SHEIKH ZAYED BIN SULTAN AL-NAHYAN, President of the United Arab Emirates, died this week at the age of 86. He has been mentioned before on this blog in connection with his founding of the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up, which he later shut down because of its promoting of anti-Semitism, and for his unsuccessful attempt to fund a chair of Islamic studies at Harvard University. Here is an obituary in the Telegraph. But to me the most interesting recent comments on him come from an article published on 19 October, shortly before his death, "Mayo builds on $25 million gift from sheikh" (Minneapolis Star Tribune), about his financial aid to the Mayo Clinic:

Controversial center

Sheikh Zayed also has contributed money to other institutions, sometimes generating controversy.

In 1999, the sheikh helped fund the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think tank in Abu Dhabi that soon drew criticism from around the world for anti-Semitic language on its Web site and speakers who promoted anti-Jewish and anti-American views.

The following year, the sheikh gave $2.5 million to Harvard Divinity School to create a professorship in Islamic studies in his name -- a gift that triggered further criticism from a Divinity School student and others. Harvard put the professorship on hold, and the sheikh later withdrew the gift with Harvard's blessing.

Amid all the controversy, however, Sheikh Zayed's government shut down the think tank, saying in August 2003 that it "starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance." The center's Web site also was closed.

That action by Sheikh Zayed earned him praise from one of the center's early critics: the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust and promoting religious tolerance.

"Give the guy credit for what he did," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, "and the implications of what he did are not small. ... He is the only Arab head of state who has explicitly dealt with and condemned this sort of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism."

True enough, and worth saying. But the point would have more force if the U.A.E. government hadn't tried in September to deny that the Zayed Centre was ever involved in anti-Semitic activity.

It's interesting to note that not one of the more than 600 online articles covering the Sheikh's death mentions the Zayed Centre.

(All this bears on ancient Judaism inasmuch as the Zayed Centre promoted the views of Jewish-Temple deniers.)