< Changing Worldviews.Commentary >

Words are powerful - Thoughts shape - Ideas have consequences

Rachel Ehrenfeld
American Center for Democracy

Saudi Charity Begins...Nowhere

Upon hearing Warren Buffett’s announcement on June 25, 2006, of giving $37 billion to charitable foundations, mostly to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Nihad Awad, declared that Muslim organizations “are lagging behind,” only because of intimidation by the West. The Muslims, he said, are in “the cycle of fear,” [of] “being accused of funding suspicious organizations that fall under the scrutiny of anti-terrorism investigations.” One wonders why they are funding “suspicious organizations” in the first place.

Instead of blaming America and the West, as CAIR constantly does, it could initiate the establishment of a new Muslim foundation with a similar mission to that of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This new Muslim foundation could supply immunization, HIV and anti-malarial medication, and medical means to reduce cervical cancer incidence and deaths in poor Muslim countries, feed millions of refugees from Muslim atrocities in Darfur, and generally “bring innovations in health” to Third World Muslim countries. Indeed, Awad himself pointed out that, “We in the Muslim world are lagging behind when we should be pioneers as per our Islamic beliefs.”

To be sure, there is no shortage in oil billionaires in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. According to Forbes Magazine 2006 list of the World’s Richest People, Saudi and Gulf billionaires are worth at least $134 billion. Muslim billionaires in Egypt, Turkey and Lebanon are worth additional $29.4 billion. This is not taking into account Muslim billionaires and millionaires in Asia and elsewhere. Moreover, the oil boom in the Middle East generated at least 300,000, new wealthy millionaires in the region.

According to the Department of Energy, Saudi Arabia is estimated to gain $154 billion in oil revenues in 2006, alone, and has at least $110 billion in foreign assets.

Read the rest of the article here.


© Rachel Ehrenfeld 2006 Reprinted with Permission

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is the author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed—and How to Stop It, and the director of the New York–based American Center for Democracy and the Center for the Study of Corruption & the Rule of Law, and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger with James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA. She is a consultant on the problems of terror financing, international terrorism, to banking communities, law enforcement agencies, and governments, including the U.S. Defense Department’s Threat Reduction Agency. She testified before the European Parliament on how the Palestinian Authority uses aid money to fund its terrorist activities, and her articles appear in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the National Review, the Jerusalem Post, the Los Angeles Times and others. And she has been on radio and TV including The O’Reilly Factor, CNN, ABC, NBC, and MSNBC. Website: http://www.public-integrity.org/