section_path: Sunni State institutions
section_name: Sunni State institutions
paragraph_text: Sunni State institutions
  
  One of the most important teaching institutions of Sunni Islam worldwide is the Azhar in Egypt. Article 32b, paragraph 7 of the Egyptian Azhar Law of 1961 stipulates that the Azhar "follows the path of the Sunnis" (manhaǧ ahl as-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa), Umma has agreed to the foundations of the religion and applications of fiqh, with its four disciplines. Only those who stick to the paths of their science and behavior can become a "Member of the Council of Great Scholars" (haiʾat kibār al-ʿulamāʾ), among whom the Grand Imam of al-Azhar is elected. Zitouna University in Tunisia and University of al-Qarawiyyin in Morocco are recognized. They are also mentioned, along with the Azhar, in the final document of the Sunni Conference in Grozny.
  
  Another body that claims to speak on behalf of Sunnism is the Council of Senior Religious Scholars founded in Saudi Arabia in 1971. In the past, the committee has expressed several times on fatwas about the Sunni-membership of certain Islamic groups within. In 1986 it published a fatwa excluding the Ahbāsh community from Sunnism. The Islamic World League in Mecca, also funded by Saudi Arabia, made a resolution from 1987 that it regards Sunnism as the pure teachings at the time of the Messenger and the rightful existence of the Caliphate. However, the Council of Senior Religious Scholars is largely under control of Wahhabi scholars.
  
  The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı), follows the religious policy of the Ottoman Empire, providing a Sunni interpretation of Islam. Plans by the Committee of National Unity in the 1960s to convert the Diyanet authority into a non-denominational institution that also integrated the Alevis, failed because of resistance from conservative Sunni clergy inside and outside the Diyanet authority. Since the 1990s, the Diyanet authority has presented itself as an institution that stands above the denominations (mezhepler üstü) The religious education organized by the authority at the Turkish schools is based exclusively on the Sunni understanding of Islam.