ottomans, because Islam was the state religion and because political divisions in the country were based on religious divisions. See drop-down essay on "Islamic Conquest and the Ottoman Empire" During the 19th and 20th centuries, successive governments made extensive efforts to limit the role of the ulama in public life and to bring religious institutions under closer state control.

After the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the government assumed responsibility for appointing officials to mosques and religious schools. The government mandated the reform of Al-Azhar University beginning in 1961. These reforms permitted department heads to be drawn from outside the ranks of the traditionally trained orthodox ulama.

History

Arab caliphate

In the 7th century, Egypt was invaded and
conquered by the Islamic caliphate by the Muslim Arabs. When they defeated the armies of Byzantine Empire in Egypt, the Arabs brought Islam to the country.
In 639 an army of some 4,000 men were sent to Egypt by the second Rashidun caliph, Umar, under the command of Amr ibn al-As. This army was joined by another 5,000 men in 640 and defeated a Byzantine army at the battle of Heliopolis. Amr next proceeded in the direction of Alexandria, which was surrendered to him by a treaty signed on 8 November 641. Alexandria was regained for the Byzantine Empire in 645 but was retaken by Amr in 646. In 654 an invasion fleet sent by Constans II was repulsed. From that time no serious effort was made by the Byzantines to regain possession of the country.
The Arabs founded the capital of Egypt called Fustat, which was later burned down during the Crusades. Cairo was later built in the year 986 to grow to become the largest and richest city in the Arab caliphate, and one of the biggest and richest in the world.

The Abbasid period was marked by new taxations, and the Copts revolted again in the fourth year of Abbasid rule. At the beginning of the 9th century the practice of ruling Egypt through a governor was resumed under Abdallah ibn Tahir, who decided to reside at Baghdad, sending a deputy to Egypt to govern for him. In 828 another Egyptian revolt broke out, and in 831 the Copts joined with native Muslims against the government. Eventually the power loss of the Abbasids in Baghdad has led for general upon general to take over rule of Egypt, yet being under Abbasid allegiance, the Tulunid dynasty (868–905) and Ikhshidid dynasty (935–969) were among the most successful to defy the Abbasid Caliph.

The Fatimids, Ayyubids and Mamluks

Muslim rulers remained in control of Egypt for the next six centuries, with Cairo as the seat of the Fatimid Caliphate. With the end of the Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, a Turco- Circassian military caste, took control about 1250. By the late 13th century, Egypt linked the Red Sea, India, Malaya, and East Indies. The mid-14th-century Black Death killed about 40% of the country's population.
In the late 10th century, the Shia Ismaili caliphate of the Fatimids made Egypt their centre and Cairo their capital. Egypt flourished and the Fatimids developed an extensive trade network in both the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Their trade and diplomatic ties extended all the way to China and its Song Dynasty, which eventually determined the economic course of Egypt during the High Middle Ages. Many traces of Fatimid architecture exist in Cairo today, the most defining examples include the Al Azhar University and the Al Hakim mosque. The Fatimid palace in Cairo had two parts. It stood in the Khan el-Khalili area on Bin El-Qasryn street.

In the early 20th century, Egyptian Islam was a complex and diverse religion. Although Muslims agreed on the faith's basic tenets, the country's various social groups and classes applied Islam differently in their daily lives. The literate theologians of Al-Azhar University generally rejected the version of Islam practiced by illiterate religious preachers and peasants in the countryside. Most upper- and upper-middle-class Muslims believed either that religious expression was a private matter for each individual or that Islam should play a more dominant role in public life. Islamic religious revival movements, whose appeal cut across class lines, were present in most cities and in many villages.country studies Egypt Contemporary Islam
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Islam and state

Muhammad Ali, who assumed power in Egypt in the early 1800s, nationalized all land, including hundreds of thousands of hectares of land belonging to Al Azhar Mosque, putting the funding of that institution under state control. This put an end to the political independence of the Ulama. Awqaf, traditionally independent endowments for mosques and Islamic schools, became a ministry of the government. In 1961, Gamal Abdel Nasser made Al Azhar part of the Ministry of Awqaf or Religious Endowments. He also made the appointment of the grand sheikh the prerogative of the Egyptian president, just as the appointment of any other state official. In time,the school became responsible for assigning imams to all major mosques, and all these imams were required to be graduates of the school.

Ulama

Orthodox ulama or "the religious establishment" found themselves in a difficult position during the wave of Islamic activism that swept through Egypt in the 1970s and 1980s. Most Ulama, including those of Al-Azhar University, are employees of the Egyptian state who "recognize the regime’s primacy, support its stability, and legitimize its policies". Radical Islamists viewed them as puppets of the status quo. To maintain their influence in the country, the ulama espoused more conservative stances. After 1974, for example, many al-Azhar ulama, who had acquiesced to family planning initiatives in the 1960s, openly criticized government efforts at population control. The ulama also supported moves to reform the country's legal code to conform to Islamic teaching. They remained, nonetheless, comparatively moderate; they were largely loyal to the government and condemned the violence of radical Islamist groups. Outside of the state-mosques are more than 40,000 independent mosques throughout Egypt.

