It is a much worthier venue for a big sporting event than other recent hosts
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskfails to distinguish between truly repugnant regimes and merely flawed ones. At worst, it smacks of blind prejudice. A lot of the indignant pundits sound as if they simply do not like Muslims or rich people.
Qatar may not be a democracy, but it is not the despicable despotate of cartoonish editorials. The previous emir, under no popular pressure at all, introduced elections of a sort. He also set up a news channel, Al Jazeera, that is more outspoken than its Arab rivals, even if it goes easy on Qatar itself. That is a far cry from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where you get sent to prison for describing the war in Ukraine as a war, let alone denouncing it.
The world also looks at migrant workers in Qatar through a distorted lens. For one thing, the emirate is more open to foreign labour than America or any European country. Native Qataris make up only 12% of the population—a proportion supposedly more enlightened countries simply would not tolerate. Although these migrants are sometimes mistreated, the wages most earn are life-changing, which is why so many want to come in the first place.
The claim that Qatar is a den of homophobia is also misleading. Gay sex is illegal, it is true, but so is all sex outside marriage. There are few prosecutions for violating these laws, however. And such conservative but seldom-enforced laws are common throughout much of the developing world, and in almost all Muslim countries. Qatar hardly stands out.bribed its way to World Cup glory. That may be true, although no clear proof has ever been made public.
The strongest argument against Qatar as a host is environmental. With the world overheating, it seems mad to fly in legions of players, fans and hangers-on to run about in new, air-conditioned stadiums on grass sustained by desalinated water. The hosts’ claim that the event will be carbon-neutral is dubious. But this is a vice of all big sporting events, to some degree. Thanks to clever engineering, cooling the stadiums is not as polluting as you might imagine. And the 3.
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