Qatar is criticised for being different to Western
Europe, the United States and other democracies. The criticism is grossly hypocritical.
No one criticises the human rights record of Djibouti, nor how it treats
homosexuals, because there isn’t going to be a football tournament in Djibouti
and anyway few of us could point it out on the map.
But the hypocrisy goes deeper than this. Why is Qatar the
way that it is? Why does it treat women differently to men? Why can’t homosexuals
get married like they can in Britain? Anyone would think that it is simply some
odd quirk of Qatar that it has laws and customs that make it more difficult to
buy beer and spirits than in Aberdeen, that it has a singular lack of well
attended churches and rather few gay pride marches.
But Qatar is similar to the vast majority of other
countries Islamic countries for a very simple reason. It is Islamic.
There are differences between Muslim countries. Some
are very strict like Saudi Arabia or Iran others are less strict like Turkey or
Morocco. Qatar isn’t Turkey, but neither is it Iran. You can buy a drink in
Qatar in certain hotels and restaurants. You can wear a bikini in the hotel. If
you behave yourself and act sensibly you can probably have a good time there on
holiday if you are rich enough.
But whatever the level of strictness in an Islamic
country the rules and customs which differ from ours are derived from Islam.
There isn’t a single rule or custom in Qatar that is being complained of that cannot
be justified as either coming from the Quaran, the Hadith, or Sunnah and the
various traditions of interpreting these. What is dishonest and hypocritical about
the criticisms of Qatar is that it is presented as if this were not also a
criticism of Islam.
Qatar is a theocracy because Islam thinks that religion
ought to be a matter of law. It has laws about human sexual behaviour because
it thinks that sex outside the marriage of a man and a woman is a sin that
should be punished by law. It has laws about what people can eat and drink
because Islam believes that we should be compelled to follow these rules. It punishes
people who cease to believe in Islam because it is commanded to by its sacred
texts.
The strictest Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia and
Iran follow the rules of Islam most closely. Others countries like Qatar are
willing to bend or even break some rules at least for foreigners. But when Qatar
allows foreigners to drink beer it doesn’t change the rule about alcohol. It
still thinks that it is wrong to drink beer. The most liberal Islamic countries
still believe exactly the same as the strictest. There hasn’t been a
reformation. There hasn’t been anything like the Western theological tradition that
analysed the Biblical texts accepting some rejecting others. There has been no
reform such as happened in many western churches where teachings about homosexuality
were revised. Islam is pretty much the same as it always was.
There are things I rather admire about Islam. Muslims frequently
have a very strong faith. They believe literally in what the Quran and Islamic
tradition teaches. They follow that teaching even when it would be easier not
to. I would not like to fast nor drink even water during the day during
Ramadan. I would not like to have to pray four times a day whether it was
convenient or not. I have always thought it incredible how Islam spread from Mecca
all the way to Indonesia. This is clearly a very powerful faith.
But I would not like to live in an Islamic society,
because I think religion ought to be a matter of choice rather than a matter of
law. Who am I to tell someone else what to believe or to force him to follow religious
rules? If Muslims don’t want to drink
beer or if they think that homosexuality is a sin that is there right, but why
force others to live as they do? I believe that so long as you harm no one else
you can do what you please. Muslims don’t believe this. This is why liberalism
and Islam are incompatible, because liberalism is incompatible with a religion
being the law.
The reason I think as I do is because Christianity is
not a religion of law. Jesus picked the grain on the Sabbath and changed
everything including the future. Ultimately
it is for this reason that the West developed in the way that it did. Tolerance
comes from Christianity allowing us to choose to believe and choose to follow religious
rules. From there we in time made Christian rules also a matter of choice. If
you don’t like the bits in the Old Testament about Sodom and Gomorrah then skip
them. If you think that Jesus didn’t really mean what he said about marriage,
then you no doubt know better than him. If you think that God did not create us
male and female, then no doubt you know better than God too.
What we have discovered in the past decades is
Christianity is negotiable. If society demands women priests the church must
have them, if society demands tolerance of homosexuality or transgender
Christianity will adapt. Jesus said go and sin no more. But now the woman about
to be stoned would say today that her sin in fact is not a sin and the church
would agree.
At the same time belief in Christianity has collapsed.
Traditional Christian morality about sex and marriage or indeed about anything
else simply no longer exists in Britain. It is a dead issue like belief in Zeus
and Nietzsche in the sense that he meant has been proved right.
So, from the Qatari point of view, the critics are
really saying “If thou wilt be perfect, go and give up all thy beliefs and laws,
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me” But the Qatari
will point out you don’t believe in heaven. You don’t believe in God. If I
follow you, I will end up with no faith at all. What will I have to show for
it. A flag with a rainbow and the faith that men can become women. Your faith
is merely woke. It believes nothing about God and destroys morality for a mess of
LGBTQQIP2SAA and a coat of many colours.
I would not like to live in Qatar and still less in
Saudi Arabia or Iran. I dislike theocracy and could not endure following a religion
of laws. But the Qatari can justifiably point out that the laws that he has are
because of Islam and he can also point out that if he follows the path of the
West, he will end up with no religion at all. If that is what the West wants
from him, then it should be honest about it, but why should he follow the path
that the West took knowing that it leads to the destruction of all that he
holds most dear leaving him nothing but an acronym that keeps getting longer.
