World Cup Triggers Religious Conflicts In Qatar Over Alcohol And LGBTQ Rights
FIFA says LGBTQ flags will be allowed to fly inside Qatari stadiums during next year’s World Cup, despite the Muslim nation’s strict laws against homosexual acts. Wikipedia Commons photo.
It was a typical Liverpool home game at Anfield Road. Fans, forced to watch from home for most of 2021 because of the pandemic, were happy to have returned to the stands at the start of this season despite the ongoing pandemic.
The Dec. 16 match, with Liverpool looking to amass another three points in its quest for a Premier League title, featured plenty of cheering and goals. In the end, Liverpool emerged on top after scoring three unanswered goals in a 3-1 win against Newcastle, a team recently purchased by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
What Liverpool fans have witnessed so far this season could result in yet another championship as the best team in England — where Manchester City, owned by the UAE-based Abu Dhabi United Group, is currently in first place. Better still, the Reds, as the team is also known, remain in contention to win the UEFA Champions League: the most competitive club competition on the planet, which crowns the best team in Europe.
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Liverpool’s star striker — and the man who has spearheaded the team since his arrival in the summer of 2017 — is Mohammed Salah. The Egyptian-born player isn’t just a scoring machine — his play has helped shatter negative stereotypes about Muslims.
Like many soccer players, Salah, 29, is a practicing Muslim and has incorporated his faith in his goal celebrations, often dropping to his knees and placing his head on the ground. The gesture of prostrating oneself to God — known as “sujud” — is welcomed by Liverpool fans with wild cheers and applause.
These small acts on the field have helped shape life off of it. Researchers at Stanford University issued a study in 2019 that found an 18.9% drop in anti-Muslim hate crimes in Liverpool since Salah signed with the club. At the same time, there were half as many anti-Muslim tweets by Liverpool fans as supporters of other major Premier League teams.
“The survey experiment suggests that these results may be driven by increased familiarity with Islam,” the report said. “These findings suggest that positive exposure to outgroup celebrities can reveal new and humanizing information about the group at large, reducing prejudiced attitudes and behaviors.”
Can this type of acceptance also work the other way, with the Muslim world embracing Western secular beliefs? That theory will be put to the test in 2022 when the tiny Middle Eastern nation of Qatar hosts soccer’s World Cup next November. It will test the majority-Muslim nation in several ways, but primarily when it comes to public intoxication and homosexuality — both of which are illegal there.
“We know that the World Cup brings with it a certain amount of scrutiny,” Nasser Al Khater, the chief executive of the tournament's organizing committee, told CNN last month. “We’ve seen it in the past. But if it’s something that’s going to be catalyst for change, we’re all for it.”
Qatar has come under fire over the past few years in the lead up to the 2022 World Cup primarily for its abuse of migrant workers used to build the stadiums that will be used throughout the month-long competition. Beyond that, the biggest issue remains what to do about drinking and LGBTQ rights. Homosexuality, for example, is punishable by flogging and imprisonment.
Australia’s Josh Cavallo, a defender who came out as gay in October, said he would be afraid to play at the World Cup in Qatar because of the Gulf nation’s ban on homosexuality. Qatari officials have said they would be open to fans of all sexual orientations but expect them to respect norms that frown upon public expressions of affection.
Not everyone in the Islamic world has expressed such openness. For example, retired Egyptian soccer star Mohamed Aboutrika said homosexuality is “not compatible with Islam.”
“Our role is to stand up to this phenomenon, homosexuality, because it’s a dangerous ideology,” he added, “and it’s becoming nasty and people are not ashamed of it anymore.”
The comments came in response to the Premier League’s Rainbow Laces campaign, in which all 20 clubs donned rainbow-themed branding — including armbands and laces — during league games contested between Nov. 27 and Dec 2.
“They (the Premier League) will tell you that homosexuality is human rights,” said Aboutrika, who now works as a TV pundit for the Qatari-based sports network beIN SPORTS. “No, it is not human rights. In fact, it’s against humanity.”
James M. Dorsey, a journalist and senior fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute, drew attention to these issues in a recent Substack column that noted the following:
What is evident in the sexuality debate is that few people, if any, will be convinced by arguments raised by the opposing side. Both sides of the divide feel deeply about their positions. The best one can hope for is a live-and-let-live middle ground that is what the Qatari 2022 World Cup organizers appear to be proposing.
The question is whether the controversy has let a genie out of the bottle. Largely state-controlled media and clerics, and others in Qatar and elsewhere in the Middle East have fueled the fire. Qatari World Cup organizers’ statements have sought to calm Western fears but, together with government officials, have refrained from attempting to manage emotions at home.
With over a billion followers, Islam is the second-largest religion in the world after Christianity. Muslims are forbidden, for instance, from drinking alcohol because the Prophet Muhammad, to whom Muslims believe the word of God was revealed in the Quran, spoke against it. World Cup organizers have said that beer will be sold inside the venues and that drinking will be allowed inside special designated areas, such as inside fan zones, hotels and restaurants.
When it comes to homosexuality, the issue is more muddled. Since Islam has no central governing body, it is not possible to state clear policies regarding LGBTQ people.
Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the United States, noted the following on its website: “Depending on nationality, generation, family upbringing, and cultural influences, Islamic individuals and institutions fall along a wide spectrum, from welcoming and inclusive to a level of rejection that can be marked by a range of actions ranging from social sequestration to physical violence.”
Islamic scholars overwhelmingly teach that homosexuality is a sin. The Quran recounts the Hebrew Bible story of Lot and the destruction of Sodom, known in Arabic as “liwat.”
It’s these types of religious conflicts that could be on full display in Qatar despite FIFA’s assurances. The sport’s world organizing body, which oversees the World Cup, said that rainbow flags will be allowed in Qatari stadiums.
“I’m an openly gay woman in football, so this is personally, to me, something I'm close to as well,” said Joyce Cook, FIFA’s chief social responsibility and education officer. “We will see a progressive change in all of those aspects and rainbow flags, t-shirts will all be welcome in the stadium — that’s a given. They understand very well that is our stance.”
Clemente Lisi is a senior editor and regular contributor to Religion Unplugged. He is the former deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.