Pak Sahafat – The opening of the 22nd football world cup was held in Qatar on Sunday night; According to the emphasis of its organizers and according to the slogan of the International Football Federation (establishing peace between the countries of the world through sports), the matches are supposed to be held under the umbrella of this slogan.
Although it is the first time that the Middle East and an Islamic country are hosting these games, the host country, despite political and cultural attacks from different regions, did not submit to specific global guidelines and even anti-Islam media insinuations in this big tournament, but instead to the “Daily Star” newspaper, England adhered to all its Sharia and Islamic laws during the World Cup.
As the newspaper “Al Rayeh” of Qatar wrote in a report referring to the opening ceremony of the biggest football festival in the world, quoting “Ghananim al-Maftha”: Last night’s host started the opening ceremony with the recitation of verses from the Holy Quran by one of his citizens in front of international actor and social activist Morgan Furman to prove his commitment to preserving Islamic customs and traditions and show that the World Cup is an opportunity to change the false image of the Islamic world, which is a big challenge that Qatar can overcome by hosting the world’s most prominent football event.
This men’s football championship, which is held every 4 years by the International Football Federation (FIFA), this time from November 21 to December 18, will be held for the first time in this Islamic country on the shores of the Persian Gulf. According to the evidence, on the first day Holding these competitions did not deviate from its national and Islamic values.
Since the hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup was officially entrusted to Qatar, the anti-Islamic media, especially the Western media, started their activities in attacking Islamic concepts and values ​​and focused on so-called human rights issues.
Immigration laws, environmental issues, improper treatment of workers, climate, bribery accusations, etc. are among the issues that the Western media focused on in relation to Qatar in order to use all their efforts to prevent any possible success of the first Islamic country.
For example, the sports network “Bleacher Report” in Europe, which currently has the largest presence in social networks, published a report entitled “6 Reasons to Deny Qatar the World Cup Host” with an anti-oriental view of the colonial era.
The network added: The air temperature in a small Arab country is very hot and the sun is very hot there”, while these matches are scheduled from late November to mid-December (with the cool air of the Persian Gulf), as the Europeans play their games in the cold.
Meanwhile, some other western sports media also declared in their humiliating and racist reports: How is it possible that an Arab country with a population of almost 2.8 million, which has no history in the field of football, can be successful in holding the 2022 World Cup?” At the same time, some other Western media have raised doubts in their numerous reports regarding the permissibility of holding a major sports event in an Islamic country.
Hosting this Islamic country for a long time has been met with the political reaction of many countries in the world, especially in Europe and America, and even some Arab countries in the region, to the point where Europeans protested the implementation of Islamic laws in the host country and even prevented the travel of some nationals, means contrary to all the claims about the separation of politics from sports, but the intrusion of political decisions into sports from months ago, obviously sidelined football.
Western countries, which have always demanded the successful holding of these competitions and other sports events among themselves, this time seeing the achievements of this small eastern Islamic country, could not remain silent and tried to question Qatar in several areas, while if this event was held in America or England, such biased comments would not have been made.
When this group of media saw that Qatar’s per capita income reaches more than 90,000 dollars per year and according to the report of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), it has one of the highest resources in the world, using this wealth to provide funds to improve its position in the region through the Al Jazeera network, at first they accused this network of helping the so-called political Islamists.
Meanwhile, this gas-rich country, which has been using its huge wealth for a long time to improve its international status, this time became the 80th country to host the World Cup for the first time.
They know that these games, for which Qatar has spent 200 billion dollars, have become the most expensive games in the history of world football, because Doha was able to prepare 8 stadiums for them in the shortest time, and the spectators can watch the second game the third and even the fourth every day, because the maximum distance between football stadiums is not more than 75 km and the amazing fact is that about one and a half million people will watch these games and this is an amazing game in the history of football that many people come to see.
However, it is not easy for some Westerners to see this achievement by an Eastern Islamic country that has the third largest natural gas reserves in the world, for this reason, by making political accusations against this country, they even questioned its Islamic culture, saying that Qatar violates the rights of LGBT people (sexual minorities) and that Qatar does not allow religious and cultural viewers to discuss this issue in its lands and the streets of Qatar; A claim that can trap Qatar in a diplomatic abyss.
For example, according to reports, the captains of the national football teams of England, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Wales were supposed to wear the “OneLove” sign on their arm, which contains colors, in the framework of the anti-discrimination campaign. This is while Qatar has decided not to allow such an incident to happen on the stands of its stadiums or to place the rainbow flag, reserved for homosexuals, on the seats, because it may threaten the safety of European spectators of the World Cup by the opponents of homosexuality.
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Meanwhile, these European players, including the English “Robertson”, do not have any worries about their stay in Qatar, because they know that Islamic societies like Qatar have never witnessed violence in their stadiums. This is while, as evidenced by history, many violent acts have taken place, especially in European countries, during the past periods of the World Cup, which has been held in different countries.
