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| Clockwise from L.: Raed Salah, Paul Corkum, Ferenc Krausz, Douglas Coleman and Jeffrey Friedman |
Sheikh Raed Salah, a
Palestinian activist with Israeli citizenship, has donated half the endowment
of $200,000 he received this week for winning
the 2013 King Faisal International Prize (FFIP) for “Service to Islam” to “the
children, bereaved mothers and widows in Syria.”
He earmarked the other half of the cash prize to “set
up an international trust to support (East) Jerusalem and the Holy al-Aqsa
Mosque.”
The Syrian National Coalition has just published a
“Thank You” note to Sheikh Raed Salah on its Facebook page.
FFIPs were awarded in three other categories this
year:
-- The
prize for “Arabic Language and Literature” went to the Arabic Language Academy in
Cairo for its contributions over the past 80 years, including publication of a
large collection of specialized dictionaries.
-- The
prize for “Medicine” was shared by Jeffrey Michael Friedman of Rockefeller University
in New York and Douglas Leonard Coleman of the Jackson Laboratory in Bar
Harbor, Maine, for their discovery of the leptin pathway and its role in
regulating bodyweight.
-- Two
physicists shared the prize for “Science”: Paul B. Corkum of the University of
Ottawa and Ferenc Krausz of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. They
are recognized for their independent pioneering work, which made it possible to
capture the incredibly fast motion of electrons in atoms and molecules with a
time resolution down to attoseconds. For context, an
attosecond is to a second what a second is to about 31.71 billion years, or
twice the age of the universe.
Prizewinners
received their awards from Saudi Crown Prince Salman at a gala ceremony in
Riyadh last Saturday night.
The
King Faisal International Foundation says
on its website its prize for Sheikh Raed Salah were in recognition of his
following services to Islam:
- Being a preeminent founding member of the Islamic Movement in occupied Palestinian territories in 1948.
- Pursuing distinctive reforms and social services during his chairmanship of the Islamic Movement between 1996-2001.
- Serving as Chairman of al-Aqsa Foundation for the Refurbishment of Revered Islamic Places and Chairman of the Humanitarian Relief Organization in Occupied Palestine.
- Being one of the pioneers who have led many projects in al-Aqsa Mosque, in collaboration with the Islamic Endowment Organization in al-Quds and the Committee for the conservation of the revered al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
- Being the first to discover the tunnel dug under al-Aqsa Mosque by the occupiers.
- Serving his countrymen by working and succeeding, together with al-Rawha Peoples Committee, in preventing the confiscation of al-Rawha land in 1998.
- Organizing regular events titled “al-Aqsa is in Danger” which attract thousands of Palestinians in the occupied territories and help boost their morale.
