Like other religious institutions, the mosque had previously been funded by awqaf, or "private religious endowments," which were part of the strong Islamic tradition of charitable giving.
That is exactly what happened at the end of last month when the ministry of awqaf (religious endowments) decided to ban Egypt's Sufi orders from holding gatherings for the performance of dhikr – rituals devoted to the remembrance of God.
We are in the small, cramped office of the fatwa hotline on the eighth floor of the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments in Abu Dhabi, better known by its Arabic acronym, the Awqaf.
Other tweets on his account described the initiative as being a form of awqaf, an Arabic term for a kind of religious Islamic foundation.
Turner illustrates Ghazali's jaundiced view of many jurists in a quote that they disdained other disciplines like medicine because they did not involve "the management of religious endowments (awqaf), execution of wills, possession of the money of orphans, and appointment to judicial and government positions through which one exalts himself above his fellow men and fastens his yoke on his enemies".
Sometimes she chooses the topic; other times Awqaf scholars decide.
But the Awqaf ministry, which is in charge of religious matters, denied the report on Thursday.
The Awqaf has 14 telephone lines and between them the muftis and muftiyas answer 1,000 queries every day, rising to 3,000 during Ramadan, from both men and women.
Awqaf hums with quiet bureaucracy and the whir of air conditioning as religious scholars in long white robes and keffiyehs wander in and out of glass-walled offices carrying papers and heavy books.
The Awqaf is effectively the final authority on all matters related to Islam; every religious text is scrutinised for radicalism, every imam vetted.
At the end of the evening, her notes, giving a broad overview of it (omitting intimate details that might identify women), will be submitted to the Awqaf authorities, who are looking out not for issues of private moral choices but possible support for radical Islam.
