of pilgrims than hajj in Mecca. As many as three million Egyptians and other Arabs gather there every October to celebrate the life of Sayid Ahmad al-Badawi, a thirteenth-century Sufi leader. According to the Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf (Islamic charity), there are officially more than forty such annual commemorations, and the Sufi Council in Egypt lists eighty other festivals for lesser-known founders of Sufi orders. According to a report issued by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Egypt’s Islamic religious establishment is strongly Sufi in character. Adherence to a Sufi order has long been standard for both professors and students in the al-Azhar mosque and university system. Although al-Azhar is not monolithic, its identity has been strongly associated with Sufism. The current Shaykh al-Azhar (rector of the school), Ahmed el-Tayeb, is a hereditary Sufi shaykh from Upper Egypt who has recently expressed his support for the formation of a world Sufi league; the current Grand Mufti of Egypt and senior al-Azhar scholar Ali Gomaa is also a highly respected Sufi master. Salafi An estimated 5–6 million Egyptians are Salafis. Scholar Tarek Osman describes Salafis before the 2011 revolution as the "most important or pervasive Islamic force in the country" with an influence "many times more than that of organized political Islam." With "no history of violence, no organizational structure, no manifestos and no obvious political ambitions", they were tolerated by the Mubarak regime and ignored by the news media. The Salafi movement benefited from government support the 1990s when the government hoped to "combat and undermine" the violence of the Jihadi Salafi al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya with the preaching of the apolitical Salafis. It has also benefited from some of the $70 billion spent by Saudi Arabia to promote "Wahhabi" ideology worldwide through mosques, schools and books, that is similar or "virtually identical to Salafi beliefs and with which Sufis have had difficulty competing." During the Mubarak era most Salafis considered participation in politics to be "religiously forbidden", however since then Salafis have shown themselves to be not only tolerant of political participation but very adept. In the 2011–12 Egypt parliamentary elections, the Islamist Bloc led by salafi Al-Nour Party received 27.8% of votes cast or 127 of the 498 parliamentary seats contested, second-place after the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. Al‑Nour party itself won 111 of the 127 seats. Sufi Islam is a sore point with Salafi Muslims. Salafi and