DOHA, Qatar — I arrived here a week ago as the tide of Arab-Muslim anger over the infamous Danish cartoons collided with the barbarism of those who murder in God’s name demolishing one of the holiest shrines of Shiite Islam in Samarra, Iraq.
I was a guest of the Doha Foundation and its project, The Doha Debates, whose patrons are the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and his wife, Sheikha Mayassa bin Hamad.
My companion and debating partner in Doha, David Frum, wrote about this visit — an invitation to debate whether Hamas, recently elected by Palestinians to administer the Palestinian Authority, should be recognized by the international community — in the National Post earlier this week.
(Our position was that Hamas should not be recognized. Not surprisingly, a strong majority of the audience sided with the opposing position. The debate will be televised on BBC World today and tomorrow — for more information, log on to the website, thedohadebates. com.)
Doha is the capital of Qatar, with less than a million people. Nearly two-thirds are expatriate workers from countries of south and southeast Asia, and Arabs mainly from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria.
It recalled to me anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s neat observation that a wink might disclose a universe of meanings. So here are my random thoughts from an eye-opening journey to a part of the world that dominates news, but is rarely understood.
Qatar is an immensely rich emirate floating on oil and natural gas. It has the wealth to buy what the world offers without breaking a sweat, and to preserve this enviable situation Qatar needs a trustworthy protector.
Qatar and her sister emirates on the Gulf were protected by Britain until 1971. During the high noon of the British Raj, this area was administered from Delhi, but Britain’s gradual withdrawal from the region following the Suez crisis of 1956 left a political vacuum.
Iran under the Shah provided a counterweight to the radicals in the region pursuing the chimera of revolutionary utopia. Then the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran unleashed a tumult still raging across the region, its highs and lows stoked by quarrels that cut across ethnic lines and religious loyalties while traditional values are besieged by the outside world.
The United States filled the void Britain left behind. Qatar discreetly became America’s most important military base in the Gulf, and behind its protective shield the Emir’s ambition to make the country a haven for business has soared.
But it comes with a price. Doha is also the headquarters of the virulently anti-American Arab television network Al-Jazeera and the home of Sheikh Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric who is a fierce apologist for supporters of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida and a defender of suicide bombings.
Qatar’s dominant creed is the Wahhabi version of Islam, though somewhat more relaxed than that found in Saudi Arabia. Here, women may appear in public with their faces uncovered, and have permission to drive cars on their own (unlike Saudi Arabia). But this is progress seething with trouble, and its management is the ruler’s nightmare.
Qatar and her sister emirates are at the eastern end of the Arab world; Morocco is on the western end. The two ends of the Arab world are yet ruled by traditional tribal dynasties where a degree of calm reigns as rage consumes Arab lands between the two ends.
Keeping Qatar safe is the Emir’s dilemma. He has bought it with oil money and cunning diplomacy or, more bluntly, the hypocrisy of those who live at the edge of looming peril.
I leave wishing the Emir and his people well, surrounded as they are by angry men envying Qatar’s fortune, scorning its protector, and ready to torch their world.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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