Amr Khaled
Islamic Televangelist Risks Popularity
Islamic televangelist Amr Khaled is young, smiling, teaches love and mercy, and is so popular he’s credited with inspiring thousands of women to take the veil.
Now he’s putting his popularity on the line by trying a new role, as a bridge between Islam and the West at a time when many are talking about a clash of civilizations.In the process, Khaled is telling the faithful something they’re not used to hearing from clerics — that Muslims aren’t blameless in the tensions, that the West is not always bad and that dialogue is better than confrontation.
“A young Muslim goes to Europe with a forged visa, takes unemployment insurance there, then goes on TV and says, ‘We’re going to expel you from Britain, take your land, money and women,’” Khaled said recently on his weekly program on the Saudi satellite TV channel Iqraa, trying to explain the mistrust of Muslims in Europe. “It’s a rare example, but it exists.”
The 38-year-old Egyptian raised a storm of controversy when he attended a March 9 conference of European and Muslim leaders in Denmark, which has been the focus of anger across the Islamic world over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad first published in a Danish paper.
Some in the Arab world saw his attendance as a surrender and branded him a traitor and an opportunist.
He will be leading an interfaith conference (on the cartoon dispute) in Copenhagen.
He may be risking more than his popularity. But more power to him. There’s always plenty of talk about “reaching out to moderate Muslims.” Here’s a real one, with his own website.
The Independent (UK) calls him “Islam’s Billy Graham. More popular than Oprah Winfrey, the world’s first Islamic television evangelist commands an army of millions of followers.”
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