Our nation’s leader, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd, has been struggling with ill health for some time. This week his condition worsened and requests were made to pray for him. Many people in other nations do not know much about King Fahd and that is unfortunate. King Fahd’s reign has been during challenging times in the Kingdom. He has worked to keep the Saudi economy stable during decades of turmoil in the region and has made a strong mark nationally in the areas of education and infrastructure development.
There is a government website dedicated to King Fahd at www.kingfahdbinabdulaziz.com. The website contains information on the life of the king and his contributions to the development of Saudi Arabia. The site includes a limited amount of multimedia content, such as photographs and audio clips. Unfortunately, the site is not all it could be.
For example, there are quotations from the king including:
“I will be father to the young, brother to the elderly. I am but one of you; whatever troubles you, troubles me; whatever pleases you, pleases me.” But we don’t know when this quote was made and on what event.
Much of the information is out of date. For instance, under the section on Saudi Arabia’s Oil Policy it reads:
“At this point we should perhaps consider what has happened to the price of oil over the last three decades if we take inflation into account. When the oil-consuming nations complain about the price of oil, they forget that, even at $25–$30 a barrel today, oil is far from being at a historically high level.” Oil now hovers at $50 a barrel.
The site could also be enriched by links to other Saudi websites, photographs of the king as a young man and while crown prince, video clips to remind us of King Fahd in his prime and a visitors book. Worst of all, the site does not use Saudi Arabia’s top level domain “.sa”.
While King Fahd may not be well enough to pay personal attention to a website in his name, our sense of pride should be more than enough to see that this site is an excellent representation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its leader.
