p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; color: #101010; -webkit-text-stroke: #101010} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} span.s2 {font: 14.0px 'Lucida Grande'; font-kerning: none} span.s3 {font-kerning: none; color: #347ab7; -webkit-text-stroke: 0px #347ab7} CAIRO — Cairo, known as the city of a thousand minarets, actually has over 3,000 mosques, and the country as a whole is home to over 100,000 Muslim houses of worship. Over 80,000 of these are controlled by the country’s Ministry of Religious Endowments, yet a recently published plan could pit the government’s strategy against the wishes of Al-Azhar, Egypt’s top religious authority.

Most of Egypt’s mosques were buildings donated by their owners to the state on condition that they would not be sold or leased but turned into mosques. This conditional donation is known as a “waqf,” or endowment.

Al-Azhar rejected on March 28 a law allowing the state to change the endowment condition. In other words, Al-Azhar rejected giving the state the option to change the purpose and conditions of use of such donated premises, whether by selling or leasing them.

On April 13, the Egyptian Sawt al-Umma newspaper published an article about the government’s plan to reinvest in some of the endowment properties in a different manner to change and ensure optimal purpose of use, despite Al-Azhar's rejection of the new law. Does this suggest that the relationship between the government and Al-Azhar is heading down a conflictual path?