Creating a Culture of Coexistence

The Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World was pleased to host Amr Khaled on Friday, May 11 in a discussion moderated by veteran Washington Post reporter Robin Wright. Khaled runs the Arab world’s most popular website, hosts regular shows on the Saudi-owned religious satellite channel Iqra, and commands enough influence in the Middle East that the majority of people in the Middle East pick Amr as one of the people they most admire.

His model of “Life Makers” encourages Muslims to implement action plans for transforming their lives and their communities through Islam. He also urges them to live peacefully in coexistence with the West.

Amr Khaled addressed the two most important trends and quests in the region . The first was the desire for reform, or the idea of making Islam relevant to the modern world; the second was the pressure of globalization. It was noted that the Amr Khaled phenomena would not have taken off 25 years ago, as it had today.