Amr Khaled and wars of ideas

Last week, Ahmed al-Muslamani wrote a column in Egypt's al-Masry al-Youm about allegations that British intelligence was paying the TV evangelist Amr Khaled as part of its strategy of promoting moderate Islam and fighting Islamic radicalism.  Muslamani wrote that while he had nothing for or against Khaled, the televangelist should respond to the allegations since people had the right to know.  Today, Muslamani writes that Khaled did in fact contact him to respond.  Khaled pointed out that the allegations aren't new, but rather date back to a 2004 article, and absolutely denied that he had taken money from British intelligence.  Muslamani accepted the explanation and apologized, and reproduced Khaled's explanation of his own purpose and goals.   

That ends the most recent bout of controversy... but it will be back.  In Cairo last week I picked up a recent book by Mohamed Ibrahim Mabrouk (in Arabic) called Liberal Islam, which the cover makes clear should be understood as an Islam "produced by America.. in service of its interests in the region". Khaled rates a lengthy critical section in this book, along with the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian 'centrists' Tariq al-Bishri, Ahmed Kamal Abu al-Magd, Mohamed Salim al-Awa, and Fahmy Howeydi.  Denunciations of such figures is commonplace in the jihadi forums, of course, and in the more radical literature - Mabrouk's book is just one of the more handsomely produced and prominently displayed examples of the genre that I've seen.  Such polemics might actually be seen as a good sign:   the very fact that radical voices feel the need to go after the Islamist moderates suggests their importance.

A lot of the more interesting ideas for such 'wars of ideas' do indeed revolve around harnessing the prestige and influence of such relatively moderate Islamist figures.   The possible association with the US puts them at some risk - hence Khaled's immediate response to Muslamani's column.  That certainly doesn't mean that Americans should avoid dialogue with them.  Quite the contrary - I've always been an advocate of dialogue with moderate Islamists, and I'm looking forward to participating in the Brookings U.S.-Islamic World Forum next month to do some more of it. I was a bit dismayed when Fahmy Howeydi told me that such dialogues had lost most of their value after the events of the last few years - a position discussed by Abdullah Ali al-Alian in today's al-Khaleej - and it's pretty clear that attitudes on both sides are pretty hardened at this point.  But as bad as things are, dialogues can still accomplish quite a bit even if their results are not immediately apparent.   

At any rate, I mainly wanted to reflect on one of the biggest dangers lurking within a lot of recent talk in the 'wars of ideas' community about 'using' moderate Islamists.  Given such mutual public hostility and mistrust, the temptation is great to avoid public dialogues and instead focus on covert methods such as paying influentials to spread 'our message'.  But the costs of the inevitable exposure of such approaches should be taken into account.  Dialogue is good, and giving them the chance to fight their own battles by pushing for more free and diverse media is even better.  But the US shouldn't get sucked into payola schemes:  people like Mabrouk already use allegations of such schemes to try to undermine their credibility, and actually doing them has a very high probability of backfiring badly. 

Comments

[moloch-agonistes]

But the term 'moderate Islamist' in American usage means something different from 'al-wasitiyeen al-ulamaniyeen,' doesn't it? To Americans, it means pure and simple someone who doesn't use anti-American rhetoric. To people like Mabrouk it actually has a political and theological project attached to it, as well as a strong class referent--he's sneering at them as ulama', i.e., elitists. Maybe in the past there has been some overlap between the two designations (e.g. Tantawi and the Azhar establishment refraining from "bashing" the U.S. and condemning Palestinian suicide bombers) but isn't that correlation disappearing fast--and likely to fade still further as attacks like the one on Amr Khaled intensify? IOW, as American foreign policy becomes harder to defend, even people who might be inclined to declare their affinity place themself publicly in opposition, and refuse to engage. I'd be curious to hear from AA and other people on the ground lately who can confirm or deny my impression, but this episode would seem to be a pretty clear illustration of some of the mechanisms by which "gunboat democracy" has turned out to be a historic (if predictable) ideological failure.

[Martin]

How much of the American outreach to "moderate Islam" is originating out of the office of Karen Hughes?