This resource was published on 09/20/2013 and is not updated to reflect changing circumstances.

Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa was sworn in as Egypt’s minister of religious endowments on July 16, 2013, nearly two weeks after the ouster of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi at the hands of the military. The author of several books on Arabic literature and poetry, Gomaa was the dean of the Faculty of Islamic and Arabic Studies at al-Azhar University, the country’s premier religious institution.  He was also a member of the senior clerical establishment at al-Azhar, head of al-Azhar’s religious media, and a forty-year member of the Egyptian Journalists’ Syndicate.

Since assuming office, Gomaa has taken a series of controversial steps to reassert state control over Egypt’s sprawling network of mosques and to limit the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations.

Between July and September 2013, Gomaa has undertaken a number of measures, including:

• banning Friday prayers in mosques smaller than 80 square meters in an effort to limit the impact of small, unregulated mosques that have historically been a repository for antigovernment agitation;
• passing a regulation that only clerics with licenses from schools approved by al-Azhar will be allowed to preach, which will result in tens of thousands of clerics who lack these qualifications losing their jobs;
• requiring senior clerics to move every three years, reducing their ability to acquire large followings;
• implementing new regulations to control donations at mosques; and
• establishing a hotline for worshippers to report preachers who are not adhering to ministry policies.

Gomaa has long been a proponent of the religious moderation favored by al-Azhar. Since becoming minister, he has frequently warned preachers to avoid political messages in their sermons.