JEDDAH, 13 July 2003 — Saudis must do more as individuals to improve their nation’s image in the United States and beyond, according to the founder of the first US-based think-tank on Saudi Arabia.
Abdullah Al-Tayer founded the Saudi Studies Center a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, which were committed by 19 plane hijackers — 15 of them Saudi.
Al-Tayer, who lives in Fairfax, Virginia, said this week that he has returned home to raise funds for his struggling organization, which he opened to inform Americans concerned about Saudi Arabia and counter what he described as the misinformation surrounding his country’s relationship to terrorism.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Al-Tayer — a diplomat and college professor — has been drawing attention to his country’s poor image abroad and urging Saudi academics, businessmen, journalists and officials to do more to address the US public’s concerns.
“After the events of Sept. 11, we didn’t do anything,” he said. “There wasn’t one Saudi academic or journalist to speak out about the events, to try to put them in context, explain how something like this could happen.”
“When we don’t provide media outlets with Saudi speakers we leave the arena open, and others speak for us. We need to speak out for ourselves,” he said.
Funded out of his own pocket, Al-Tayer’s think-tank has received more than 150 requests from curious Americans for information about his country. “What is this country that has caused us such a headache, people want to know,” he said. “They always ask me, ‘Why do you hate us?’”
While in the Kingdom, Al-Tayer hopes to raise $300,000 to produce documentaries about the country and offer scholarships for 10 Saudi academics and journalists to spend a year in America.
“We’re still a developing country and we will need the United States with its advanced technology for a long time to come. We also have a lot to learn from them in terms of democracy and reform,” he said.
But convincing Saudis to donate money to educate Americans — whose own reputation has plummeted in the Gulf following the US-led war in Iraq and the perceived American bias toward Israel — is a tough sell, Al-Tayer admits.
“Because of the negative (post-Sept. 11) backlash, many Saudis are mad at America. Their feelings are hurt. I try to explain to them, if we make more of an effort, there wont be this backlash and misinformation.”
Al-Tayer said it can be difficult to explain what Saudi Arabia means to Americans when there are aspects of the country he, himself, disagrees with.
“There are things that need change ... some things I can’t defend, things that need a solution, like women being allowed to drive,” said Al-Tayer, who teaches Islamic studies and Arabic as a foreign language at the Virginia-based Institute of Islamic and Arabian Studies in America.
Al-Tayer says his center tries to present a true picture of Saudi Arabia, including its deficiencies.
But its efforts are complicated by extremist views prevalent in the United States toward Saudi Arabia.
“First they (the Americans) thought (Saudi Arabia) was a huge petrol station, and now they think it’s only a breeding ground for terrorists,” Al-Tayer said.
