Can this man defeat al-Qa’eda?

Amr Khaled’s TV preaching has made him Islam’s answer to Billy Graham – and he’s mounting a direct attack on the terror camps of Yemen

Aden, Yemen
There’s a new weapon in the war on terror, ladies and gentlemen. Never mind drones and spies, surgical strikes and covert ops, they’re old hat. There’s a time and a place for them, of course, and we must thank our spooks and soldiers for helping to keep us safe, for foiling plots and knocking off the odd wayward beardie in distant deserts and freezing mountain passes. But that’s not really draining the swamp.

For those of us who would prefer not to live under sharia law; for those of us who like drinking and dancing and freely consorting with the other sex; freedom of expression, democracy and Test Match Special and all the other accoutrements, however decadent, of the West, there is good news to report. It turns out we have a supremely sleek new armament in the arsenal, it’s home-grown within the Islamic world, is long-term and sustainable, doesn’t cost squillions, has nothing to do with foreign infidels or armies and it — or rather he — has just stepped on to the battlefield in Yemen. Al-Qa’eda, prepare to meet your nemesis. He is the telemufti.

Amr Khaled, to give him his proper name, is a hugely popular preacher man from Egypt. He’s Islam’s answer to Billy Graham and rapidly becoming famous throughout the world. His website, amrkhaled.net, is an institution from Morocco to Oman. In a 2008 poll to determine the world’s top public intellectual, in which more than 500,000 voted, Khaled came in sixth. The New York Times has called him ‘the world’s most famous and influential Muslim television preacher’. We should also call him a godsend: a Muslim celebrity who is a proponent of inter-faith dialogue and who urges hundreds of thousands of young Muslims, who might otherwise be swayed by Osama, to rub along peacefully with the West.