10-Apr-13: "I cannot help but cry out long live the descendants of apes and pigs"

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From Arabian Business this week:

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud, the Arab world’s wealthiest individual with an estimated fortune of $25.9bn, is the rumoured buyer of the planet’s largest superyacht. The recently launched Azzam cost $609m... Few details have been released about Azzam’s interior, other than it will require a crew of about 50 and will be delivered to its owner later in 2013... The UK’s Daily Mail tabloid reported that Azzam had been paid for by Prince Alwaleed, a prominent investor and member of the Saudi Arabian royal family. Alwaleed’s Riyadh-based firm, Kingdom Holding, owns stakes businesses including Citigroup and Twitter. If Alwaleed were to be revealed as the yacht’s buyer, Azzam would be the latest in an impressive list of high profile assets that includes a Boeing 747-400, for which he paid about $220m for. The Kingdom Holding chairman also confirmed earlier this year he had sold an A380 double-decker (airliner), valued at about $319m. A spokesperson for Alwaleed did not respond to Arabian Business’s query regarding his possible purchase of Azzam.

It's beyond the scope of a simple and relatively-focused blog like ours to give people advice on what to do with their money. But seeing a man spend $600+ Million on a recreational vehicle (the name Azzam means very determined, resolute) gets you thinking about what kinds of things money like that could do.

Think for instance of the hospitals, vaccination programs, educational facilities for girls and women, and water purification projects that could turn people's difficult lives completely around.

Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia is a clever fellow. He surely knows what we just said. You would have to assume that such a public figure, in deciding to drop more than half a billion on a bauble, assumes the purchase is not going to hold him back in life but on the contrary - advance him, and raise his standing in the community that matters to him. This quote, also from Arabian Business, would seem to support that thought:

“The Middle East continues to lead demand in the global superyacht market,” said Mohammed Hussain Al Shaali, chairman of Gulf Craft. “We are very optimistic about this region as more people are finding their way to the water." 

(We know that finding their way to the water is a powerful and urgent motif in Arab public discourse.)

In other words, it's an action that lends itself to interpretation - one that throws light on the values of the society in which he moves.

A recent column in the Egyptian daily Al-Watan ("Motherland") takes an unexpectedly robust look at the way people use their wealth.

It's a theme that surely resonates throughout the oil-soaked parts of the Arab world, given the stark contrast between Arab haves and Arab have-nots. But for us non-Arabic-savvy news readers, it's one that rarely gets much attention. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an active not-for-profit that has been shining a light since 1998 on what the Arabic-speaking world is saying to its own people, published a translation of the column this week. It originally appeared a month ago.

In it, Khalid Muntasir - said to be a secular commentator ("known for his polemical writings against Islamism" according to this 2008 book) - takes a scornful look at Islamist super-piety and racism, contrasting it with... ah, let's quote him rather than paraphrasing:

• "The founders of Facebook and Google and the Russian billionaire [Yuri Milner] are the ones who truly love life, change it for the better, and have passion for freedom and creativity. They respect [true] scholars, as opposed to those whom we call scholars merely because they memorized 100 old books and can recite them without interpreting or even understanding them – scholars that could be replaced by a single DVD containing these books, which  can be read at the stroke of a key on a keyboard costing less than $1. These emperors of the internet founded an organization that awards the world's biggest prize without any preconditions of age, faith or gender, and with no limit on the number of times you can win.
• "When the Jewish internet and social network magnates get together, put aside their competition and unite to declare a $33-million grant for medical research on incurable diseases that prolongs human life, I cannot help but cry out 'long live the descendants of apes and pigs,' as they were described by [Egyptian President] Dr. [Muhammad] Mursi and his [Muslim Brotherhood] movement.
• "On the other hand, those who detonate bombs in the midst of the innocent, murder tourists and eviscerate them, assassinate politicians, thinkers and intellectuals, and accuse others of being infidels can go to hell, where they can continue indulging their sick taste for violence and blood.
• "As I read the article on this organization, I also happened to watch a video sent to me by one of my friends, in which an important [Muslim] speaker lectured on the benefits of having a beard in treating impotence, and [explained] how the beard gives the man virility and strength. I closed the article, shut off the computer, sighed and said: It's no use. Free us [of your discussions] on whether it is permissible to eat the flesh of demons, whether a woman can disrobe in front of a male dog, and on treatments using camel urine, fennel flower, bee stings, etc. 
• "The voice of the sheikh in the neighboring mosque rose and echoed as he cursed the Jews, the descendants of apes and pigs, [wishing] that they would scatter in every direction and that their wives become widows and their children orphans, while the worshipers rejoiced in the mighty victory..."
• "By God! Who is more conscionable, moral, and loves life and his fellow man? Is it these three Jews who contribute to science, health, happiness and the improvement of life, or [Al-Qaeda leaders] bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri and Al-Zarqawi, [Taliban leader] Mullah 'Omar, and those who display their pictures, kiss them, memorize their ideas and adopt them? Who does more good to humanity and the world, and even to Muslims..?

