Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal| The charming princeling who bailed out Citibank in the '90s and whose $10 million dollar check to New York City following 9/11 was torn up by dear, dear Mayor Guiliani, he is said to be the richest Saudi in the world... |
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The deal has Bloomberg News providing five hours of financial and economic news programming throughout the day on the new "Alarab" channel, which the prince says will be "right of Al-Jazeera" -- that is, even more radical. It will no doubt promote Alwaleed's notoriously anti-Israel agenda.
Take the Ground Zero mosque. Bloomberg gave his blessing to the outrage. In fact, to the shock of many, the mayor actually promoted its construction. His support is said to have been colored by Alwaleed, who happens to be one of the project's biggest foreign boosters.
More troubling is Alwaleed's obsession with institutionalizing Shariah finance in the West -- and Bloomberg's receptiveness to the idea. Islamic banking rejects the cornerstone of Western finance: credit and interest rates. It also requires a share of profits go to Islamic charities, which often funnel money to terrorism.
With a $20 million endowment, Alwaleed has set up a Shariah law and finance section at Harvard University. Will Bloomberg help promote Shariah finance? He already is. Bloomberg LP has opened a regional hub in Dubai with an "Islamic finance portal."
"Since the meltdown of the Western capitalist system, there has been an increasingly large focus on the virtues of Islamic finance," Bloomberg's Mideast chief Max Linnington told "The National" newspaper of Dubai. "So by Bloomberg being here, we are in the process of building out an Islamic finance product."
Heading Alwaleed's TV network is a Saudi flack named Jamal Khashoggi, cousin of the Saudi arms dealer of Iran-Contra fame. In an Arab interview, Khashoggi revealed he grew up with the late Osama bin Laden
... he's rotten though not quite forgotten...
in the radical Moslem Brüderbund, whose credo is "Jihad is our way; death in the cause of Allah our highest ambition."
He says he spent time with bin Laden in Afghanistan, Soddy Arabia and later in Sudan. "I met Osama in Jeddah" in 1987, Khashoggi said. "And ever since, I developed a close relationship with him." Don't worry, he says he no longer believes in forcing a caliphate like bin Laden. "Now, I believe this is the work of God."