Arab states' miserly donations for Tsunami relief

Did you see the reports that the rich Arab states in the Middle East have pledged relatively little for Tsunami relief? Qatar and Saudi Arabia each pledged $10 million. UAE has pledged $20 million. Kuwait has pledged $10 million. There was an editorial in a Kuwaiti paper criticizing these govt's for not pledging enough. Kuwait has a budget surplus of $10 billion, and just distributed $700 million to its own citizens as a sort of dividend. And of course much of the effected regions are Muslim, like the Middle East.

The news reports did say that charitable contributions from Muslim citizens have been made difficult since we made them shut down so many of their "charitable" organizations. But my complaint is not about the individual citizen's donations, but about the official government donations.

On the Today show today, Matt Lauer interviewed the UN guy who called the western countries stingy - he was misquoted in that his comments were not specifically about Bush and his initial pledge of $35 million. And the news of that criticism sure has been over-reported - I saw one of the networks ask Jeb Bush about it when he landed in Asia. Anyway, I sent the Today Show an email saying they should report on these low pledges by the Middle Eastern countries.

Oh - one other thing - some Muslim charities were advertising for donations for Muslim victims. The Kuwaiti paper criticized this, and published a special religious ruling that it was OK to donate to non-Muslims.

Take a look at http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/04/news/arabs.html