Arab awakening: Qatar's controversial alliance with Arab Islamists
<
http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/andrew-hammond> Andrew Hammond
26 April 2013
Tension with its Gulf neighbours began to rise from 2006 when Qatar and Al
Jazeera stood with Lebanese Shi'ite group Hizbullah during its war with
Israel, while western allied states clearly hoped to see the Iranian-backed
militia wiped out.
Secular activists and politicians in Egypt and officials in Gulf states such
as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - each for their own reasons -
have watched with alarm as the Gulf state, Qatar, and its pan-Arab media arm
Al Jazeera have promoted the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and allied Islamist
groups such as Ennahda in Tunisia.
Islamists, critics charge, are determined to impose their control on the
political scene and have acted in a cavalier majoritarian manner that has
brought both countries into conflicts with leftist and other forces who
oppose Islamist rule. The constant street fighting in Egypt has raised the
possibility of a further descent into communal violence and economic ruin,
though Qatar has given Egypt $1 billion in grants, deposited $4 billion in
the central bank and hinted at investments of much more in value.
Meanwhile, those Gulf states fear that Brotherhood-inspired Islamists in
their midst will, under orders from Cairo, increase their activism for
parliamentary government and challenge the entrenched power systems in
place.
Qatar has been troubling its Gulf Arab peers since 1995. The father of the
current emir, Hamad bin Khalifa, had been reluctant to transform a sleepy
backwater very much in the Saudi orbit into something more, but, with their
eye on vast natural gas resources and emerging liquefication technology, his
son and others in the family including foreign minister Hamad bin Jassim saw
other possibilities. After a coup in that year, the new team embarked on a
series of moves to set Qatar apart as an independent polity making itself
important to as many regional and international players as possible and
developing links with political groups in the Arab world that cut across
regime lines. The United States was invited to establish the Udaid airbase,
Israelis were allowed to open a trade liaison office, and various Arab and
Muslim opposition figures were offered a sanctuary of sorts in Doha.
Tension with its Gulf neighbours began to rise from 2006 when Qatar and Al
Jazeera stood with Lebanese Shi'ite group Hizbullah during its war with
Israel, while western allied states such as Saudi Arabia, and Egypt at the
time, clearly hoped to see the Iranian-backed militia wiped out. In 2011
Qatar even won the right to host the 2022 football World Cup, despite summer
temperatures of 40 C, humidity over 70 percent, and a population of less
than 300,000 Qatari nationals among a total 1.9 million people now living
there - a population so small that Asian residents are paid to fill seats at
its football stadiums.
But there was another strand to the Qatar story, one that is now alarming
its Arab neighbours more than at any time since it all began 17 years ago:
its promotion of Arab Islamist political parties linked to Egypt's Muslim
Brotherhood. Al Jazeera always had a strong contingent of Islamist-leaning
broadcasters and journalists and it hosted from the beginning the
Brotherhood-linked Egyptian cleric Yousef al-Qaradawi, a long-time Doha
resident who had developed close ties with the ruling family. Come the
uprisings of 2011, Qatar was in a position to take on the mantle of enabler
of distant revolts and supporter of Islamist groups linked to Egypt's Muslim
Brotherhood.
Thus, relations between Qatar and other Gulf states are at their most tense
in a while since the street violence erupted in November between pro- and
anti-Brotherhood forces in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates' arrest and
trial of 94 Islamists on charges of forming a group aiming to overthrow the
system of government. The "question of Qatar" has become a favourite parlour
game. Influenced by this pervasive anti-Brotherhood atmosphere in their host
countries, diplomats, analysts, policy makers and journalists in places like
Dubai or Abu Dhabi feverishly debate the opaque decision-making processes in
Qatar and wonder if Qatar as a state or perhaps the emir himself are going
to pay some kind of price for the insolence of their dissonant tone in an
era of febrile fear and loathing. The emir came by coup, he could leave by
one too, commentators say in private.
Yet, if there's a major policy rethink in the offing, truth be told there is
little sign of it inside Qatar itself. At last week's Arab summit in Doha,
the emir and his foreign minister strutted triumphantly, commanding more
attention at the annual gathering of Arab leaders than in a long time. The
emir had before him leaders of countries Qatar has helped 'coach' in one way
or another through the Arab Spring - Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Libya, and
Morocco and Yemen where it has subtle ties to Islamist parties now with a
place in government.
