Dr. Khaled M. Batarfi
PRINCE Muhammad Al-Faisal has just died!,” said the note I received on my mobile, last Saturday. As sad and shocking as it was, I wasn’t totally surprising. The 80-year-old prince had been fighting illnesses for years.
Lately, he went through hard times. It seems the body that carried so many responsibilities and duties, fought so many battles and faced so many challenges, finally gave up against a relentless, ruthless, undefeated enemy. Weeks after he was admitted to the intensive care unit of King Faisal Specialist Hospital, in Jeddah, the last ray of hope and optimism, the dreaming prince has always enlightened our lives with, went off and away.
This was the conclusion of a long, rich and enriching life story. It started with his birth in September 1937, in the mountainous town, Taif. Then went through years of studies and work in America, thrived with decades of achievements and pioneering projects, and filled with hopes and dreams; shocks and disappointments, sorrows and challenges.
The second son to King Faisal Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, and his wife Princess Effat Aluthnian Al-Saud, Prince Muhammad was the first Saudi royal to join a school in the United States. After finishing his elementary and secondary schooling in Taif, in 1953, his father sent him with his brother, Saud, to a boarding school, Hun School of Princeton, in New Jersey, then to Lawrenceville School in the same town. In 1963, he concluded his academic program at Menlo College, San Francisco, in business administration.
After graduation, Prince Muhammad joined the Saudi diplomatic mission to the United Nations, New York, and acted as a special representative to the Kennedy Administration. He had to work on bridging gaps in the Saudi-American relations that went through turbulent seas.
Those were tough times for Saudi Arabia. Internally, the country was facing hard economic challenges that almost bankrupted it. Externally, it had to face the destabilizing tide of anti-royalist movements. In recently independent Arab countries, nationalist, Baathist and Socialist parties were bringing down the old order and establishing revolutionary regimes. The Yemen War (1962-1970) was raging on our southern borders, with Egyptian support and US political cover. Iraq was threatening to take over Kuwait, Iran was claiming Bahrain and three UAE islands, and Britain occupied the Saudi oil-rich Bruaimi Oasis.
After returning home, in the late 1960s, the young prince led an unprecedented sea water desalination project to quench the thirst of a country that was thriving and prospering, but deprived of the most essential natural resource for man —water.
Throughout his years as governor of Saline Water Conversion Corporation, Prince Muhammad helped transform the desert Kingdom into the world’s largest producer of desalinated water. Potable water was transported through an extensive network of pipelines from the Kingdom’s seashores to mountaintops and remote inland villages and towns.
He even envisioned hauling South Pole glaciers to Red Sea shores. “I got so enthusiastic about the idea that I had a 2,000-page feasibility study over five years,” he relates in his memoirs “Prince Muhammad Al-Faisal reminisces,” and presents, “It was a fully comprehensive project involving scientists from all over the world. They participated in the study during several international conferences between 1975 and 1980. The total cost of those conferences and studies reached about $12 million almost bankrupting me.” The project was not realized because the Saudi officials he approached preferred well-tested methods, like his original project—seawater desalination!
From the sea world to the financial jungles of the world, Prince Muhammad decided to change the rules of the game with his new vision — Islamic economy. This time he succeeded with the establishment of Faisal Islamic Bank in Egypt and Sudan; as well as, the Gulf Investment Corporation in Sharjah, the UAE, and Geneva.
His other pioneering projects included Al-Manarat schools. “The curriculum we designed focused on Islamic studies and modern sciences in an interactive, rather than a passive and traditional way. Memorization was restricted to Qur’an. The elementary level student would memorize parts of the Qur’an, if not all,” he explains in his memoirs. “The enhanced curriculum prioritizes comprehension and spirituality. We aimed to equip generations and not just produce graduates. Our national statistics should not be about how many students we graduate by the end of the academic year, but on how many are qualified to enter the work market. We should not be like factories or poultry farms. We are institutes determining the future of our nation,” he maintains.
We have a proverb in Arabic that says: “Those who brought up good children would never die.” Prince Muhammad Al-Faisal not only left us with pioneering projects and theories, but also gave us Eng. Amr, published novelist, Maha, and world-renowned photographer, Reem. He shall never die!
— Dr. Khaled M. Batarfi is a Saudi writer based in Jeddah. He can be reached at kbatarfi@gmail.com. Follow him at Twitter:@kbatarfi
