When Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, then defense minister, gave a televised speech on July 3, 2013, announcing that President Mohammed Morsi had just been overthrown, he was flanked by Egypt’s top religious leaders, Pope Tawadros, the head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, and Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar. Tayeb, who had earlier called on Morsi  — the country’s first democratically elected president — to step down to end the bloodshed, threw his weight behind the military man who helped rid Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood, since designated by the country as a “terrorist group.”

Now, nearly four years later, cracks have appeared in the alliance between Sisi (himself a devout Muslim), who became president in 2014, and Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s oldest seat of learning. Al-Azhar has resisted repeated appeals by Sisi to “renew Islamic discourse” and “modernize the faith.” Any doubts skeptics might have had about Tayeb and Sisi not seeing eye to eye in regard to "modernizing Islam” vanished when the president publicly took a jab at the grand imam last month, telling him, “You wear me out.” While the remark was made jokingly, it signaled underlying tensions in their relationship, suggesting Sisi’s patience with Al-Azhar’s intransigence on reforms may be wearing thin.

Sisi first made his impassioned plea for what he called a “religious revolution” two years ago during a New Year’s Day speech at Al-Azhar, lamenting that ”radicalized thinking is antagonizing the entire world and tearing the umma [Islamic nation] apart.” His bold comments earned him praise from Western supporters who noted that Sisi had done something that no Western leader had had the courage to do. Skeptics, however, cautioned that Sisi was an unlikely reformer as “he champions the application of Islamic law [Sharia].” Furthermore, Sisi had given no specifics regarding the revolution he seeks, argued Daniel Pipes in an article published by the Middle East Forum think tank he heads.

At home, Al-Azhar scholars took Sisi’s exhortations for religious reforms with a grain of salt. “Any change must come from scholars of Islam, not from the government,” an Al-Azhar official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press, told Al-Monitor. Hinting that Al-Azhar preachers resent state interference in their religious affairs, he criticized the decision by the Ministry of Religious Endowments to unify sermons at Friday congregational prayers in mosques across the country.