A former British diplomat has been accused of racism after he reportedly told students at Oxford University that “the Arabic mind is empty”.
Former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia, from 2003 to 2006, and top HSBC executive Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles was speaking at a dinner at the university, when he allegedly said he wished he had learnt to speak Chinese, instead of Arabic, because China is apparently “more interesting”.
Sir Sherard, HSBC’s head of public affairs, said “the Arabic mind is empty compared to the Chinese”, according to sources who shared their comments to The Mail on Sunday.
The remarks were condemned.
“It is racist and not acceptable at all,” author and prominent Arab commentator Abdel Bari Atwan was quoted as saying in the report.
“It is definitely very humiliating to the Arabs. To say that their brain is empty is a huge insult.
“I don’t know how a former diplomat like him managed to say these kinds of things.”
However, the 68-year-old diplomat, who is also the China-Britain Business Council (CBBC) lobbying group chairman, said: “These selective comments, which have been taken out of context, were personal remarks made at a private event to raise the understanding of China.
“They do not reflect the views of either HSBC or CBBC.”
This is not the first time Sir Sherard exhibited foot-in-mouth diplomacy as he aplogised in June following remarks at a separate closed-door event in London where he branded Britain ‘weak’ for bowing to US demands in its approach to Beijing.
His latest comments were made at the beginning of a dinner hosted by the government-funded Great Britain-China Centre, attended by so-called ‘future leaders’ who are embarking on a ‘crash course’ on China.
The British tabloid added that during his extempore speech, Sir Sherard told students that after joining the Foreign Office in the late 1970s he opted to learn to speak Arabic because of the importance of the Middle East to world affairs.
He joked that the department was known as the ‘camel corps’ at the time.
The daily added that an audience member claimed that the former diplomat said he regretted not learning Chinese because “the Arabic mind is empty compared to the Chinese”.
Another person recalled that in a ‘jokey way’ Sir Sherard claimed that “compared with the Chinese mind, the Arab mind is relatively empty”.
Sir Sherard did not deny making the remarks when The Mail on Sunday approached him at his £2 million home in West London.
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