Qatar provided the critical political and financial muscle for operations
that brought down Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi - formerly a close friend of
the emir - and which Qatar still hopes will bring down Syrian president
Bashar al-Assad - another close friend. Just days before, Qatar had done it
again - sidelining the head of the Syrian National Coalition Moaz al-Khatib,
who had been in favour of negotiations with the Assad regime, by
coordinating with the Syrian Brotherhood to have a US-based Brotherhood
figure Ghassan Hito appointed head of an interim Syrian government-in-exile.
Egypt's Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, a veteran Brotherhood figure, sat
opposite the emir with something of a smirk on this face before dozing off
to sleep: for his critics, nothing could better symbolize his delivery of
Egypt to a new Gulf patron.
At a post-summit press conference, Hamad bin Jassim, Qatar's foreign
minister since 1992, took a possibly planted question from an Egyptian
journalist about Qatar's penchant for the Brotherhood. He picked up on the
most ridiculous of the rumours in the fevered environment of Egypt, that
Qatar would 'buy' the Pyramids or 'rent' the Suez Canal, in order to easily
knock them down, arguing that Qatar's help for post-uprising Egypt began
during the rule of the military before the Brotherhood won elections. "There
are people who want to spread these rumours, like buying the Pyramids or
renting the Suez Canal. Egypt's affairs are Egypt's and nothing to do with
us. Qatar deals with governments not individuals," he said, in confident
tones. "Qatar didn't call for these revolutions but they started because of
circumstances there, authoritarianism, and the desire for leaders to pass on
their rule (to their sons). Qatar has given support to Arab Spring countries
without consideration of who rules them."
Doha remains for now a mini Ikhwanistan, an oasis of Islamism where
suppressed debates elsewhere - such as 'will Al Saud survive the uprisings?'
or 'is the ongoing trial of 94 Islamists and rights activists in the UAE a
sham?' - are fair game for public discussion.
Islamists from around the region are a notable presence in university
departments, think tanks and other non-government organisations and there is
a constant flow of Islamist politicians to Doha seminars and forums.
Mohammed al-Mukhtar al-Shangiti, a Mauritanian Islamic studies professor who
often comments on Al Jazeera, launched into a scathing critique of Saudi
Arabia when I visited him at the Qatar Foundation. "The Saudi state is a
disaster for Islam and for Saudi people, and I hope it will change peaceably
and gradually, otherwise it will change violently," he said. "These are
explosive youth and they cannot let the situation go on like this. Saudi
Arabia as it is today cannot continue."
Salah Alzein, a Sudanese analyst who heads the Al Jazeera Centre for
Studies, suggested the UAE would soon face pressure to change tack and
accept the Brotherhood: "For how long can the UAE continue aggressively
standing against the Muslim Brotherhood and making that the basis of its
policy? You start having problems with Egypt and Qatar, and maybe Turkey.
How much will you achieve with that?" You don't often hear such opinions
expressed so bluntly and openly in the Gulf.
Qatar has no formal Brotherhood branch, or front organization like Islah in
the UAE, after the local chapter of the Brotherhood dissolved itself a
decade ago. But its promotion of the group regionally and hosting of so many
sympathisers seems unconcerned that they might try to organize amongst
Qataris, who, ironically, given Al Jazeera and its remit to educate the
Arabs about the Arabs, are among perhaps the most depoliticized people in
the entire Arab world. Yet there are Qataris who as individuals espouse
Brotherhood thought. Jassim Sultan runs a study centre (Tanmiya for Studies
and Consulting) and website that promotes a "nahda", or "renaissance", in
the Arab world. The word is significant; it is a key term in the lexicon of
modern political Islam, the same word in the name of the Tunisian Ennahda
party and the slogan Egyptian Islamist president Mohammed Morsi and his
Freedom and Justice Party also used in election campaigns over the past two
years. Sultan's NGO was involved in organising a conference of Islamists in
Kuwait two years ago that was scrapped after Saudi pressure.
Gulf fears of the Brotherhood, and Qatar's policy towards them, are
exaggerated, Sultan said, chatting one morning in the offices of his study
centre in the old, skyscraper-free downtown area of Doha. "Nothing has
changed in the Islamists' thinking about the existing regimes. Most of the
Brotherhood people in the Gulf are from ruling families or are close to the
ruling families so they are hardly subversive groups," he said. "They are
not populist movements like in Egypt or other places and they do not have a
major cause to fight for; there's no pressing economic circumstance causing
people to formulate specific demands and in the light of the abundant
capital in the Gulf, the ceiling of people's dreams for political
participation is very low. It might rise with some elites but they don't
have widespread support."
