Some critics of the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan, including commentators on Fox News, have linked the project to terrorism by seizing on a Saudi prince’s past financial backing of the imam at the center of the controversy.
Prince Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia is also the second-largest shareholder of Fox News’s parent, the News Corporation, with a stake worth more than $2 billion, which was not always disclosed on Fox News.
In fact, Prince Walid, in his first public comments about the matter, says he is actually opposed to the Islamic center’s being built in downtown Manhattan.
“I have been associated with this mosque in New York, but frankly speaking, I have nothing to do with it,” he said in an interview. “I’m not for putting that mosque there.”
Prince Walid offered a two-pronged explanation for why he was opposed to the project: he said out of respect for Islam, it does not belong at the proposed location because of its proximity to a strip club; and out of deference to the families of 9/11 victims who might feel antagonized, the Islamic center should not be near ground zero. “I respect all religions,” he said.
The prince’s charity, the Kingdom Foundation, has supported causes linked to the imam behind the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, as another News Corporation outlet, The New York Post, has reported. But, he says, it does not support the Islamic center project near ground zero.
On the subject of relations between Islam and the West, Prince Walid has been a controversial figure, both here and in the Middle East. In the United States, he is often depicted as a backer of radical Islam, for giving to organizations like the Islamic Development Bank, and for supporting the construction of madrassas, a name for Islamic schools that in some corridors has become a broad-brush phrase for incubators of Islamic terrorism.
But he has also given $20 million to Harvard to finance an Islamic studies center. So the controversy simmers on the other side as well. “I sometimes get penalized in the Arab world for being pro-American,” he said.
In 2001, he sought to donate $10 million to the victims of 9/11, but the money was refused by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani because the prince had made critical comments about United States foreign policy. In his statement at the time, he said the United States “should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause.”
Prince Walid became a figure in the cable news controversy over the Islamic center, which reached its zenith in late August. Dan Senor, a Fox News commentator and former adviser to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer when he was viceroy in Iraq after the American invasion, referred to Prince Walid as someone who “funds radical madrassas all over the world.” In one presentation this summer, Glenn Beck, the Fox News host, seemed to directly tie Prince Walid to 9/11.
And then Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show,” weighed in with a comedic game of connect the dots, noting what Fox News had not disclosed: “The guy they are painting as a sinister money force owns part of Fox News.”
The prince said: “It’s funny, it’s like a joke. I take these things very lightly.”
He has long been an investor in the News Corporation and a supporter of its leader, Rupert Murdoch. Several years ago, he increased his voting stake in the company in a show of support for Mr. Murdoch, who holds the largest stake but was at the time facing a challenge from John C. Malone, another media mogul.
This year, the relationship was cemented in a new way: Mr. Murdoch invested about $70 million in Prince Walid’s media company, Rotana.
“My relationship with Rupert goes back 20 years,” Prince Walid said.