The grant-giving organization to which he refers is

The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences... founded by Art Levinson, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Yuri Milner to recognize excellence in research aimed at curing intractable diseases and extending human life... who collectively have agreed to establish 5 annual prizes, US$3 million each, going forward. These prizes will be awarded for past achievements in the field of life sciences, with the aim of providing the recipients with more freedom and opportunity to pursue even greater future accomplishments [more]

People who read the kind of posts we write here are unlikely to have difficulty accepting the cogency of Dr Khalid Muntasir's case. But life, as we have learned, works quite differently from the logic he represents. We're unfortunately not in a good position to know what impact his recent Al-Watan column had on its readers. We suspect his is not exactly a household name in Egypt. By contrast, the 'resolute' and 'determined' man who evidently spent hundreds of millions of dollars on an ultra-luxury boat is at the top of the "annual countdown of the world’s most influential Arabs" (see "The world's most powerful Arab").

It's trite to say that determination, influence and economic power can do a lot to benefit mankind across ethnic, religious and every other kind of boundary. Maybe it's harder to see that when you're sailing the seas on the deck of a vessel of "innovative and timeless design... providing luxurious and sophisticated accommodation".

But it's true all the same - a question of values.

14-Sep-06: Manipulating the Media: Frank Exposure, Courtesy of Reuters

How honest, accurate and untainted by ignorance, malice or influence are the news media that tell us what's happening in the world?

Imagine a headline that said: "Zionists Urged to Buy Influence in World Media". Think that might get some attention?

Would a report that quoted a major Jewish leader saying "Jewish tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-semitic attitudes around the world" get reported? Would it be discussed on talk-radio, the Guardian's op-ed page, Malaysia's cartoon pages? Would it be a major story on ABC, BBC, CBC, CNN, Al-Jazeerah?

Now let's stop the speculating. Here's a true story -- only it's about Moslems, about Islamic power and about an authentic, formal, organized bloc of 57 nations that act in unison to control nearly one-third of the votes in the United Nations General Assembly.

Below is the actual, unedited form of yesterday's story as published by Reuters. After you've read through the text, please also read the comments we've added at the end.

Muslims urged to buy influence in world mediaWed Sep 13, 2006 2:12 PM BST

RIYADH (Reuters) - Muslim tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-Muslim attitudes around the world, ministers from Islamic countries heard at a conference in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

Information ministers and officials meeting under the auspices of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world's largest Islamic body, said Islam faced vilification after the September 11 attacks, when 19 Arabs killed nearly 3,000 people in U.S. cities in 2001.

"Muslim investors must invest in the large media institutions of the world, which generally make considerable profits, so that they have the ability to affect their policies via their administrative boards," OIC chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told the gathering in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

"This would benefit in terms of correcting the image of Islam worldwide," he said, calling on Muslim countries to set up more channels in widely-spoken foreign languages.

Muslim stakes in Western media are minimal. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 5.46 percent of media conglomerate News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-run group behind the Fox News Channel. The U.S. channel is generally seen as right-wing and no friend of Arab or Muslim interests.

Washington's response to September 11, invading Afghanistan and Iraq and tightening civil freedoms at home as part of a wider "war on terror", has created a widespread feeling among Muslims worldwide that their religion is under attack.

A row earlier this year over Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Mohammed deepened the sense of a divide between Islamic culture and the West.

"The fierce attack on Islam in the five years since the September 11 attacks has forced us into a defensive position on our faith and understanding of our tolerant religion," Egyptian Information Minister Anas el-Feki said in a speech.

"Now more than ever we need a new Islamic media message that reaches all parts of the world," Feki said, citing Israel's recent 34-day war in Lebanon as one issue where Muslims needed to make their views and influence felt.

To this, we'd like to add several comments.

1. About the OIC's Role

We've spoken publicly in the recent past about the Organization of the Islamic Conference (also referred to as the Organization of Islamic Countries.) Apart from hosting the conference described above, the OIC's actions are the main reason why the United Nations has failed, after years of inside efforts, to adopt a convention against terrorism. You can see the background to this in Arnold Roth's speech to the 3rd International Congress of Victims of Terror, reprinted here. The OIC's ability to frustrate all attempts to comprehensively outlaw terrorism constitute a remarkably under-reported, largely-unknown and shameful story.

2. About the Influencers

The way Reuters chooses to describe the influence of Alwaleed bin Talal is odd, to say the least. It says:

"Muslim stakes in Western media are minimal. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 5.46 percent of media conglomerate News Corp..."

And that's it. No other investments, no other investors. So how minimal is minimal?

Alwaleed bin Talal is surely worthy of a touch more attention than Reuters gives him. In addition to being a member of the Saudi royal family, a nephew of King Abdullah and the the richest Arab in the world with estimated net worth of US $20 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the world's eighth richest person. Wikipedia says: "He has been nicknamed by Time magazine as the Arabian Warren Buffett."

