This article deals with Mustafa Sabri Efendi’s (d. 1954) views about the debate on the relationship of religion, science and politics in Egypt. One of the favorite topics of the Islamic thought in the nineteenth century was the Muslims’ loss of power before the western world—the backwardness of the Islamic world, in the popular parlance. The westernist and Islamist thinkers of the time intensively discussed this topic

This article examines the controversy over the correct pronouncition of the letter dad. It started in 1718 when Süleyman Efendi (d.1722), the preacher of the Grand Hagia Sophia Mosque, claimed that the sound dad was pronounced wrong in Istanbul and thus needed to be corrected. Having multiple aspects such as scientific, intelectual, religious, and social, this controversy led to a serious social chaos in Istanbul and ended only with the intervention of the Ottoman central government. This controversy is especially important as it sheds light on the influence of the communities of scholars in Haremeyn and Cairo over the Ottoman scientific tradition and religious life.