For example, fans of the English national football team, who are known as “hooligans”, have repeatedly caused conflict and chaos in various stadiums. The events that happened in the Euro 2020 matches are only an example of the actions of English fans in creating chaos in stadiums. In addition, the events of the final game of the European Champions League, which were carried out by the fans of the English “Liverpool” team, have not yet been erased from the minds.
On the other hand, the Western countries and even the Arab countries of the region put forward other excuses, including the host country’s treatment of migrant workers who built the infrastructure of these competitions, while Qatar’s situation is not much worse than its neighbors and critics regarding the above issues and criticisms.
Westerners also accuse Qatar of having good relations with the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the Muslim Brotherhood, or Iran and Russia, while the same relations were beneficial to the West before, because negotiations for the release of Western hostages in some countries Like Syria, it relied on Doha. Qatar also hosted peace talks with the Taliban, which opened an office in Doha in 2013 with the tacit approval of the United States.
Even though the teams of Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Qatar are also present in these competitions, the Saudi Arabian State Wealth Fund bought the British team “Newcastle United” in 2021. One of the brothers of the president of the United Arab Emirates (Mohammed bin Zayed) owns “Manchester City” and the Dubai-based Emirates airline is a financial sponsor of the London club “Arsenal”. The same teams that currently hold the top three positions in the English Premier League table are the same ones who are the main critics of Qatar in the field of workers’ or LGBT rights and even the war in Ukraine.
Needless to say, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt, with the support of former American President Donald Trump, accused Qatar of supporting terrorism and interfering in the internal affairs of other Arab countries, and imposed political and economic sanctions on Doha and of course this siege ended in early 2021 before the inauguration of the new US President Joe Biden with his mediation.
In any case, the process of politicizing football in the 2022 World Cup continues, and the removal of the Russian team from this competition due to the attack on Ukraine was the culmination of this completely political decision by the Westerners, because there have already been efforts by the United States, some European countries, and Ukraine to Some countries were excluded from international football games.
This is despite the fact that no country condemned and deprived England in 1982 due to the attack on Argentina’s “Malvinas” islands (the Falkland War) thousands of kilometers away from its borders, or America was never deprived of the World Cup because of the 20-year war in Afghanistan and Iraq but this decision was made about Moscow because it was not a westernized country.
It was for this reason that recently, the head of the International Football Federation, “Infantino”, in the face of all these efforts of the western countries, asked the 32 teams participating in this competition in a written letter to focus only on the football games in Qatar and that the games should not be used politically or ideologically and as FIFA’s motto is to establish peace between countries through the game, the same policy should be followed.
In this letter, which is a kind of negative reaction and a serious response to the words of America, NATO and Ukraine, he wrote that we know that football plays an important role in countries and there are many problems and challenges, but do not allow football to become a political and game field.
In fact, this response of FIFA prevented those who wanted to remove the Iranian team and other teams from the World Cup through political use and pressure. Because the countries that have a hostile policy against Ukraine in connection with Russia were excluded from the World Cup.
For this reason, many experts and observers of political developments believe that the Western media’s discourse on sports issues is not only caused by the sports perspective and is also dependent on other political, social and historical issues; Because throughout history, we have always seen that Western European countries have extended their hegemony over the media, culture, and sports of the world. The reasons, evidences and historical proofs are proof of the fact that the British completely brutalized the traditional and local sports in the Indian subcontinent so that they could replace them with their own sports.
Some experts also do not consider the motivation of some claims against Qatar to be purely political and cultural and ask why a sport like football should be a place for gays to express their identity.
They consider the economic motivations of the case to be involved and believe that the Westerners gain huge financial benefits through the propaganda of homosexuality and the promotion of this phenomenon, and if Qatar prevents this propaganda, they will suffer a lot of financial loss. For example, Westerners sell gay t-shirts, flags and badges, and this is a big financial market for them. It is obvious that the loss of such a market during a major event such as the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will cause great financial damage to the West, as these competitions are always profitable for other commercial companies such as McDonald’s and Pepsi Cola”.
Of course, perhaps in the meantime, what has provoked even more anti-Eastern Westerners is that Qatar tried to use the hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup as an opportunity to create an Arab-Islamic cultural heritage, because this country came to the conclusion that there is no better occasion than holding these competitions to produce an Islamic cultural heritage and introduce it. As mentioned, this is what provoked the western countries.
The fact is that Qatar pursued several goals by trying to obtain the right to host these world championships, the most important of which was to challenge the routine image made by the West of Islamic and Arab countries. In fact, Qatar tries to present itself as a member of the global community that has its own values ​​and social principles; Moreover, Western liberalism is constantly promoting its approach, so the unilateral politicization of this sports event by the West is an inhumane and anti-cultural act, that is, an accusation that the Westerners bring to the Eastern countries.