Popular Egypt TV religious figure raises his sights

His 2.6 million fans on Facebook make him one of the site's 75 most popular people. His television show borrows from Donald Trump's. When he appears before thousands of adoring fans, he wears Hugo Boss suits and applies a little black makeup to his scalp to hide the gaps in his thinning hair.

Amr Khaled is the Arab world's most successful mulberry sale televangelist, a charismatic guide for millions of Muslims.

His TV programs, audiotapes and DVDs have long been ubiquitous. Now, Egyptians are seeing him in the flesh once again after his return from eight years of exile in Britain.

At the Cairo Opera House the other day, spotlights shone down on Khaled in spinning, kaleidoscopic patterns of light. The sound system vibrated with gentle, liquid beats. An impossibly thin woman wearing pinstripes and fake eyelashes stood at the glass lectern, reading his introduction.

The hall was filled with hundreds of young middle-class strivers, his core following. Egypt's revolution had lifted the yoke of hopelessness and apathy, and he had more good news for them: Vodafone was giving millions of dollars to the volunteer arm of his ministry to increase literacy in southern Egypt.

Poverty and illiteracy, he is fond of saying, mulberry handbags have made Arabs "parasites." He urged his audience to focus on economic development as the gateway to political ends. After all, the prophet Muhammad was a successful merchant.

"Let's dream again," he told the crowd, gazing into audience members' eyes as if they were sharing an enchanted moment.

It was another step in Khaled's careful reentry. He went into exile after then-President Hosni Mubarak's regime banned him from appearing in public. His independent voice was viewed as a threat to the popularity of state-sanctioned religious figures. In Birmingham, England, he was a favorite of Westerners who saw him as a counterweight to Islamic extremism.

Khaled came home at the end of January, as demonstrations convulsed the country.

Now, he's not just filling Egyptian stadiums. He's cautiously testing the waters for a new political party or even a run for the presidency.

Message boards on his website buzz with fans urging him to run.

But after stepping off the opera house stage, Khaled, 43, was noncommittal in responding to a question about his political intentions.

"We need to wait and see," he said. "It's too early."

Khaled's spiritual home is an immaculate mosque in 6th of October City, one of Cairo's new suburbs, where the prosperous escape the overcrowded city at the end of a desert highway lined with a Starbucks, a Chili's Grill & Bar and billboards touting homes in new subdivisions.

The mosque ― a gleaming white structure with a soaring ceiling and colossal chandelier ― is conservative but forward-looking. Women are urged to wear the veil and are advised to follow their husbands' advice when it comes to work, but Khaled focuses on women's central role in Islamic history and denounces so-called honor killings, in which male relatives kill women accused of promiscuity.

Banners in the mosque celebrate a future Palestinian state, and a "free Jerusalem" is an often-expressed dream, but Khaled says this will be achieved through economic development at home, and without any violence.

On a cool winter night, thousands gathered for Khaled's first appearance at the mosque since his return. Yasmeen Khayyam, who manages the mosque, became teary eyed when she saw him. "He's like a son," she said.

Khayyam, once a renowned singer whose style and voice drew comparisons to the Egyptian legend Umm Kulthum, is one of Khaled's most important patrons. When she spotted him a decade ago, he was working as an accountant. He had taken a deep interest in Islam during his teenage years in Alexandria. As he grew older, he focused on Islam as a path to personal and community revival and began speaking at sporting clubs and private homes.

Khaled does not have the religious credentials to issue rulings on what is or is not permitted under Islam. His preaching takes the shape of a conversation that invites, not orders, listeners to follow the tenets of the faith.