It was named after and principally funded by the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
[1][2] Based in Abu Dhabi, the center hosted lectures by notable personalities such as former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, former U.S.
[3][4] As a result of international outcry, Sheikh Zayed shut down the center in August 2003, saying that the think-tank "had engaged in a discourse that starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous anti-Semitic forgery created in the 19th century to vilify Jews, was held up as a factual account of a Jewish plan to "control the world."
Speakers included Mr. Rami Tahbob, advisor to Al Quds' File on Arab Affairs, who claimed that Israel was trying to control the Palestinian population through the use of "chemical drugs," according to the Zayed Center website; Michael Collins Piper, a Washington-based political writer and conspiracy theorist,[6] who claimed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are "not a theory but a real fact," that Israel is developing an ethnic bomb that will kill only Arabs, and that the Mossad was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Watergate scandal and the Monica Lewinsky affair; and Lyndon LaRouche, who spoke about global finance and his proposal for a transcontinental highway.