World Cup: Qatar’s goal for inter-civilisational dialogue

Qatar, the host of the 2022 Football World Cup, lost the opening game to Ecuador 2-0. But it has already emerged a mighty winner. We are not talking about the successful manner in which it is conducting the 29-day tournament, now into its first week. We are referring to the super goal it scored as the tournament began, for the shot was aimed at bringing about togetherness and unity and clearing the net woven with mutual suspicions people harbor against one another.

During the current World Cup, what we are witnessing in Qatar, the first Arab and Muslim country to host the tournament, is an attempt, rightly so, to establish a dialogue among civilisations through sports instead of a clash of civilisations, of which International Relations expert Samuel Huntington warned the world in the 1990s in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War. 

The talk of a clash of civilisations did not begin with Huntington. The man who first mentioned the phrase was British Orientalist Bernard Lewis when he delivered a lecture at Johns Hopkins University in 1957, arguingthat Islam and the West had differing values which would only be resolved following a conflict.

Regarded as the father of post-9/11 Islamophobia, Lewis spent his entire academic career studying Islam with a view to demonising Muslims and to bringing about a clash between the West and Islam. His toxic ideology became the foundation for American neoconservatives’ sinister plan to invade Iraq and destabilise the Middle East. It was this ideology that led to targets being given Muslim names during military training for US soldiers during the presidency of George W. Bush, an admirer of Lewis and an alleged war criminal. While misrepresenting Islam, Lewis served the purposes of Western imperialist domination.

Lewis died in 2018 at the age of 101. But it appears his venomous Islamophobic ideology is still not dead. Islam remains the most misunderstood religion today, the Muslim is a terrorist, and Islam a cancer because of people like Lewis, Frank Gaffney Jr., who is one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes, and Geert Wilders, the face of anti-Islam hatred in the Netherlands, where, according to a study conducted by the Amsterdam Municipality, Islamophobic racism is increasingly being normalised.
What is needed is not a major war between civilisations but a continuous dialogue and alliance between civilisations to drive home the point that it is in unity in diversity that humanity’s progress lies. 

And this is what the tiny Gulf State of Qatar is attempting to do through football. But before awarding the golden boot, there is a multibillion-dollar poser to Qatar.

Isn’t spending a staggering US$ 220 billion -- 15 times what Russia spent for the 2018 tournament –a social crime, given the desperate search for funds to alleviate global poverty, deal with the Covid pandemic and climate-change challenges, prop up crashing economies of debt-ridden developing countries and eliminate hosts of social ills?
Besidesemerging as a colossus provingits capabilities in hosting a mammoth event, Qatar is also becoming a global force to promote a greater understanding among civilizations. At the opening ceremony, Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, said the tournament his country was hosting was for the good of all humanity. 

“How beautiful it is for people to put aside what divides them to celebrate their diversity and what brings them together at the same time,” he said. 
Keeping with his vision, the theme of the 2022 Soccer World Cup is “Bridging Distances”, signifying – in the words of the tournament’s creative director Ahmed al-Baker -- “a gathering for all mankind, an invitation to come together as one, bridging all differences with humanity, respect,
and inclusion.”

The once-in-four-year greatest show on earth began with a recitation of a Quranic verse by a 20-year-old YouTube star and Qari (reciter), Ghanimal-Muftah, who was born with a rare condition that impairs the development of the lower spine. He was accompanied by Morgan Freeman, the Oscar-winning Hollywood actor. Freeman sat on the pitch as al-Muftah recited the verse that is described by scholars as Islam’s statement of racial equality and universal brotherhood. "O mankind, indeed We have created you from a male and a female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you…” (Quran, 49:13). Freeman added: “We all gather here in one big tribe. How can so many countries, languages, and cultures come together if only one
way is accepted?”

To give more impetus to the inter-civilisational dialogue, Qatar has organised public events to highlight commonalities between the world’s religions. Among those invited to address these events is Dr. Zakir Naik, on whom there is an arrest warrant in India. The Indian scholar now lives in exile in Malaysia which has rebuffed India’s request for his extradition. The scholar has a huge following among Muslims and non-Muslims. In India, he was promoting a Hindu-Muslim dialogue by comparing the common teachings in the Vedas and the Quran, especially the concept of the oneness of God.

Worried about his popularity, the Modi government slapped terrorism charges on him and banned his Peace TV – and even pressurised Sri Lanka to take it off from satellite channels –based on a questionable statement the Bangladeshi government has issued. 

Unfortunately,the important message of the inter-civilizational dialogue Qatar is seeking to establish is not appreciated by its detractors. The BBC, in a highly unwarranted act, blacked out the opening ceremony or underreported it in a move linked to Qatar’s refusal to allow the public display of LGBTQ statements, its alleged human rights violations, especially about migrant labour, and a beer ban at world cup venues.No such pressure was applied on Western companies that gobbled up much of Qatar’s US$220 billion world cup expenditure through construction and service contracts. 

The same BBC, however, embraced Russia and broadcast the 2018 world cup opening ceremony despite Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, an act the West considers illegal.
The BBC’s double standards and the West’s agenda-driven journalism apart,the tournament’s spirit and Qatar’s goal of inter-civilisational unity have been overshadowed by the controversy over LGBTQ rights. Homosexuality is punishable by a prison term in Qatar. The host country has also imposed a ban on the display of banners or publicity material in support of gay sex. It insists that value systems do differ from culture to culture and those who visit Qatar should respect Qatari culture.

In the absence of a universally accepted value system, the Westtrying to impose its value system on Qatar or any other country is indeed cultural colonialism which is incompatible with enlightenment, or a conceited attempt to declare everything West is superior and to force the rest of the world to follow Western values with no questions asked about decadence and disintegration in western societies.