Editorial: Good news and bad news

News from the Kingdom recently has produced some extraordinary contrasts between good and evil.
We have the conviction this week of four people in Jeddah who stole money allocated for the relief effort after the 2009 Jeddah floods. Last month two others, a businessman and an official were jailed for five years each and fined SR 500,000, for corruption, bribery and dereliction of duty. At least 180 more municipal officials and contractors are awaiting trial.
To have stolen money destined for those who were suffering is contemptible. To have allowed substandard design and construction work to take place, to have permitted illegal building, all in return for a bribe, is a scandal. At the time it might have seemed to the criminals, an insignificant act, which benefited both sides. History has proved those corrupt payments cost lives and immense and expensive disruption to one of the Kingdom’s most important cities.
Then we have the ongoing trial of members of the so-called “88” terror cell. They are accused of planning to use car bombs to blow up a foreign consulate in the Kingdom, a US military base somewhere in the Gulf and an oil facility in Jeddah. These attacks would have been pressed home regardless of the cost in innocent lives, with the full approval of Al-Qaeda leaders, whom the terror cell is also accused of aiding.
When will these bigots understand that their immoral assaults on a peaceable and civilized society cannot possibly succeed? Though the wounds inflicted by terrorists around the world, have been horrendous, none of their attacks has led to the collapse of a cohesive and well-organized country. Indeed rather the opposite. Ever since the first terror attacks here in the Kingdom, every subsequent outrage has redoubled the determination of decent Saudis to stamp out and excise the evil in their midst.
But then what about the contrast to crooked officials and vicious terrorist thugs? What about the Saudis who selflessly give their own blood, in the knowledge that their gift will help someone else to live. Awards have recently been presented to a group of Riyadh citizens for having donated their blood ten times. Similar ceremonies are not infrequent around the Kingdom.
A relatively small but dedicated group of Saudis gives their blood to clinics and hospitals, in no expectation of any reward, except the knowledge that it will be used in a transfusion that could well mean the survival of an injured person. Indeed it is more than likely that among those blood donors who are honored for their generosity, there is a good number who are embarrassed by the attention they are receiving.
And then there is the case of the young Saudi man in northern Hail, who found a wallet belonging to an expatriate worker that contained not only money but also his iqama (work permit). The man spent a lot of time seeing if he himself could find the worker. He was not successful. So he took the wallet to the local police station and they were able to reunite it and its contents with its anxious owner. The young man was subsequently given a SR 2,000 award for his honesty.
It is very likely that this reward was as embarrassing to this good citizen as the ceremony honoring their generosity was to the blood donors. Put another way, people implement the Islamic principles of charity and giving because they are so obviously right. Gifts are made without any expectation of reward.
At the extreme opposite of this generosity, consider the money-grabbing officials and businessmen in Jeddah who stole funds destined for the needy and in return for payola, turned a blind eye to dangerous construction, a crime which cost many lives. Consider also the selfish terrorist bigots, who instead of charity have only death and destruction to offer the society in which they live.
They do say that “good news doesn’t sell newspapers” and sadly that is true the world over, where headlines are dominated by terrorism, crime and corruption and economic troubles. It is, however refreshing, every once in a while, to be able to turn away from this diet of bad news and instead celebrate something decent and wholesome, such as the Kingdom’s selfless blood donors and the upright young man of Hail.