In 1966, Daniel Crecelius published a seminal article titled “Al-Azhar in the Revolution” in The Middle East Journal (vol. 20, no. 1). The article explored the role of al-Azhar in the 1952 revolution. He framed the role of al-Azhar in the context of a broad process of modernization that had weakened the religious institution, whose members were not able to respond intellectually to deep social and political transformations. Indeed, Nasser’s regime brought the ulama to heel and submitted al-Azhar politically. In my view, if the ulama did not “react” politically and ideologically, only acting by obstructing the Nasserist reforms, it was not necessarily because they were inherently “anti-modern” and conservative, but because they had no choice, as members of the institution of al-Azhar, other than to submit to the diktat of the regime. For many of them, the submission of al-Azhar to the state and its nationalization in 1961, which was officially described as a “reform” (iṣlāḥ) or a modernization/evolution (taḥdīth/taṭwīr), was a trauma. They viewed it as the destruction (tadmīr) of al-Azhar. The ulama I interviewed in the 1990s in Cairo and in other cities and towns of Egypt did not uniformly criticize Nasser’s reforms modernizing the curriculum. In fact, some praised this transformation, and others condemned it. But they all complained about the loss of independence of their institution that made their interpretation of the tradition of Islam submit to the demands of the authoritarian regime.  Since 1961, the ulama have often expressed more or less explicitly desires to become independent from the state: not that they refuse to have a relationship with the state—they are attached to the centrality of their institution and to the power and resources being a state institution confers to them. However, they would like to become free of any pressures from the executive branch of the state in order to conduct their roles of educators, preachers, legal scholars, and religious intellectuals. The complexity of the current political position of al-Azhar is precisely related to the tension between its desire to become independent on the one hand and its interest to keep its weight and centrality as a state institution. The revolution of January 25, 2011 has given al-Azhar an opportunity to reiterate its demands to become independent and to start thinking about the details of its future relationship with the state as well as about its political engagement defined more broadly.