Case Study: Amr Khaled (Cairo, Egypt)

From cab drivers to street food vendors, everyone in Cairo seems to know of Amr Khaled. “Of course! We grew up with him!” they’ll say – sometimes smiling ruefully. With an audience of over 50 million viewers, Khaled has been called the world's most famous Muslim television preacher. Foregoing a traditional clerical education, he grew to fame in the 1990s, teaching in everyday clothes and colloquial language to a devoted audience who bought his tapes from street corner market stalls. 

Khaled’s work is part self-help psychology, part spiritual experience, and part call for moral renewal – all grounded in traditional religious concepts that confer legitimacy. His early TV shows were inspired by American televangelists, and he ushered in an age of savvy Islamic preachers and media-makers – a tradition that lives on with a new generation of YouTube preachers and TikTok creators like the Zimbabwean Mufti Menk or the American Omar Suleiman

“The big problem for the Arab world is that we don’t have an intellectual and spiritual project for the masses. Every major movement, like Wahhabism, is a reaction against modernity,” he says. Instead, Khaled wants his viewers to flourish within the modern world.

A skilled creative and media distributor, his latest televised offering is aimed at a young, global Muslim audience. Each episode features a group of youth from across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe gathered in a circle on a beach or mountain, listening to Khaled teach. They, like Khaled’s viewers, are trying to navigate the challenges of life, and he reframes traditional Islamic practices and concepts to help them on their journeys. For instance, in an episode on how to survive life traumas and crises, he shows how the practice of Dhikr, the recitation of short remembrances and glorifications of Allah, is a step along the bridge to transform pain and difficulty to the tranquility of living with Ihsan, or a state of inner and outer excellence that comes from knowing Allah.

Now in his late 50s, Khaled is a serial innovator, consistently seeking out new technologies and sources of knowledge. For the latest series, he sought out the VIA Institute on Character in Ohio to enrich his teachings – drawing on positive psychology research to complement his instruction of Islamic wisdom. He has also traveled to India and Japan to learn how Hindu and Buddhist meditation teachers lead mantras, or the repetition of sacred words or phrases, which is a practice he has incorporated into his own guidance on television and social media.

But the quest for wide appeal can lead to pitfalls, too. He was widely panned for appearing in a chicken brand commercial and critiqued when he ran for office after the Egyptian revolution of 2011 – ”a mistake,” he says. “It was a crazy time.” 

His vision remains, however: to help Muslims live out their faith in the 21st century using whatever tools he has at his disposal. So to turn preaching into practice, Khaled is building a network of hundreds of young “Ambassadors of Ihsan” to serve their local communities. They gather weekly on Zoom and annually for an in-person retreat, giving his work extensive reach and meaningful local depth, too. “Spirituality isn’t meant for escaping life,” he says. “It is meant to nourish it.”

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