Daily Times

The Economist, a renowned British journal wrote a piece titled Muhammad Bin Salman, “The millennial autocrat who controls our oil,” with a racist feature image. The article focused on how in-demand MBS has never been and how he “took on American and won.”

Ghada AlMuhanna, a Saudi Arabian writer, criticised the renowned British journal for disrespecting Arab visual identity. She wrote, “What an abhorrently nasty and racist cover,” pointing out the picture of an Arabic shemagh lining a fuse bomb (also known as the keffiyeh or Arab scarf).

Ghada further wrote, “Instead of being proud of your cover, own up to the horrendous prejudice against Arabs that you and your colleagues exhibited, @RosieBlau With this design you reinforced the image of Arabs (almost 500 mil.) being terrorists. This is truly inexcusable and unacceptable.”

The Saudi Journalist further adds that “I can imagine if this were any other cultural background, the editors would take so many precautions as not to offend anyone. I mean, what if this were a man wearing a kippah? How would this be perceived? Or a man in a turban? Would they think twice? Personally, I believe so.”

Activist Usama Khilji stated, “This is outrageously racist – can’t believe none of the editors see it and think this would be acceptable. There’s nothing brilliant about bigotry and racism. Takes another level of tone-deaf to do this in 2022. Retract this cover and apologise now.”

“The article is false, fictitious and contradictory.The article is clearly politically oriented…Very funny,” another twitter user said.

Besides the cover, the Internet community called out The Economist for saying ‘our oil.’ “Our oil? No wonder the Iraq invasion was justified,”