DUBAI, 28 August 2003 — United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed ibn Sultan Al-Nahayan, confirmed yesterday his government had closed a think tank that had hosted speakers who expounded ‘anti-American’ and ‘anti-Semitic’ views.
When it came to the attention of Sheikh Zayed that the center that carries his name “had engaged in a discourse that starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance, directives were issued for the immediate closure of the center,” said a statement from Sheikh Zayed’s office faxed yesterday to The Associated Press.
Sheikh Zayed “has always been a strong advocate of interfaith tolerance and harmony among religions, as constantly reflected in his words and actions. This respect for all faiths is a basic principle of Islam,” yesterday’s statement added.
An official in this Gulf state had told AP earlier this month that the Emirates was closing the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed International Center for Coordination and Follow-Up.
The Emirates has funded and hosted the center, whose official patron is the Arab League, since it opened in 1999.
Attempts to reach officials at the center were unsuccessful. The center’s website displayed only one line yesterday: “This site has been stopped.”
An Arab League official had no immediate comment yesterday, saying the league had not yet received official word of the closure.
The think tank was established with the aim of promoting Arab unity and has hosted such speakers as former US Vice President Al Gore and former US Secretary of State James Baker.
It also has sponsored speakers who disparaged Zionists and expounded anti-American conspiracy theories.
One speaker, Mohammed Ahmad Hussain of Cairo University, told the center that Jews, “with their media machinery,” used the Holocaust to breed hatred toward non-Jews and cover up massacres committed by Israelis, according to an earlier posting on the center’s website.
The center also hosted Thierry Meyssan, author of “9/11, The Big Lie,” which implicates US military officials in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Center officials have said the think tank is neither anti-Semitic nor anti-American, but ready to listen to “any kind of views.”
Sheikh Zayed is seen as an outspoken critic of Israeli policies who donates millions to Palestinian causes. He also uses his fortune for causes in the United States, where questions have been raised about the center.
Harvard Divinity School in Boston has been reviewing a $2.5 million gift Sheikh Zayed gave a few years ago to endow a professorship in Islamic religious studies last year as students and faculty members began questioning Zayed’s views.
