It was still associated with Sufis, and a cluster of coffee houses grew up in Cairo around the religious university of the Azhar.
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His own fatwas have often been challenged by a rival authority, the ancient university of al-Azhar.
On March 2, 2012, the UNESCO Director-General signed at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris an agreement between UNESCO and three universities, respectively -- The Islamic University of Gaza, the Al Aqsa University and Al Azhar University -- for the establishment of a UNESCO Chair in Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Sciences.
Hundreds of students at Egypt's al-Azhar university broke into the offices of the country's top Muslim cleric of the al-Azhar mosque.
"Reliance of the Traveller" is not only authenticated by al-Azhar University (the premier seat of Sunni Islamic authority in the world) but also by Islamic legal authorities in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.
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Another key post, the minister of religious endowments (Awqaf), went to Osama al-Abd, the president of al-Azhar University.
This was immediately followed by attacks and calls for death of the 36 year-old graduate of Al Azhar Islamic University.
And a senior Muslim cleric, the Grand Imam of the prestigious al-Azhar university, Ahmed al-Tayeb, expressed sorrow and said he "greatly remembers his vision towards Jerusalem and its history".
After a childhood accident left him a quadriplegic, he devoted his early life to Islamic scholarship and studied at al-Azhar university in Cairo, the birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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The university belongs to the al-Azhar mosque, one of the main centres of Sunni Muslim learning, which also awards degrees in sciences and humanities.
The best-known case may be that of Kareem Amer, the pseudonym of an expelled student from al-Azhar University, who blogged about violent clashes between Christians and Muslims (often a taboo subject), mockingly referred to President Mubarak as a deity, and criticized Muslim leaders for their obsequious support of him.
They have also criticized the military for passing two recent laws without seeking parliamentary approval one governing presidential elections and the other reorganizing the leadership of Al Azhar, a pre-eminent Islamic university controlled by the Egyptian state.
He later lectured at the prestigious Al Azhar University (where President Obama would deliver his speech of outreach to the Muslim world in 2009).
Last June, Obama infuriated the Egyptian government when he insisted on inviting leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood to attend his speech at Al Azhar University in Cairo.
Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, whose offices were attacked, is the university's ultimate authority.
Al-Azhar University, a revered 1, 000-year-old seat of Sunni Muslim teaching in Cairo, has come out strongly against any change.
While IVF using eggs and sperm taken from the couple in question is allowed, Sunni Muslims are prohibited from using donor eggs or sperm, and surrogacy is also forbidden after the issuing of several "fatwas" from the 1980s onwards from the Al-Azhar University in Egypt.
In just one example, the venerable Al Azhar mosque and university in Cairo, which not too long ago was a paragon of Islamic moderation has been taken over by the Wahhabis and spews extremist propaganda on a regular basis.
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Egypt's foreign minister warned that Syria was reaching a point of no return, an opinion echoed by such diverse Egyptian institutions as al-Azhar University and the cineastes union.
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