International Philanthropy

Well, just look at that. Saudi Arabia has money to burn. Funding mosques and 'community centres' all over the world. And let's not forget those madrassas established all over the Arab and Muslim world - and to complete the picture in just about every city in the Western world where burgeoning Muslim populations have migrated. And now they're completing a world-class clock to appear in Mecca, to challenge the primacy of Greenwich Mean Time.

That's a lot of funding, representing a whole lot of money. And where did that money come from? Well, oil proceeds, since Saudi Arabia, like many of its peer countries in the Middle East has been handsomely endowed by nature and geography with an immensely valuable natural resource. Fossil fuels to be precise. Which, in an energy-hungry world is greedily consumed. So Europe and North America help the Saudis extract those natural resources, and they import it to their home countries and pay big time.

And a lot of that money emanating from those sources making their way into the Arab oil-resource-full countries are spent on lavish display, buildings of immense proportions, funding princely lifestyles of ostentatious excess. And of course, exporting Wahhabi-style Islamism abroad. Some of which; much of which, has transmogrified into violently incendiary Islamist jihadism. Which is most definitely not healthy for the rest of the world.

And, with all this oil wealth is there anything that can be characterized as a philanthropic bent within the oil-wealthy Arab republics, dictatorships, theocracies, autocracies, and kingdoms? Not that one could notice. When other, far less financially and geographically naturally-endowed Muslim countries suffer great hardship due to natural disasters or internal catastrophes, it appears to be the West and its finances that pick up the rescue tabs.

In contrast, interesting contrast,there is the recent initiative by the Gates and their friend Warren Buffet to encourage other billionaire Americans to surrender much of their vast wealth in the name of charitable enterprise. America is also hugely wealthy, having hundreds of billionaires, the most of any other country by far. Thus far, 40 members of the American billionaire elite have pledged to give away over half of their fortunes. And 13 of that 40 just happen to be American Jews.

The Giving Pledge, pioneered by Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates has energized and enthused the philanthropic spirit among U.S. billionaires. Their funding will be directed toward health issues, scientific projects, education, and a vast array of charitable projects, at home and abroad. And it is more than a little interesting that wealthy Jews represent the most charitable donors on a huge scale, per capita. According to Forbes, over a third of living donors who have given away over $1-B of their fortune, happen to be Jews.

And although Jewish philanthropists give generously to Jewish causes, those donations represent a mere fraction of the millions given away annually to a variety of other causes unrelated to ethnicity or religion. Quite a contrast in sensibilities.