The ulema have historically been led by the Al ash-Sheikh, the country's leading religious family.

< BLOCKQUOTE > In a political and regional context where Islamist and ulema claim to have an opinion about everything, it is striking how little they have to say about this most central of human activities, beyond repetitious pieties about how their model is neither capitalist nor socialist.

A younger generation of ulema, who are less firmly established and more radical in tone, have openly criticized the senior ulema and the government in the past.

In principle the only group authorised to declare a Muslim a kafir is the ulema, and this only once all the prescribed legal precautions have been taken.

Over the past twenty years learned and holy men ‘ ulema and Sufis, have emerged as a subject for serious study.

The ‘ ulema of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent have come to share in this development, although perhaps a little tardily …

The new Curriculum seems to have grown on the one hand out of increased interest in the development of practical skills which would enable the ulema to discharge their duties competently in state service as judges and administrators, and, on the other hand, out of interest in the traditions of philosophical and theological learning which Mir Fazal Allah Shirazi ( died 1589 ) helped to stimulate in Mughal India and which flourished most vigorously in Awadh and eastern UP.

As we have seen, the Punjabi Chistis in the same period came to be known for their teaching of the Law, the subject par excellence of the ‘ ulema.

They did not as a group have the interest in popular reform characteristic of some other ‘ ulema.

Many of these early polymaths were also religious priests and theologians: for example, Alhazen and al-Biruni were mutakallimiin ; the physician Avicenna was a hafiz ; the physician Ibn al-Nafis was a hafiz, muhaddith and ulema ; the botanist Otto Brunfels was a theologian and historian of Protestantism ; the astronomer and physician Nicolaus Copernicus was a priest.

Ulama (, singular, " scholar "), also spelt ulema, refers to the educated class of Muslim legal scholars engaged in the several fields of Islamic studies.

He also introduced pension and social insurance programs for workers despite objections from some of the ulema.

As a result of the tobacco movement, the ulema firmly established not only their religious legitimacy but also their political legitimacy.

Amir Kabir also sought to reduce clerical power by restricting the ability of the ulema to grant refuge ( bast ), in their residences and the mosques under their control, to criminals and others pursued by the state.

This province has also contributed many notable Salafi ulema and sheikhs.

In 1919, he also helped to found, and was the first president of the organization of Indian ‘ ulema, the Jamiatul -’ Ulema-i Hind ; while his son, Mawlana Jamal Mian, with his Farangi Mahall contemporaries, was very active in the All-India Muslim League ’ s struggle for Pakistan, being honorary joint secretary of the League from 1942.

The abandonment of the Arabic script was not merely a symbolic expression of secularization by breaking the link to Ottoman Islamic texts to which only a minor group of ulema had access ; but also Latin script would make reading and writing easier to learn and consequently improve the literacy rate.

His extremely influential book, Towards Understanding Islam ( Risalat Diniyat in Arabic ), placed Islam in a modern context and influenced not only conservative ulema but liberal modernisers such as al-Faruqi, whose " Islamisation of Knowledge " carried forward some of Maududi's key principles.

The emphasis was to be reversed, as discussed below, by other groups of ‘ ulema, but even they were influenced by the scholarly standard set by his school.

Outside of the House of Al Saud, participation in the political process is limited to a relatively small segment of the population and takes the form of the royal family consulting with the ulema, tribal sheikhs and members of important commercial families on major decisions.

The ulema and the major Islamic law schools became truly defined in the period of al-Ma ' mun and Sunnism, as a religion of legalism, became defined in parallel.

Fearing that King Saud's financial policies were bringing the state to the brink of collapse, and that his handling of foreign affairs was inept, senior members of the royal family and the ulema ( religious leadership ) pressured Saud into appointing Faisal to the position of prime minister in 1958, giving Faisal wide executive powers.

Since his accession to the throne in 2005, King Abdullah has taken steps to rein back the powers of the ulema, for instance transferring their control over girls ' education to the Ministry of Education.

A great number of the Shia ulema were expelled into Persia / Iran where they set the foundations for the rise of the city of Qom as the center of the Shia learning and authority in lieu of Najaf.

The pious scholar was forceful in his criticism of the Egyptian ulema for what he perceived as their timid compliance with the Ottoman authorities and their spiritual conservatism.

However, no progress was made until, once again, Prime Minister Sharif intervened two months later, in March, by inviting Mullah Rabbani, now head of the Taliban shura in Kabul, to Islamabad and obtained from him an agreement in principle for the convening of a Steering committee in preparation for the ulema commission.

On 9 April, the United Nations Special Envoy went to Kabul and discussed with Mullah Rabbani and other Taliban leaders how to proceed with the idea of a Steering Committee for preparations for an ulema meeting.

Reasons for this are cited to be financial stringency and personal inclination on the part of the emperor, and a petition by the ulema.

He induced the ulema to sign a letter, praying the sultan to revoke the command for reinstating the beys, persuaded the chiefs of the Albanian troops to swear personal allegiance to him, and sent 2000 purses contributed by them to Istanbul.

Several ulema came to stay in the Ribat of this peaceful city for contemplation.

He was generally ignored by the ulema of Mecca, and after staying in Mecca for nearly seven or nine months he returned to India where he proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi at Ahmedabad and later at Badhli ( near Patan, Gujarat ).

He writes that Naik is " strongly disliked " by many members of the Indian ulema for ignoring their authority and stating that anybody can interpret the Quran.

Nobody can forget the father of Mulla Ahmad Abdul Haq, Mulla Saeed, for his contribution as the compiler of Fatwa-e-Alamgiri since this compilation alone is described by many ulema as the cornerstone of Islam.

When, for example, the madrasay-yi ‘ Aliyah in Calcutta was established under the British auspices in 1780, its first principal was a graduate who instituted the nizami curriculum there. 31 To the extent that an important dimension of modern transformation of the ‘ ulema rested in closer ties among themselves, this contribution of Farangi Mahall was an important one.

Like the Farangi Mahallis, Shah Waliyu ’ llah hoped for a restoration of stable Muslim rule in which the ‘ ulema would play an important role34.

Unlike them, he explicitly analyzed the basis of the arrangement between ruler and ‘ ulema and argued the necessity of their complementary functions and the need for proper balance between the two.

The Farangi Mahalli ‘ ulema, however, even though demand for their skills declined and the availability of princely patronage was increasingly scarce, did not consciously seek a more independent position for themselves by addressing a more widely based audience.

Yet in their independent efforts to maintain a high intellectual standard for the ‘ ulema, their success in drawing students from a wide area, and their integration of the bookish and mystic traditions, they exemplified increasingly important characteristics of he ‘ ulema in the post-Mughal period.

Saudi Arabia is almost unique in giving the ulema a direct role in government, the only other example being Iran.

By the 1970s, as a result of oil wealth and the modernization of the country initiated by King Faisal, important changes to Saudi society were under way and the power of the ulema was in decline.

The ulema proved to be a highly valuable ally of the bazaari as key religious leaders sought to protect national interests from foreign domination.

The ulema considered foreign rule as a greater danger to Islam than Hindu competition.