A rainbow-colored bear on a camera: With the World Cup, Qatar’s homophobia has come into focus, but some protests are damaging to the people there.
Photo: imago/Moritz Müller
Qatar just allowed what was never officially forbidden at this World Cup. The world football association Fifa, as the organizer of the tournament, had never forbidden stadium visitors to wear the rainbow colors. With the start of the second round of the group stage on Friday, the hosts have now also pledged that neither fans nor journalists will be forced by security forces to take off the symbols and colors of the queer community. This will probably not change anything about the dangerous life of homosexual people in the emirate.
Qatari doctor Nasser Mohamed no longer wanted to hide his homosexuality. He gave up his possessions at home, severed relationships with family and friends – and now lives in San Francisco. Mohamed reports on his story in social media and interviews. “In Qatar they are trying to censor our existence,” he told the BBC. “As a gay man, you live there in constant fear. You have to plan every step of the day well in order not to accidentally come out yourself. That would be risking your life.«
Qatar is one of the 69 countries in the world where queer people face persecution. Under Article 285 of the Qatar Penal Code, having sex outside of marriage, including same-sex relationships, is punishable by up to seven years in prison. In the ZDF documentary “Geheimsache Qatar”, the World Cup ambassador Khalid Salman made statements that should meet with the approval of many Qataris. In connection with homosexuality he spoke of “mental damage”.
Activists want to raise awareness of homophobia in the period leading up to the World Cup final on December 18th. Among them is Nasser Mohamed, who contacted victims for a report by Human Rights Watch. The human rights organization interviewed a gay man, a bisexual woman and four transgender women from Qatar. All said they were temporarily held in an underground prison in Doha by Qatari officials. The cases apparently occurred between 2019 and September 2022.
In the report, the victims describe how some of them were beaten, humiliated and verbally abused. Some were apparently denied access to legal counsel and medical care. Their mobile phones are said to have been unlocked under duress for checks. Apparently those affected had to agree to “stop immoral activities” from now on. None of them had received written confirmation of their detention and no charges had been brought. “The security forces appear confident that their indiscriminate abuses will go unreported and unchecked,” said Human Rights Watch’s Rasha Younes. The Qatar Interior Ministry rejected the allegations and criticized the report.
Such reports with concrete statements are rare. Few examples can be found in the archives where harsh legislation was also applied to foreigners. In 1996, according to the US State Department, a US citizen was sentenced to lashes in Doha. Two years later, several gay workers from the Philippines were apparently expelled from Qatar. In 2016, a Polish social media activist is said to have been in prison for homosexuality.
It can be assumed that the Qatari state will also apply different standards to the population on this issue. Human Rights Watch appears to be aware of seven detained lesbian and gay men from Morocco, Nepal and the Philippines, countries from which hundreds of thousands of migrants who work hard for little money in Qatar come. “The state apparently monitors social media and checks messages that could come from queer people,” says Piara Powar of the football anti-discrimination network Fare. “There will also be an informal telephone hotline. There, relatives and friends can report certain people to the authorities.«
Many high-income westerners live on The Pearl, an artificial island in Doha with restaurants, cafes and family entertainment. It seems that they are less afraid of state surveillance. In background interviews, queer people from the international community confirm that they “are left alone” as long as their homosexuality remains a private matter. In principle, physicality is frowned upon in public in Qatar, even between women and men. Sometimes the subject of homophobia is even discussed in »Education City«, a campus with branches of western universities.
But the topic remains taboo outside the liberal retreats. An adviser to the Qatari Foreign Ministry called homosexuality a “grave sin”. The idea of introducing a sexual orientation test for tourists was discussed in online media. Statements like these resonate with parts of traditionalist society. In 2020, Northwestern University in the US wanted to host a concert with a Lebanese rock band in Doha. The outrage and protest against their gay singers were so great that the university canceled the concert.
The government probably wants to avoid such controversies with censorship. On several occasions, online articles from the Doha News portal or the New York Times about homophobia in Qatar were no longer available. Even moderate Qatari politicians who studied in the US avoid taking a position. Probably also because they didn’t want to be seen as weak compared to their rivals in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, says Islamic scholar Sebastian Sons: “The social structures in the Gulf are male-dominated and strongly characterized by gender segregation. You want to radiate a certain ideal of masculinity.« Apparently, homosexuality sees this supposed ideal as a weakness.
However, Sons advocates a differentiated and circumspect debate. In no way should Islam be called a homophobic religion. For centuries, homoerotic ideas also found their way into the songs and poems of Arab authors. Up until the 19th century, a number of societies in the Near and Middle East were considered permissive and informal. The Arabist Thomas Bauer writes in his book »The Culture of Ambiguity« that prudery only came more strongly with the colonial powers.
The World Cup intensifies the debate about homophobia in the Gulf region. And there’s a good chance Qatar will largely tolerate protests throughout the tournament. The authorities in Russia did something similar during the 2018 World Cup. But soon after the departure of the international journalists, the Kremlin intensified its repression of civil society. Therefore, coordination with Qatari activists is now important, says Middle East researcher Leo Wigger: “Sometimes protest actions can be counterproductive and make life even more difficult for those affected.”
Fifa remains passive. In 2021, Egyptian football legend Mohamed Aboutrika described homosexuality as a “dangerous ideology” on a Qatari television channel. He received a lot of support in the Arab world, including Mahmoud Al-Mardi, captain of the Jordan national team. Fifa did not distance itself.
The glorification of homophobic statements contributed to the fact that the doctor Nasser Mohamed left his native Qatar. He described another problem to the BBC: Qataris came from one of the richest countries in the world. Sometimes they find it difficult in the asylum procedure to prove their homosexuality as a reason for persecution. He wants to explain further.
Read all our articles on the World Cup in Qatar at: dasnd.de/katar
