ثناء المحبّين
What they said of him
The man who came to expose him
The most useful testimony on this page was written by someone who set out to prove the opposite.
The testimonies gathered here come from his wife, from men who worked beside him, from a UN Under-Secretary-General, and from people who had publicly doubted him. Each one carries the name of who said it, where, and when.
Kuwait, in his lifetime
A journalist wrote that he was enriching himself in Africa
Al-Sumait did not answer him in print, and did not complain about him. He telephoned the man at home.
01
The accusation
A Kuwaiti journalist wrote that Al-Sumait was taking donors’ money and playing with it in Africa — and building himself an enormous fortune out of it.
Reference biography · p. 125
02
The telephone call
“My brother, do you know anything about me? Has anything bad about me reached you?” The man did not answer. So Al-Sumait invited him — flights, the best hotels, a month in the field, all paid — to come and look for himself.
Reference biography · pp. 125–126
03
What he filed instead
He could not wait until he was back in Kuwait. He sent his newspaper an article a day from the field, about what he had actually found there.
“I saw in Abdulrahman Al-Sumait the opposite of everything I had been saying about him.”
Reference biography · p. 126 single source
01Acts · 03
And yet
«نحن لا ننتظر شهاداتٍ من أحد، نحن عملنا في الميدان وننتظر من الله فقط أن يتقبّل منّا»
“We are not waiting for anyone’s testimonials. We worked in the field, and we wait only for God to accept it from us.”
His own words, to those who asked about his work · reference biography, p. 125
He refused this page while he was alive. So it is built to his standard rather than to his taste: nothing appears here without a named speaker, a place and a date — and what rests on one source alone says so, in gold.
Register one
3
Said to his face
Thirty years in the field, and this is the whole of what we can document — because he left the room. Praised at the reception desk, he was later found cleaning the lavatory.
Register two
8
Said after 15 August 2013
When he could no longer object. Newspapers, television, a university, the United Nations — and villages that never printed a word. The record is open.
The record
The testimonies
Filter by who is speaking. Those resting on a single source are marked with a gold dot, exactly as in the honours chapter.
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I never had the chance to meet the late Kuwaiti Dr Abdulrahman Al Sumait, but in recent months I’ve come to appreciate the remarkable man that he was. … Al Sumait understood that lifting the world’s poorest out of poverty had to start with the building blocks of life. … And, like our foundation, Dr Al Sumait’s philanthropy was largely focused on the most impoverished people in Africa.
Bill Gates
Co-founder, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation · Arabian Business, 11 November 2015
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Doctor — you gave me a degree the universities of the world could not give me. I took a doctorate in contempt for my own self before great men, and a first-class degree in knowing who the real men of this nation are. But they say what you used to say to me: we worked in the field, and wait for God to accept it of us.
Dr. Fahd Al-Sunaidi
Presenter, «ساعة حوار» · Al-Majd TV · open letter to the deceased · reference biography, p. 609
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He praised me. I wanted to teach myself not to be taken in by it.
Al-Sumait himself
Found cleaning the lavatory, minutes after a donor had praised him at the desk · Yousef Al-Kandari, «عبد الرحمن الفاتح» · reference biography, p. 97
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I saw in Abdulrahman Al-Sumait the opposite of everything I had been saying about him.
A Kuwaiti journalist
Who had accused him in print — and was invited to come and see · reference biography, p. 126 · single source
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He left the arena of competition and called to God in a land people avoid. He was good company, sweet in speech; you never tired of sitting with him.
Dr. Khalid Shuja Al-Otaibi
College of Basic Education, Kuwait · reference biography, p. 609
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A pioneering humanitarian figure in Kuwait, the Arab world and the African continent. He left a humanitarian legacy that will go on making a great difference in the lives of the poor.
Valerie Amos
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs · Al-Rai, 23 September 2013
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Before that journey he asked me, half joking, to write my will — or to choose which animal would eat me, the lion or the leopard. I said: the lion, so my martyrdom has some honour.
Umm Suhaib
His wife · on the 2001 journey through Kenya, Chad and the Central African Republic · reference biography, p. 46
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لستُ في حاجةٍ إلى مال — فقط تشهد أن لا إله إلا الله.
قال: إذن فلتنتظروني! فذهب وأحضر زوجته وأولاده فأسلموا جميعاً.
A da’wah worker, and the man who answered him
Recounted of a journey into the villages · reference biography, p. 576 · translation ours
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He built where no one was building, and he asked no one to watch him do it.
Sheikh Muhammad Al-Khamis
Al-Qabas · 17 August 2013 · wording to be set from the cutting
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The pen he used was not worth half a riyal, and his car was plain and unremarkable — and he could have owned a very great deal.
A colleague
On his manner in Kuwait · reference biography, p. 125
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He was a brother to his patients, not only a doctor — he ached at their pain and carried their worries.
Written of his years in medicine
Kuwait, before Africa · reference biography, p. 79
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Her grandfather’s prize for coming top of her class was a journey. Twenty-seven women took their shahada at the hands of a thirteen-year-old.
Of his granddaughter
The family’s account of what he thought a reward was for · reference biography, p. 47
No testimony in this group yet — it is one of the gaps we are still working to fill.
single source — published, but awaiting a second confirmation before it is presented as settled.
Someone in your family met him.
A letter, a recording, a sentence they still repeat at the table. The record is not closed — and a testimony with a name and a date is worth more to us than a hundred without.
Its twin
What institutions gave him, and what people gave him
Chapter seven is the ledger of medals: eleven decorations from heads of state, an emirate, a university and a royal prize committee. He kept none of the prize money.
This page is the other ledger. Nobody signed these, and nobody could take them back.
Decorations and prizes11
Prize money he kept0
Testimonies on this page11
Sources: the reference biography (pp. 46, 47, 79, 97, 125–126, 576, 609) · Al-Qabas, 17 August 2013 · Al-Rai, 23 September 2013 · «ساعة حوار», Al-Majd TV · «عبد الرحمن الفاتح». Translations from the Arabic are ours and are marked as such. How we handle disputed and single-source material: Sources & Method.