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Amr Khaled: Islam's Billy Graham

(Independent-UK) David Hardaker - Amr Khaled is the Arab world's first Islamic tele-evangelist, who has fashioned himself into the anti-Bin Laden, using satellite TV to turn around a generation of lost Muslim youth. He offers a tough message about the destructive force of self-pity. "We Muslims are living as parasites on the world. Our problem is that we have got used to taking without ever giving," he says. "Don't tell us it is a Western conspiracy against us, it is not." Khaled's remedy is a tough personal regime of self-renewal, based on what he says are real Islamic values, drawn from the Koran. But while the preacher might be hip, he is deeply conservative. He is commonly held to be the single major force behind young women taking the veil. "We don't want to lead lives like the West," he says. "He is very close in style to the Muslim Brotherhood," says Hala Mustafa, one of Cairo's prominent liberals.
2006-01-06 00:00:00
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