If one wishes to understand the global influence of al-Azhar, few countries present a better case study than Malaysia. Of Egypt's approximately 11,000 Malaysian students, al-Azhar University hosts more than 4,000 in the departments of Religious Studies and Arabic Studies alone. The number of Malaysian students at al-Azhar surpasses even the 3,239 Indonesian students who study there, and the implications of this become more pronounced when one considers the population size of each country: Malaysia has only 17.3 million Muslims, comprising 61.3 per cent of the country's population, while Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any country, 177 million. The difference is tenfold.

The reasons for the popularity of al-Azhar among Malaysian students become apparent when one looks at the Malaysian system of culama training. Malaysian culama are trained through a religious school system that is separate from the national system, and the outstanding feature of these religious schools is that the religious studies and Arabic curriculums follow the system at al-Azhar. The textbooks are imported from al-Azhar and reprinted in Malaysia; the certification given upon passing the final examination (called STAM) for the al-Azhar curriculum is recognised upon entrance to undergraduate courses at al-Azhar; and after the STAM examination, Malaysian students who wish to continue their study at al-Azhar are provided with orientation information by the state religious office and sent in groups to Egypt. Most of the students receive scholarships from the various religious bodies within their respective states,7 and the majority live together in hostels provided by the state religious offices. These official forms of support make their lives at al-Azhar quite comfortable.

This chapter attempts to provide answers to two broad clusters of questions. The first cluster concerns why Malaysia developed an education system that draws so heavily upon al-Azhar, and why there is such extensive official support for sending students there. The second cluster concerns what it means for individual students to study at al-Azhar, and how the relationship with al-Azhar is viewed by Malaysian society. In response to the first cluster of questions, this chapter shows how the adoption of the al-Azhar curriculum in the nation's religious education system was the result of the efforts both of individual culama and local communities.