Beliefs

Contemporary belief

Egyptian Muslims believe that Islam defines one's relationship to God, to other Muslims, and to non-Muslims. Some devout Muslims believe that there can be no dichotomy between the sacred and the secular. Many Muslims say that Egypt's governments have been secularist and even anti-religious since the early 1920s. Politically organized Muslims who seek to purge the country of its secular policies are referred to as "Islamists".

Egypt's largely uneducated urban and rural lower classes are intensely devoted to Islam, but they usually lack a thorough knowledge of the religion. Even village religious leaders usually have only a rudimentary knowledge of Islam. The typical village imam or prayer leader has at most a few years of schooling; his scholarly work was limited to reading prayers and sermons prepared by others and to learning passages from the Qur'an. Popular religion include a variety of unorthodox practices, such as veneration of saints, recourse to charms and amulets, and belief in the influence of evil spirits.

Popular Islam is based mostly on oral tradition. Imams with virtually no formal education commonly memorize the entire Qur'an and recite appropriate verses on religious occasions. They also tell religious stories at village festivals and commemorations marking an individual's rites of passage. Predestination plays an important role in popular Islam. This concept includes the belief that everything that happens in life is the will of God and the belief that trying to avoid misfortune is useless and invites worse affliction. Revelations from God in the Qur'an form the basis of Monotheism merged with a belief in angels, jinn and afarit (spirits).

Popular Islam ranges from informal prayer sessions or Qur'an study to organized cults or orders. Because of the pervasive sexual segregation of Egypt's Islamic society, men and women often practice their religion in different ways. A specifically female religious custom is the Zār, a ceremony for helping women placate spirits who are believed to have possessed them. Women specially trained by their mothers or other women in zar lore organize the ceremonies. A zar organizer holds weekly meetings and employs music and dance to induce ecstatic trances in possessed women. Wealthy women sometimes pay to have private zars conducted in their homes; these zars are more elaborate than public ones, last for several days, and sometimes involve efforts to exorcise spirits. However, while once common, the zar is rarely practiced today, under fire for its perception as a religious heresy.

There are more than 45 million citizens 35 years old or younger. The Influence of digital/youth culture is found in preachers such as the very popular Amr Khaled who "maintains a disciplined focus on the lives, issues and problems of the upper middle classes"; espouses "living a comfortable life"; talks to youth about "getting closer to God" without changing one's lifestyle; promotes hijab while "joking about dating and flirting".Osman, Tarek, ''Egypt on the brink'', 2010, p.105 The young "sheikhs" deliver their sermons over the Internet, on private satellite channels and in sports clubs, away from the control of Al-Azhar and the state.

Sufism

A primarily male spiritual manifestation of Islam is Sufism, an Islamic mystical tradition. It has been called the "default setting" of Muslim religious life in Egypt although many Sufis are thought to have voted for the Muslim Brotherhood Freedom and Justice Party.

Sufism exists in a number of forms, most of which represent an original '' tarika'' ("path") developed by an inspired founder, or sheikh. These sheikhs gradually gathered about themselves murids, or disciples, whom they initiated into the tarika. Gradually the murids formed orders, also known as turuq, which were loyal to the Sheikh or his successors (also called sheikhs). In Egypt there are 74 Sufi orders (tarikas), each headed by its own sheikh. Overseeing them is the Supreme Council for Sufi Orders and the president of Egypt is directly in charge of Sufi affairs.Salafi intolerance threatens Sufis
Baher Ibrahim, guardian.co.uk, 10 May 2010

The devotions of many Sufi orders center on various forms of the dhikr, a ceremony at which music, body movements, and chants induce a state of ecstatic trance in the disciples. Since the early 1970s, there has been a revival of interest in Sufism. Egypt's contemporary Sufis tend to be young, college-educated men in professional careers.

Estimates of the number of Sufis in Egypt include at least a third of the adult male Muslim population in Egypt, being members of a Sufi order; fifteen million of the country's roughly 80 million citizens "claim" Sufism "as a practice", still others say that while 15 million are registered as Sufis, "the true figure is likely to be higher". Participation at the festivals ( moulids) the Sufi orders organize, is perhaps twice that (and includes women and children).Bradley, John R., ''Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution'' by John R. Bradley, Palgrave MaacMillan, 2008, p.85 The moulids are a major manifestation of Sufi Islam in Egypt, and are held in honor of holy men and women (In Egypt the term Moulid is not reserved for Muslim festivals and may be in honor of Christian, and until recently Jewish holy men). Sufi Muslim moulids not only venerate the prophet Muhammad and his descendants (such as Hussein, the second son of the fourth Caliph Ali whose moulid in Cairo can draws crowds of more than a million people), but founders of Sufi orders, down to dozens of lesser-known sheikhs celebrated mostly in remote rural communities. The largest moulid in Egypt takes place in Tanta, which draws an even larger number of pilgrims than hajj in Mecca. As many as three million Egyptians and other Arabs gather there every October to celebrate the life of Sayid Ahmad al-Badawi, a thirteenth-century Sufi leader. According to the Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf (Islamic charity), there are officially more than forty such annual commemorations, and the Sufi Council in Egypt lists eighty other festivals for lesser-known founders of Sufi orders.

