The Arab World Cup

The principle of sovereignty demands that one country must respect the internal politics of another. It is an important principle, even if it is limited, as without it, one country could not be held accountable for interfering in another every time it dislikes its policies and politics. The limits are also clear. If genocide occurs and other, systematic, violence directed against a particular group occurs, the community of nations, as represented in the United Nations, is called upon to intervene in order to protect those being targeted.

If we accept and apply this framework, then Qatar is not high up on the list of concern, but those countries who are in clear violations of international treaties and conventions, like Russia, China, and several others.

The USA and Europe itself, due to their suppression of voting right (in Georgia a bill was passed that discriminates minorities) and their treatment of migrants at the European borders, would then be on the list of violators and potential targets of international intervention. And yet, as the world watches the FIFA men’s soccer world cup, the Western media, and the population it reaches, seem to focus their critique on Qatar.

On a Wikipedia page entitled “2022 FIFA World Cup Controversies,” entries are grouped into different categories and ordered by importance: “Human Rights Issues; Climate; Transportation; Cost; Cultural and Political Issues; Corruption Controversies; and Boycotts. Under each of these headlines, the interested reader can find details about what critique is being voiced against holding a soccer world cup in Qatar.

In comparison, the entries under world cup 2018, held in Russia, contain less entries (corruption being No. 1 on the list) and the world cup of 2014, held in Brazil, even less, with “construction” leading the list. This is even though Russia is barely a haven of democracy and human rights, and Brazil is consistently ranked among the most corrupt and worst violators of human rights in the world. Russia, however, is close to Western Europe and Brazil was a European colony and thus predominantly Christian. Both Russia and Brazil are perceived by many Western European observers and commentators as being relatively similar to Western European culture and religion.

Brazilian violations

South Africa, of course, was the first African country to host the FIFA men’s soccer world cup, in 2010 and the Western media coverage was similarly critical as it is now. Most Western European commentary back then focused on refereeing and soccer internals, such as qualifying matches, thus hinting at South Africa’s perceived “lack of competence” to host such an event. Interestingly, the Wikipedia website dedicated to 2010 world cup controversies also lists “animal sacrifices” as a contentious issue, ranked second in importance, indicating similarities to the current controversies about Qatar. It appears that cultural practices and believes become the target of controversy among Western media and its audience, whenever they diverge from the European or North American norm.

South Africa, of course, was the first African country to host the FIFA men’s soccer world cup, in 2010 and the Western media coverage was similarly critical as it is now.

2022 will be the first time that such a major international sports event is held in a Muslim country of the Arab world, in the Middle East. All previous hosts since 1930, the year this international competition was created, were either Western European or Latin American, except for South Africa.

The Western media coverage of this event is predictably problematic and Western public opinion seems to follow suit of the framing the Western media is applying when reporting on Qatar. Western chauvinism and white supremacy are dripping from many of the coverages and commentaries offered.

Qatar is, of course, a hereditary monarchy, ruled by the House of Thani. It is the home of many migrants, who, according to Amnesty International, make up 90 percent of the local work force. The law of the land is Sharia – Islamic canonical law. The constructions of the infrastructure to host the world cup was not without accidents. According to The Guardian, “6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since the World Cup was awarded” (Headline from Feb. 23, 2021). What we do not learn from this media coverage is how many fatalities other word cups have caused in the past, so that we can put these numbers in perspective. As almost the entire Qatari workforce consists of migrants, we should not be surprised that those who died were, well, migrants. The fact that so many people around the globe choose Qatar as their migration destination indicates how attractive this small, rich country is to many. Qatar has among the highest per capita incomes in the world and their Human Development Index of 0.84 is considered very high.

Arab boys and colonial attitudes

Why is that? Because, according to Mhaka, “I am confident that this year’s World Cup will impress many 11-year-old Arab and African boys and girls, just as the 1986 competition [in Mexico] wowed me. And I firmly believe that most Africans will stand with Qatar as it hosts the World Cup.” (Al Jazeera Opinion, Nov. 14, 2022).

Predominant Western media-led opinion, instead of critically analyzing themselves, engage in one of their favored activities: measuring and judging other countries, cultures, and religions.

And, as has been the case since colonization, the measuring stick is simply: the closest a culture or religion to our own, Christian, culture, the better and the more different from “us,” the worse. On this scale of globally applied chauvinism, Arab Muslims following Sharia law are not surprisingly classified as very distant from the way Western Christian culture is imagined.

A British creation

For many others, migration is not as voluntary as for most Europeans, as many Qatari households actively recruit service personnel, mostly from India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines to work as domestic servants and in construction. Still, Qatar is a country many seek to pursue their dreams of prosperity and well-being. Those who move there choose to adapt to the culture and values of a Muslim country with its own traditions, values, and mores.

Those Western, secular, and mostly non-practicing Christians who want to attend the world cup should take inspiration from this and restrain themselves from engaging in behavior deemed inappropriate or illegal in Qatar. They should ask themselves what their expectations towards migrants and visitors to their own country are and act, accordingly, following the golden rule: treat others as you want to be treated.

As a political scientist, I am tempted to add some comments about the foreign policy dimension of this event. Hosting the word cup represents a political opportunity for Qatar. Doing so is part of the repertoire of a country’s foreign policy. Foreign policy seeks to achieve national goals through hard and soft power, where hard power is based on military capability and threat and soft power on diplomacy and influence.

As the host of the 2022 FIFA world cup, Qatar can show the world what it has to offer. The infrastructure built for this event, but also the infrastructure of the city of Doha, will surely impress the world, as Doha rises from a very hostile desert. Qatari officials have already signaled that the world cup will be carbon neutral, relying to a great extent on solar energy.

Promotion of business

Qatar can become a leader in this field and an exporter of alternative energy production, mostly based on solar energy, once their oil runs out, but hopefully long before that. The world cup will help the Qatari government and Qatari businesses in the promotion of their foreign policy and business objectives.

A feminist foreign policy, as advocated by German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, would, of course, be a great achievement – if German security and prosperity could be achieved by collaborating only with those countries whose values overlap with Germany’s own.

However, the fact that Qatar is hosting the 2022 world cup also represents great opportunities for other countries, including those of the West. They pursue the same foreign policy strategies and the goals, namely, to achieve security and prosperity for their populations through international interactions. At least, that is what they should do. Recent events have demonstrated that those who lead and rule some Western European countries have failed to achieve security and prosperity for their populations, pushing them instead into dependencies with unreliable partners such as Russia.

A feminist foreign policy, as advocated by German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, would, of course, be a great achievement – if German security and prosperity could be achieved by collaborating only with those countries whose values overlap with Germany’s own. Unfortunately, this is not the case and most likely will never come true, as European countries simply do not have enough of those resources upon which German prosperity is built.

The European public, however, while not responsible for designing, let alone executing European foreign policy, should question the kind of solidarity that is conditioned upon similarity of culture, religion, and values. Only standing with those who are like “us” ultimately means standing alone and as my parenthesizing “us” indicates, it is no longer clear what mainstream European values truly are. “We” are no longer just Christian, white, and secular.