RIYADH, 25 December 2002 — Prince Alwaleed ibn Talal has donated half a million dollars to a Massachusetts-based scholarship fund named after former US President George Bush, the prince’s Kingdom Holding Company said yesterday.
Prince Alwaleed “donated $500,000 to the George Herbert Walker Bush Scholarship Fund, established by the Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts,” it said.
The establishment of the fund was announced at the 60th reunion of the 1942 class to honor Bush, who is one of its graduates, the company said, adding that US President George W. Bush had commended contributors to the scholarship fund named after his father.
The donation was part of the prince’s contributions to “programs aimed at facilitating better understanding with the West, especially at a time when misconceptions about Arabs and Muslims continue to loom there.”
These included a donation of similar value last month to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to “support their programs and projects in the US to counter attacks waged against Islam.” CAIR has already started a campaign in the US to supply public libraries with 16,300 book packages addressing Islam in a balanced manner to convey the true tenets of the religion. CAIR is also correcting false accusations being leveled against Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) by radical groups.
Prince Alwaleed earlier donated $1 million to the Arab League’s Arab Cultural Initiative Fund to promote better inter-cultural understanding. He also donated $300,000 to the Arab-American Institute headed by James Zogby.
Last February, he donated $1million to support a massive resettlement program for 20,000 slum-dwellers in Delhi.