This comment itself is an interesting observation since Alwaleed also holds a vast stake in that same Time magazine, a holding worth a billion dollars or more. This gives him a voice in the affairs of CNN, Time and a long list of other media properties.

His 5% holding in News Corp gives him a stake in the world's largest publisher of news in the English language: 175 papers, plus TV stations, magazines, radio, book publishers and film production studios. He's also invested in the dominant Italian media conglomerate Mediaset, in the Asia-and-Europe-wide TV network SKY and in many other media properties. In addition, a $9 billion stake in Citicorp gives Alwaleed some modest degree of influence in other parts of the global business landscape.

A man who understands what money can buy, Alwaleed donated $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard Universities in 2005. This was the second largest donation that Georgetown has ever received. Its Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (CMCU) is now renamed the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

3. How Effective is This Sort of Investment?

Middle East Online quotes Prince Alwaleed himself boasting of its effect:

During last month's street protests in France, the US television network Fox... ran a banner saying Muslim riots. [Alwaleed says:] "I picked up the phone and called Murdoch . . . (and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty. Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots."

The Prince is quoted in a Washington Times column explaining that his largesse as aimed at "bridging the understanding between East and West... for peace and tolerance." The columnist, Diana West, observes:

Funny how that bridge goes only one way. We won't ever, for example, see a Saudi prince (or anyone else) plunk down cold cash to expand -- or even establish -- Christian studies in Saudi Arabia, where exercising freedom of a non-Islamic religion is a crime.

We should point out, that in some circles, Alwaleed's holdings are themselves shrouded with question marks. As The Economist said in a penetrating and very readable analysis from 1999: "Anyone who seeks to present Prince Alwaleed as the face of the new Saudi Arabia needs to explain the mystery that lies at the heart of his empire."

Perhaps it's this shroud of uncertainty that renders Reuters so modest in its claims about his influence and that of other Arab and Moslem potentates.

4. About a "New Islamic Media Message That Reaches All Parts of the World"

This isn't the place to repeat what antisemites have said all the way down history: that the Jews control the banks, the media, the movies, the water supply and the rest. The haters will keep saying what haters say, and the rest of us will try to avoid being drawn into an ignorance-laden, prejudiced and pointless debate.

People who want to have influence and advance their private agendas have always had the means available to do this by wealth, by economic power, by war. Alwaleed is no exception and he's not alone in his ambitions, though perhaps exceptionally well-placed to achieve it. But we're dealing here with a different, threatening and more dangerous situation - one that's characterized by a barely-disguised degree of collaboration, co-operation and lofty self-justification.

Alwaleed is not the only player in the creation of a "new Islamic message". The conference that sparked this report is, after all, a global international conference of governments and their ministers. Not just some governments, but governments that have nearly a third of the United Nations in their control. And as we observed above, control is the right word since the fact is they do act in a united, co-ordinated way.

That's one of the reasons the OIC exists.

Ignoring the slightly tortured English of their website, the OIC's secretary-general Ihsanoglu says their efforts are about international co-ordination. He "expressed certainty of the possibility of achieving success and professionalism in joint Islamic information action based on human capabilities and high-level professional capacities of the Islamic world which have proved their merit and competence in the various Islamic media such as TV channels, radio stations, newspapers and websites."

Meanwhile the Saudi Undersecretary for Culture and Information, Dr. Abdullah Al-Jasser, this week "drew attention to the fact that the Islamic world faces today formidable challenges and biased world media actions that have enormously prejudiced Islam and Muslims through news, information and programme manipulations. This urgently necessitates the quick access of Islamic States to the global information society, not only by possessing and utilizing technologies, but also by upgrading content."

The word jihad doesn't appear in the press releases but its spirit seems to be there. As a group speaking with a single voice, the Islamic nations say they're grievously provoked and they absolutely have to fight back. And they see the media as a critical battlefield.

If you're searching for signs of critical self-examination by these states and their reps, don't be too hopeful. When it comes to the overwhelmingly Islamic character of global terrorism, something that troubles most of the world, don't waste your time searching for analysis on the OIC website. It's evidently not a problem of theirs. On the contrary, their pre-occupation as a global group is with rebuffing suggestions of an Islamic connection to terror (the link is to an OIC speech by Malaysia's former prime minister who addressed this theme repeatedly). The terrorism problem is mainly a problem of perceptions in the West, they say, with Islamic states and Moslems among its principal victims. The solution therefore is in changing those Western perceptions.

Are there Arab and Moslem victims of Moslem terror? Of course - vast numbers of them; we know some personally. Does this mean that Islam is unrelated to global terror and its cancerous spread in the past decade? Of course not. Islam is at the very heart of the cancer. It's impossible to comprehend terror without looking closely at the role Moslems play in its growth.

The organized Islamic governments, all 56 of them, are hardly hiding their intentions, leaving the rest of us to wonder how much of an impact their Islamic war against Western perceptions is now, and will be, reflected in the news reporting, analysis and pictures that get to our pages and screens.