Orwellian doublethink: Why West has no moral right to lecture Qatar despite its jihadi connections

“Doublethink” is a typical Orwellian word. It simultaneously accepts two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with each other. As George Orwell writes in Nineteen Eighty-Four, doublethink is “to know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies… to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy…”

On Saturday, a day before the 2022 football World Cup kicked off in Doha, FIFA president Gianni Infantino came out all guns blazing against Western countries, critical of Qatar hosting the global sporting event. As he criticised the West for being in no position to give “moral lessons” to other nations, the Orwellian ‘doublethink’ became glaringly obvious. “I’m European. For what we Europeans have been doing around the world in the last 3,000 years, we should be apologising for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons to people,” Infantino said.

The FIFA chief has a point as no one has ravaged, devastated and decimated indigenous societies and cultures across the world as the European nation-states. Within a century, nine-tenth of the indigenous population was annihilated in America; those few who survived were doomed to die a slow death. Five hundred years ago, there was no white population in America; today, it is an overwhelmingly white continent. Australian Aborigines faced a similar devastating fate. Africa continues to suffer exploitation — first from the Europeans and now the Chinese have joined the race.

As for India, Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion between 1765 and 1938, which, to put in perspective, is 17 times more than the total annual gross domestic product of the UK today. As for the loss of life in India, the casualty in just one man-made Bengal famine in 1943 — brilliantly brought out by Madhusree Mukerjee in Churchill’s Secret War — was more than three million people, just because then British prime minister Winston Churchill “instead of sending emergency food shipments” used the wheat and ships at his disposal “to build stockpiles for feeding post-War Britain and Europe”. And all this was done — in India, and across the world — in the name of “civilising the savage”!

The Western doublethink continues till date. For the West, which didn’t think twice in participating in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and was more than willing to disregard the Dragon’s wretched democratic/libertarian record, waking up to Qatar’s human rights record seemed ludicrous. The US committed a similar hara-kiri in the early 1970s when Richard Nixon’s pathological hatred for India and Indians, combined with America’s skewed Cold War calculations, thawed the Sino-American ties with obvious Pakistani support; this realignment of ideologically divergent forces caused genocide of an unprecedented scale in what was then East Pakistan. As Gary J Bass writes in his intense but highly engaging book The Blood Telegram, “In one of the awkward alignments of the Cold War, President Richard Nixon had lined up the democratic United States with this authoritarian government (Mao’s China), while the despots in the Soviet Union found themselves standing behind democratic India.”

The democratic West’s apathy for democratic India hasn’t just been episodic in nature. No wonder, the US saw India as a “fearsome hegemon”, while Pakistan, was regarded as a “beleaguered friend of yore”, as the then Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recalled in 1992, based on a New York Times report filed on a copy of the United States Defense Planning Guide for the post-Cold War era! No wonder, last month, the US Ambassador to Pakistan during his visit to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir had no qualms in publicly calling POK “Azad Kashmir”! This very mindset makes the West ignore the sinister jihadi designs in Kashmir, but let woolly-headed liberals’ heart bleed for the lack of Internet services in the Valley (obviously, shut down due to terror apprehensions)!

The Western doublethink was evident this April too when the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) came out with its 2022 Annual Report, in which democratic India found itself clubbed with communist China, Islamist Pakistan, autocratic North Korea, fundamentalist Saudi Arabia, and terror-infested Syria and Afghanistan. More ironically, Iraq, Cuba, Nicaragua, Malaysia, etc, found themselves better placed than India! Prof Salvatore Babones, an American intellectual based in Australia, during his recent India visit, too exposed this Western propensity to denigrate India and its democracy.

Qatar’s deep jihadi links

The Qatar story, however, isn’t that simple and straight-forward. If the West can be accused of doublethink, Qatar isn’t far behind either. For, here’s the country that found itself terribly offended during the recent Nupur Sharma episode, but didn’t think twice in giving citizenship to MF Husain, an Indian citizen accused of hurting Hindu sentiments by painting their gods and goddesses naked. In India, there are several temples with naked sculptures of gods and goddesses. So, in such things it’s the intent that matters. Here one needs to remember that Husain had once made a painting of Mahatma Gandhi, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler. Of these, he painted Hitler nude and reportedly said that this was his way of humiliating the German dictator. Was the intent the same for Maa Sita and Maa Saraswati? Also, the famed painter never extended his courtesy to gods and goddesses of other religions, more so his own!

Qatar has also been generous in providing financial support and patronage to fugitive Zakir Naik, who incidentally, if media reports are to be believed, will deliver religious lectures throughout the World Cup. Naik is accused of money laundering and hate speech in India. As per the Ministry of Home affairs (MHA) notification, dated 30 March 2022, Naik has “been promoting forcible conversion of the youth to Islam, justifying the suicide bombings, posting objectionable comments against Hindus, Hindu gods, and other religions, which are derogatory to other religions”. Still, Qatar has no qualms in supporting Naik and his Islamic Research Foundation.

This, however, is just the tip of Qatar’s jihadi connections. The country has deep ties with designated terrorist outfits such as Al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic State (ISIS), Muslim Brotherhood, Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), etc. According to a Wikileaks cable, Terrorist Finance: Action Request for Senior Level Engagement on Terrorism Finance, dated 30 December 2009, “Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, UN-1267 listed LeT, and other terrorist groups exploit Qatar as a fundraising locale.”One can also understand the deep nexus from the fact that Qatar has been playing a significant role — Pakistan has a real competition here — in normalising the Taliban globally, with even the Indian delegation reportedly meeting the Islamist militia in Doha last year.

Qatar has also granted citizenship to Yusuf Al Qaradawi, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood. According to an Arab News report, published on 1 April 2019, Al-Qaradawi had “issued fatwas authorising attacks on all Jews”. He wanted them counted and killed one by one. Yet, the Qatari authorities found no compunction in giving him citizenship.

Conclusion

As the football World Cup begins in Doha on Sunday, it also kicks off a debate about competing ‘doublethinks’ of Qatar and the West. Qatar would have found itself among pariah nations by now, had it not been for the hypocrisy of the West that swears by democracy but is often found embracing some of the worst dictators and human rights abusers in world history. In this almost dystopian world order, where conflicting ideologies often go hand in hand, we can at least cherish a game that’s beautiful and which unites the world as nothing else. Let the blame games stop. Time for more kicks than pricks!

The author is Opinion Editor, Firstpost and News18. He tweets from @Utpal_Kumar1. Views expressed are personal.

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