Photograph by Murad Sezer/Reuters

A Man of God and Technology, Trying to Steady Libya
By ANNE BARNARD, The New York Times, September 16, 2011

Tripoli, Libya

AREF NAYED was sipping cappuccino in the soaring marble lobby of the Corinthia Hotel near Tripoli’s seafront, quoting Montesquieu on law and Augustine on forgiveness in a conversation that had begun with earthier subjects, like the challenges of restoring Libya’s water supply and counting its dead.

He held forth on how Bedouin poetry shaped a moderate Islam in Libya, and he was just starting to explain the relevance to Libyan politics of the mathematical theory of complexity — it had to do with something called “flocking phenomena” — when his cellphone rang.

“I have to take this,” he said, glancing at the number. “Somebody wants to surrender.”

An associate of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the deposed Libyan leader, wanted safety guarantees before turning himself in. Mr. Nayed wanted to make it happen, and not just because fostering reconciliation is one of his many jobs for Libya’s de facto government.

He is also a Muslim theologian who, in addition to running a technology business, spent his time before the Libyan rebellion writing erudite papers arguing that compassion is the paramount value in Islam, that pious Muslims can thrive within a liberal secular state and that even the most righteous ones should adopt a “humble recognition” of their own fallibility.

Now, as the Transitional National Council’s coordinator of a Libyan stabilization team being asked to solve problems like fuel shortages and human rights abuses, he suddenly finds himself in an ideal laboratory to test his signature theological propositions — and to try to make them government policy.

“I don’t think there should be a witch hunt, purges or cleansings,” he said Monday at the hotel cafe, adding that those who committed crimes under Colonel Qaddafi should be tried. “Any time you deal with human beings with that kind of terminology, you end up with unfairness and persecution.”

But Mr. Nayed must himself navigate the shoals of a society that still lacks consensus on what kinds of dealings with the old government are forgivable.

Critics grumble about his family’s contacts with the old government. His father, Ali Nayed, owned a large construction business that worked on military installations, schools and other projects for the government before Colonel Qaddafi confiscated his property in 1978. More recently, Aref Nayed had contracts with Libya’s central bank, though he said they ended in acrimony. His brother Rafik was appointed shortly before the revolution to manage the country’s sovereign wealth fund and has stayed on.

For Mr. Nayed, that simply proves the point that after 42 years in which Colonel Qaddafi dominated Libya’s entire economy, few can claim to be entirely pure.

“There was another choice — to leave the country forever — and I have a lot of respect for those who made that choice,” he said. But he cautions against writing off those who continue to work in Libya; exiles, too, face criticisms, from Libyans who say they are opportunists who do not understand the country’s recent sufferings.

Mr. Nayed, 49, stands out, even among the colorful characters in the Corinthia’s lobby, which has become common ground for fighters in camouflage, leftists and Islamists in identical gray business suits, rumpled aid workers, journalists and idealistic young students, all bustling about doing the business of the new Libya.

A tall, bulky man with a close-clipped beard and well-tailored suits, Mr. Nayed claims both Muslim Brotherhood members and Marxist feminists among his friends. He speaks with the nuance of a scholar and the polish of a politician — though he insists that he wants to return to preaching and teaching, not serve in office.

As Islamists and liberals vie for jobs and political influence, he tells his life story in a way that positions him as a bridge between them — as well as between loyalists and oppositionists, and between Islamists and Western states that are waiting warily to see what kind of leaders the NATO intervention has helped bring to power.

Mr. Nayed grew up in Tripoli, studied in the United States and Canada, and did business in Italy. He returned to Libya in the 1990s, pursuing business interests here and abroad. But even as he pursued engineering at his father’s insistence, he said, his heart was always in the study of philosophy, Sufi Islam and comparative religion.

IN recent years, as Colonel Qaddafi began lifting restrictions on religious teaching, Mr. Nayed helped restore and reopen a picturesque Islamic school in Tripoli’s old city and became involved in outreach to Christians and Jews.

After Pope Benedict XVI made controversial comments on Islam in Regensburg, Germany, in 2006, Mr. Nayed was one of 138 Muslim scholars who drafted a letter inviting Catholic-Muslim dialogue. He took part in a conference of clerics who recently reinterpreted the 14th-century scholar Ibn Taymiyya’s celebrated fatwa, or religious edict, on jihad, arguing that radical Islamists who use it to justify killing are misguided.

When the rebellion started in February, he and other clerics issued a fatwa calling on Libyans to resist Colonel Qaddafi. Two days later, he fled to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he runs Kalam Research & Media, perhaps best described as an Islamic theological research and policy organization.

It was the women in his life — his wife, sister and daughter — who pushed him to take the risk of joining the opposition, he said. When loyalists threatened his sister’s sons, he said, she told him, “If they kill them one by one, do not back off.”

Anti-Qaddafi leaders made him ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, and he became a public face of the revolution — a reassuring one for many in the West. When he was named to the stabilization team, a Vatican newsletter rejoiced that “an old friend of the Vatican” was an important figure in Libya, saying his appointment might help allay the church’s fears of a radical Islamist takeover.

YET some Libyans are wary of anyone who is a darling of the West. In Tripoli’s mosques and cafes, people are on the lookout for Libyan versions of Iraq’s Ahmad Chalabi — those vaulted to power more by ties to the West than by legitimacy among Libyans. One target of such criticism is the interim government’s prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, who has appointed close associates and fellow members of the Warfalla tribe, among them Mr. Nayed.

Still, Mr. Nayed’s ideas appear to resonate with some Libyan leaders and citizens.

In his first address in Tripoli’s central Martyrs’ Square on Monday, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the Transitional National Council’s leader, called on crowds to be forgiving toward the rank-and-file soldiers who fought against the rebellion, saying they, too, were victims of the government.

Mr. Nayed argues in official meetings that anyone who committed crimes under Colonel Qaddafi should be tried but that calling all Qaddafi supporters a “fifth column” veers close to the language Colonel Qaddafi used to demonize opponents.

Mr. Nayed has grand hopes for Libya. He imagines it becoming a homegrown model for the Arab world. He sees Libyans, in their support for the NATO military intervention that aided a Libyan-led revolution, embracing the West without losing their dignity.

He says that Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood are integral to Libyan society, and that so far they are competing for political influence without using tactics of intimidation.

And he says that Libyan women, whom he calls “quite pious, quite free and quite capable at the same time,” will hold high positions in the government, showing the region that such freedoms do not equate to “anti-religious secularism.”

“If we do a good job here,” Mr. Nayed said, “this could become an example for mutual respect, mutual compassion, mutual love amongst humanity.”