This project traced parallel genealogies of Islamic religious leadership in two Middle Eastern countries, Jordan and Lebanon, since their creation out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the twentieth century. Islamic religious leaders play a prominent public role in all modern Middle Eastern countries, not only as preachers but also as officials in powerful state-sponsored religious institutions. Known by traditional titles such as 'ulama' (scholars), they operate increasingly as a professional 'clergy' employed in centralised bureaucracies. Many countries in the region have a single national institution that governs a religious sector comprising mosques; shari'a courts and advisory bodies; religious education in public schools, universities and further education centres; Islamic touristic sites; and an array of other charitable endowments. The heads of these institutions also play a significant role as formal representatives of Islam to the state and national public, usually occupying a clearly-defined place in state protocol as government ministers or advisers.
The very existence and power of these official religious institutions and their leaders is often regarded as an anachronism in modern states. Often they are labelled as a vestige of a presumed pre-modern social order, and therefore a sign - for better or worse - that secularisation has not run its course. When we look at their history over the long term, however, we see something more surprising: Islamic religious leaderships have not simply been preserved but in fact largely created and consolidated into the monolithic institutions we see today. Religious institutions have been empowered alongside and as part of the grand modernising projects of the state. This research compared cases of majority Sunni leadership in Jordan, a monarchy styled in Islamic terms, and minority Druze leadership in Lebanon, a republic styled in secular pluralistic terms. In both cases, despite the seemingly very different contexts of their state-building projects and local religious traditions, similar transformations were traced in the roles of religious leaders through the modern period. The objectives of the research were firstly to better understand the changing nature of Muslim ulama through the lens of official institutions, and secondly to use these changing institutional frameworks to better understand how 'religion' has been constructed as a social category distinct from the implicitly non-religious or secular in Muslim societies in the Middle East.
