Dangerous Islam: A Medal for Brass
On May 8, Saudi royals placed a full-page ad in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Times of London, and other papers proclaiming that a charity founded by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud, a nephew of King Abdullah and the world’s 13th-richest person, had been honored by the pope. Directly under a Koranic passage on tolerance, the headline declared: “Alwaleed bin Talal Humanitarian Foundation, representing Kingdom Foundation, awarded the Pontifical Medal by Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican.”
At the center of the page was depicted a medallion bearing the image of Pope Benedict XVI, which the ad labeled “The Pontifical Medal.” The Holy See’s coat of arms was displayed bottom center, implying that the ad carried the imprimatur of the pope.
In the end, it was consultations with an independent expert on the Vatican and interviews with several recipients that solved the mystery: The medal shown in the ad is a common souvenir.
It is minted each year by the thousand and handed out as a memento to those granted an audience with the pope. All the staffers at the American embassy to the Holy See, for instance, have received it. It was given to White House officials when Pope Benedict met with Bush. It is for sale at the Vatican bookstore. It confers no honor at all.
The recent ad directly supports this power play. It sets up visual parallels between the pope and the king, the Vatican and Mecca. A slogan at the bottom reads, “Two great faiths, Sharing one cause: humanity.” Using its control of the hajj and the vast wealth it pours into foreign evangelism, funding mosques, schools, libraries, and academic centers worldwide, the House of Saud is patiently pursuing its quest to make the Saudi variant of Islam—Wahhabism, with its warrant for the murder of heretics, apostates, and infidels—the Muslim norm. This is the ad’s chilling subtext.
The latest Saudi publicity stunt should not be dismissed as merely a boorish hoax. It offers a useful glimpse of the ambitions and methods of the Saudi state, which deserve to