Peppering his speech with reverential references to Brotherhood founder
Hassan al-Banna or its infamous ideologue Sayed Qutb, who was executed under
Nasser, Sultan thinks both Islamists and their opponents could be excused
for political immaturity after decades of repressive rule. "I'm not
disappointed with the Islamists in general because I know that they have not
had a chance to review thinking that has remained unchanged since the
movement was founded. I fear that this is not something for Islamists only
but leftists too. There is a big nostalgia for the former socialist
situation in Egypt and you find a tense language used towards capitalism and
economic systems in the world," he said, displaying the neo-liberal
sympathies that dominate Brotherhood thinking today.
Some Qataris are disturbed by their country's Islamist shift, but the
concern is restricted to a narrow band of liberal intellectuals and
puritanical Salafis, who have always found Qaradawi and the Brotherhood way
too moderate in the scheme of Islamist politics. The big question is if this
policy is based on a strategic reading of how to maximize Qatar's
importance, or perhaps reflects an ideological tendency among the senior
members of the ruling Al Thani family. "It's a difficult question. Perhaps
it's to support Arab peoples, to support the oppressed, to encourage Qatar's
role in the Arab world. It's complex and it's not clear. The Qatari people
don't take political decisions. There is no parliament, this is the
direction of individuals in the state and the people are distanced from it,"
said Hassan Al Sayed, a constitutional law professor at Qatar University.
"Maybe most people support it, but intellectuals ask, where will this lead?
- though that's a minority. Some think it could lead to disasters,
politically, financially, even on a personal level."
Within Qatar, the authorities have tried to strike a balance among different
ideological forces in society, including Salafism, Muslim Brotherhood
thought and liberals. When Brotherhood and other Egyptian cadres moved over
in the 1950s and 1960s, Qatar's emirs also brought over Wahhabi clerics from
Saudi Arabia. A large mosque in the name of Mohammed Ibn Abdulwahhab, the
Salafi ideologue who helped found the modern Saudi state and gave his name
to Wahhabism, was opened in 2011 in Doha, in an apparent effort to mollify
Salafis over liberal and Brotherhood gains. "It's more realpolitik and
balancing than promoting a specific group," said Shangiti. "The Religious
Endowment Ministry is in the hands of the Salafis and part of society has
this tendency. You find a big presence of Brotherhood in some institutions
like Al Jazeera, but not just the Brotherhood, Islamists in general. The
Qatari ministry of culture is dominated by Arab nationalists."
Defenders argue that it is not only Islamists who have a place in Qatar, it
is Arab nationalists too - part of a vision pursuing a new Arab renaissance,
the same reasoning the regime has always given for setting up Al Jazeera, or
Doha's prestigious Museum of Islamic Art or more recent contemporary Arab
art museum Mathaf. "Qatar is trying to promote what they call the 'elements
of strength' of the Arab nation, that's their vision - meaning Islamists and
Arab nationalists," says Shangiti. "They think they have a historic
responsibility to strengthen these elements in Arab societies. Tactics
change, they can be on good or bad terms with this or that leader, but the
broad vision is there. (The emir) is looking at it as a moral
responsibility, that's why they are paying a lot. They never give up and now
the Arab Spring is giving them more strength not to give up."
The question is, given the reach of the Brotherhood regionally and its long
historic ties in Qatar, how easy would it be for the ruling clique to ditch
the Islamists, even if they wanted to? Qatar was able to pick up, and then
drop, Hizbullah. When Hizbullah survived the war in 2006, Qatar rode the
wave of popularity that its leader Hassan Nasrallah then had. Similarly, in
2008 when Israel tried and failed to crush Hamas in Gaza, Qatar was there
cheerleading them on, sensing the pulse of the Arab street.
But things changed radically once the uprisings erupted. The Syrian leader
Bashar al-Assad was a key player in the 'axis of resistance' to western
hegemony that included Iran and Hamas. Qatar turned against Assad, Hizbullah
stood with him. It wouldn't be as easy for the emir to order Al Jazeera to
switch off the Brotherhood.
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Received on Fri Apr 26 2013 - 17:37:27 EDT
