Newsweek: Global Elite 2008 list

So here’s a list of the top 50 most powerful people in the world according to Newsweek that I’ve just spent loads of time browsing and it’s actually quite interesting ;) Many names from all round the world that I didn’t know are on it and some are very curious. My personal “WTF? OMG!” one is E. A. Adeboye, who is the most important figure of Pentecostal Christians worldwide and is based in Nigeria:

The world now has about 600 million Pentecostals, the largest group of Christians after Roman Catholics. In Asia, the number of Pentecostals has grown from about 10 million to 166 million since 1970, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. In Latin America, Pentecostals have expanded from 13 million to 151 million; in North America, from 19 million to 77 million; and in Africa, from 18 million to 156 million. By 2050 most of Africa will be Christian, estimates Grant Wacker, professor of Christian history at Duke University?and most of those Christians will be Pentecostals.

The list consists mainly of politicians, businessmen and economists, but it gets more whacky the lower you get, where a lot of the names are put down because of the power they hold in the realm of religion. There’s two military people on the list also, as well as some names from the realm of IT.
There are only two people from the entertainment industry that are named.
At no. 35 it’s John Lasseter - an American animator who is the chief creative officer at Pixar. I find it very suiting that it’s a Hollywood animator rather than a Hollywood star that is leading the list since animation is developing extremely rapidly worldwide and changing the film industry significantly.
And at no. 41 (I almost died of giggles) - it’s Shahrukh Khan. At first I thought it was rather ridiculous to see his name on a list that includes people like Barack Obama, Kim Jong Il, General David Petraeus and Osama bin Laden (just one place behind Shahrukh which got me giggling even more). But then when I went through the whole list and read their explanation I think I understand why they put him there. It’s about what I’ve been fixating about lately too - Shahrukh Khan’s role in promoting a secular kind of Islam. Still a bit funny to see that noticed by Newsweek though lol And I wonder if they’re right. I wish he really did have that much power in promoting secular Islam *sigh*

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