Al-Azhar scholars have denounced the statements of Bishop Bola, the representative of the Orthodox Church in the Constituent Assembly. Bishop Bola had rejected the reference by Al-Azhar regarding sharī’ah affairs. Scholars similarly rejected his call to include the term “civil (secular) state” in the constitutional amendments. Dr. Nasr Farīd Wāsil, the former mufti, stated that Al-Azhar is the institution responsible for Islamic knowledge (Tāriq Bahgat and Walīd Mansūr, al-Fath, Nov. 29, p. 4). Read original text in Arabic.