Atlanta Congresswoman Cynthia A. McKinney has gained quite a bit of press after she wrote a letter to Prince al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul-Aziz al-Sa'ud. The letter was controversial — supporting Prince al-Waleed's call for a re-examination of American policy in the Middle East. Al-Waleed himself was in the press spotlight just days prior, when his comments caused Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York to reject the prince's $10 million donation to charity. Since the letter was released, it has drawn a firestorm of angry comments in Atlanta periodicals and talk shows. The Freethought Mecca now presents Sadiqi az-Zindiki's open letter to the congresswoman, along with additional grafs that were snipped in the final letter for brevity and continuity.

Dear Honorable Representative McKinney:

While it is refreshing to have a Congressional voice that doesn't tow the line and encourages a hardy debate when it is unpopular to do so, your letter of support to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal makes me wonder: with lukewarm allies like the Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, who needs enemies?

If you wholeheartedly agree with bin Talal's statement that the US needs to reconsider its Mid-East policy, should we not also reconsider our policy on Saudi Arabia, which has hobbled the FBI investigation of bombings of US bases in Saudi Arabia, promoted the intolerant Wahhabi variant of Islam around the world and so ungraciously faltered in allowing us to use their country as a staging ground for operations to defend the United States?

You go on to mention reports of numerous human rights organizations as supporting bin Talal's "chickens going home to roost" contention. I strongly suggest that you look critically not only at the human rights record of the Israeli government, but also at the nefarious record of the Saudi and Pakistani governments. Both can be criticized for their authoritarianism, as well as their sponsorship of enemies of the United States (though admittedly it would be nice if we had not funded our own future enemies).

To take an example of authoritarianism, following the Saudi pasttime, the Pakistani government recently sentenced to death Dr. Younis Shaikh and others under the pretense of "blasphemy." On the count of aiding enemies, the Pakistani government, like the Saudi patrons of Wasabi-istic Wahhabism, has also aided terrorist causes. If we were totally serious that all governments who act as patrons of terror were to be held responsible for their actions, then it is hard to see how Pakistan would not be next on the list for aiding the Taliban and abetting the terrorists in Kashmir.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, horrible as it may be, has disproportionate media attention partially because it is used as a propagandist tool to make Israelis and Jewish people in general the scapegoats of the Arab and the greater Muslim world. The usefulness of focusing attention on an external "conniving" enemy explains why Zionist conspiracies are promoted by a gamut of power seekers from Bin Laden to official governments. One only needs to understand the swiftness with which the rumor of "4,000 Israelis absent from work at the WTC on September 11th" spreads and is treated as Qur'anic truth, to see that for every reasonable justification of hostility towards Israel and our own country, ten are added to explain away the self-imposed misery of the Muslim world.

If you consider yourself an upstanding defender of human rights by stating that a billionaire prince has the right to speak out, would you please extend that defense to those with differing perspectives who face the very real threat of violence despite their non-violent beliefs? I know that not everyone has a $10 million dollar check they can draft to aid your laudable cause of promoting racial equality, as you suggest bin Talal do. But why shouldn't hundred-naires and thousand-naires also share bin Talal's right? Please let me know if a Saudi citizen or a guest worker in Saudi Arabia can criticize the activities of the Saudi government that are the moral equivalent of Israeli human rights abuses you describe without severe repercussions. Please explain to the American public why you would accept on behalf of worthy charitable causes the money of someone who profits immensely off his high position in a repressive monarchy.

The grand divide between the Saudi government and the Taliban is that the Saudis have Petro-riyals, and the Taliban has the slim pickings of opium. I cannot speak to bin Talal in particular, but I find it disturbing that your letter sought to fundraise from one representative of a government that on several occasions has persecuted people for their beliefs, even executing apostates and "heretics" by beheading. If bin Talal speaks out openly about the state of freedom of opinion in Saudi Arabia, then I could take his criticisms of Israel more seriously for being consistent. If he made mention of the UN Charter of Human Rights that Saudi Arabia routinely violates and not just selectively the resolutions about Palestine, all the better.

The biggest oppressors of Muslims and non-Muslims in Muslim dominated societies are neither Israeli nor American, they are autocrats of varying ideological bents and fascists like Bin Laden. Sadly, as a nation we have been too dependent on oil from the Gulf to be consistent in our condemnation of all tyrannies, not just the Taliban's. I sincerely hope you consider the question I am posing to you about stopping US government silence on the lukewarm allies who violate every principal we desire to defend. Please make your outspokenness an asset to America and the world, not a liability.

Furthermore, be wary of the fact that certain groups want to take care of the Muslim-extremist image problem more than they want to take care of the Muslim-extremist murderers. The hate crime of 6,000 killed takes second place to the 2 Muslims (and more non-Muslims) killed in misplaced revenge who can be strategically useful in claiming the political desideratum of victimization. (Not that there is a back and forth talley, but I bet there are going to be more Americans/Westerners killed in Muslim lands over Afghanistan. Hasn't there already been 1 dead by a bomb, and another by shooting in Kuwait?)

Finally, on a side note, I must wonder about your statement comparing the plight of African Americans living in New York with the children of Bangladesh. While members of the African American community are still victimized by our stratified society to this day, a child in Harlem definitely has a much better chance of survival than his or her counterpart in some of the poorer parts of Bangladesh. One is puzzled, however, by the comparison of a neighborhood in one of the world's richest cities to an entire country (that happens to be in the so-called "third world"). Perhaps the congresswoman could clear up whether she was referring to children of the Bangladeshi/Bengali elite or babies from that nation's slums. Perhaps she forgot that to speak of an entire country, includes the wealthy and the powerful.

One sincerely hopes that you are not using the plight of an historically oppressed people as a mere selling point at the expense of others' feelings for the sole purpose of acquiring some of the aforementioned petro-riyals.

Sincerely, Sadiqi az-Zindiki