According to a report issued by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,

Egypt’s Islamic religious establishment is strongly Sufi in character. Adherence to a Sufi order has long been standard for both professors and students in the al-Azhar mosque and university system. Although al-Azhar is not monolithic, its identity has been strongly associated with Sufism. The current Shaykh al-Azhar (rector of the school), Ahmed el-Tayeb, is a hereditary Sufi shaykh from Upper Egypt who has recently expressed his support for the formation of a world Sufi league; the current Grand Mufti of Egypt and senior al-Azhar scholar Ali Gomaa is also a highly respected Sufi master.

Salafi

An estimated 5–6 million Egyptians are Salafis. Scholar Tarek Osman describes Salafis before the 2011 revolution as the "most important or pervasive Islamic force in the country" with an influence "many times more than that of organized political Islam." With "no history of violence, no organizational structure, no manifestos and no obvious political ambitions", they were tolerated by the Mubarak regime and ignored by the news media.''Egypt on the Brink'' by Tarek Osman, Yale University Press, 2010, p.221 The Salafi movement benefited from government support the 1990s when the government hoped to "combat and undermine" the violence of the Jihadi Salafi al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya with the preaching of the apolitical Salafis. It has also benefited from some of the $70 billion spent by Saudi Arabia to promote "Wahhabi" ideology worldwide through mosques, schools and books, that is similar or "virtually identical to Salafi beliefs and with which Sufis have had difficulty competing."

During the Mubarak era most Salafis considered participation in politics to be "religiously forbidden", however since then Salafis have shown themselves to be not only tolerant of political participation but very adept. In the 2011–12 Egypt parliamentary elections, the Islamist Bloc led by salafi Al-Nour Party received 27.8% of votes cast or 127 of the 498 parliamentary seats contested,Salafis and Sufis in Egypt
Jonathan Brown, Carnegie Paper, December 2011 second-place after the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. Al‑Nour party itself won 111 of the 127 seats.

Sufi Islam is a sore point with Salafi Muslims. Salafi and other Islamists believe Sufi tombs are unIslamic and have sometimes sabotaged or vandalized tombs and moulids.

Quranism

Non-sectarian Muslims who reject the authority of hadith, known as Quranists, Quraniyoon, or Ahl al-Quran, are also present in Egypt. During the early 20th century, the ideas of Egyptian Quranists like Muhammad Tawfiq Sidqi (1881–1920) are thought to have grown out of Salafism – specifically a rejection of taqlid. Notable Egyptian Quranists include Sidqi, Rashad Khalifa, Ahmed Subhy Mansour, and Tawfik Hamid.

Shia

While almost all of Egypt's Muslims are Sunni, there are a small number of Shia. (Estimates of their number range from 800,000 to "at most" three million.) The Syrian civil war has brought on an increase in anti-Shia rhetoric by Sunnis, harassment and arrest, and in at least one case bloodshed. In June 2013 a mob of several hundred, including Muslim brotherhood members, attacked a house in the village of Abu Musallim near Cairo, dragging four Shia worshipers through the street before lynching them. Eight other Shia were injured.

Ahmadiyya

The Ahmadiyya movement in Egypt, which numbers up to 50,000 adherents in the country, was established in 1922 but has seen an increase in hostility and government repression as of the 21st century. The Al-Azhar University has denounced the Ahmadis and Ahmadis have been hounded by police along with other Muslim groups deemed to be deviant under Egypt's defamation laws. On 15 March 2010, nine Ahmadis were detained due to their adherence to the movement.

Nondenominational Muslims

There are a significant amount of Nondenominational Muslims in Egypt. Roughly twelve percent of Egyptians, when asked about their religious affiliation, answered that they were "just a Muslim" or "just Muslim". Their lack of identifying with a particular sect was noteworthy. Besides Kosovo, Egypt has had the largest positive net change of Muslims identifying as non-denominational Muslims. Roughly five percent of Egyptian Muslims who were raised in a different affiliation began identifying as non-denominational Muslims as adults.

State involvement

The Ministry of Awqaf or Religious Endowments, oversees mosques in Egypt. There are more than 110,000 mosques registered with the state in Egypt. The ministry assigns ulama to registered mosques, which critics complain inevitably involves favoritism and political connections.

In the wake of the 2013 coup the state imposed tighter controls on mosques. The Awqaf Ministry command the mosques be locked between prayer times and took control of donation boxes. In September 2013 it declared that only imams who had graduated from Al Azhar University (estimated at 58,000) would be allowed to hold Friday sermons. This effectively banned an estimated 53,000 imams from preaching in mosques, although it is not clear if this edict can be enforced. In 2015, the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments initiated a campaign to remove any books authored by Salafi scholars from all mosques in Egypt.

Critics have complained that the actions of Awqaf reflect the government that controls them. Mahmoud Zakzouk, Minister of Awqaf from 1995 to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, was appointed by Mubarak and dismissed at his overthrow. Under the Mohamed Morsi

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