30 years ago, I attended the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in St. Paul's Cathedral, and today, I am attending the wedding of their son Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey, which is adjacent to my children's secondary school and overlooks Parliament Square and Big Ben. I say ‘attended' figuratively, because I am sure that my invitation to Prince Charles's and then Prince William's wedding was lost in the mail. I and Prince Charles after all have been partners in the dialogue of Islam and the West for 30 years, and I was invited several times to Clarence House, his home in London, and to Highgrove House, his country home and also to Buckingham Palace. Of course, I am joking with the reader, who was not invited either to the wedding, whether 30 years ago or today. Even if we live for another 30 years, neither I nor the reader will be invited to the weddings of William and Kate's children. My humor is in response to the way the UK and US press, which I read every day, are dealing with the wedding of the Heir Apparent son's wedding as though it is the most important news in the world. They have been doing this for more than a month now, and the material published on this event has surpassed the material on the ongoing global financial crisis, the war in Afghanistan, terrorist attacks, and the Arab uprisings and also the bankruptcy of the United States. There are many sections and supplements published by the press in London every day, dedicated to the wedding of the Heir Apparent. I was surprised to see the Washington Post run special reports on the royal wedding on a daily basis, which included dozens of comments and investigations. And when I requested all news published on the wedding by the very prolific electronic newspaper the Huffington Post, I received 26 pages full of such news. Even the train on Diana's wedding dress was the topic for a news story. The train was 25 feet, or about eight meters, and the bride back then stumbled and lurched as she walked into the church and then as she walked out, while her bridesmaids were not sure how to carry it to help her move. Kate Middleton will certainly wear a more modest wedding dress, and I wish the bride and groom a happy life and healthy successors, both sons and daughters. I expect that the bride will have a better luck than her late mother in law, and she is indeed smarter, better educated and free from Diana's fickleness and frivolity. Today, perhaps the most accurate thing for me to say is that I am following the royal wedding, not attending it. But in reality, if I had the choice, I would not be following it either. I am doing so against my will, because I am in London and thus caught in the middle of this event. And while I thought I was a ‘spoilsport' who doesn't care for weddings, I read that a poll showed that three-quarters of Britons are not interested in the royal wedding, and would prefer to ignore it if they could. I believe it highly likely that if a similar poll were to be conducted in the United States, it would show that three-quarters of Americans are very much interested in the royal wedding in Britain, although they had expelled British royal rule 235 years ago and declared their independence. It seems that they now regret this, as 1.5 million tourists came to London to follow the wedding, including scores of Americans. Those who cannot watch the royal couple in the procession carriage go to and then from the church, can watch it instead on a large television screen in Trafalgar Square (from Al-Taraf Al-Aghar), or Hyde Park. Inside the church, there will be 1500 guests today, including a thousand of the couple's friends, 52 members of the British royal family, 46 foreign royals, and 26 clergymen, including an imam and a rabbi. While former British prime ministers are usually invited, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, thankfully, were not. The Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa and his wife Sheikha Mozah Al Missned will be there, but Prince Salman bin Hamad, Crown Prince of Bahrain, will not. He announced he will not attend at the last minute, because of the incidents in his country. Bahraini dissidents in Britain had protested against the invitation of the Crown Prince of Bahrain to attend the wedding, and threatened to stage demonstrations. The odd thing is that London's liberal newspapers supported them, although these people are supporters of Iran and are extremists, and belong to the minority in Bahrain which ruined the dialogue efforts led by Prince Salman. The protests also involved Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf, the Saudi ambassador who will attend the wedding along with the ambassadors of countries around the world, accompanied by his wife Princess Fadwa al-Abdullah. The reason is that Saudi troops were deployed to Bahrain, and I do not understand this. Should Bahrain be handed over to Iran's people so that London's left-leaning press is satisfied? I will put this absurdity aside. Today I await to hear the speech by Prince Harry, the best man, who promised not to say anything that would upset his grandmother Queen Elizabeth, but to say what will make his brother the groom lose some of his hair. Prince William fell in love with Kate when he saw her at a student fashion show in a see-through and very revealing dress. His major is geography, so he is an expert on curves and angles. Congratulations! (I will return to the Syrian issue tomorrow.) [email protected]
