Word: saud
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When U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld turned up at an ornate royal palace in Saudi Arabia last week, he shook hands with ailing King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al Saud and then exchanged views about the war on terrorism with Crown Prince Abdullah, who runs the kingdom's day-to-day affairs. Rumsfeld might have got a somewhat different perspective if he had stopped by al Masaa, a cafe in the heart of the capital, where patrons hail Osama bin Laden as an Arab hero...
Osama's father Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden emigrated from Yemen to Saudi Arabia as a bricklayer and slowly built the largest Saudi construction firm. His secret was winning the trust of the Saudi King, Abdel Aziz ibn Saud, who reigned from 1932 to 1953. The King asked bin Laden to rebuild the sacred city of Mecca, and ever since, the bin Ladens have been responsible for construction in Mecca and Medina. After Mohammed's death in a plane crash in 1967, his sons built Saudi BinLaden Group into a multibillion-dollar enterprise. Recent ventures include building a freeway around...
Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, has a slightly different way of solving the current crisis. Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told a European Union delegation last week that the war on terrorism should be linked to a peace settlement between Palestinians and Israel. That, he said, would shorten the campaign against terrorism to three years instead of 10. The prince admitted, however, that many Saudis had gone off to the other side. The Shehhi tribe of the impoverished southwestern province of Asir had provided some of the 10,000 fighters in the Afghan war against the Soviets. Many remained...
...family's wealth came from the Saudi bin Laden Group, built by Osama's father Mohamed, who had four wives and 52 children. Mohamed had had the good luck of befriending the country's founder, Abdel Aziz al Saud. That relationship led to important government contracts such as refurbishing the shrines at Mecca and Medina, Islam's holiest places, projects that moved young Osama deeply. Today the company, with 35,000 employees worldwide, is worth $5 billion. Osama got his share at 13 when his father died, leaving him $80 million, a fortune the son subsequently expanded to an estimated...
...East, Iraq, and Yugoslavia could be offensive to Muslims and less powerful countries. Initial sympathy and support for the U.S., he says is waning. And this comes from individuals who say that Islamic militancy is unacceptable because their religion is based on peace. "Violence has no religion," says Professor Saud Alam Qasmi, Head of Religious Studies at Aligarh Muslim University. "If you kill one person you kill all humanity...