The Emir of Qatar’s Dissimulation about the Muslim Brotherhood

Sept. 22 2022

For years, Qatar has used its vast fossil-fuel wealth to fund Islamist groups throughout the Middle East and beyond, especially those affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood—including Hamas. This policy, together with Doha’s maintenance of friendly relations with Tehran, has repeatedly stirred the ire of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Yet in a recent interview with a French magazine, the country’s ruler, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, flatly denied any relationship between his government and the Brotherhood, adding that “there are no active members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or any groups related to it, on Qatari land.” Alberto M. Fernandez comments:

One thing I learned from decades of government service is that there are many ways for government officials—all of them, including Western ones—to lie that skirt outright falsehood in some technical fashion while covering up an inconvenient reality. . . . It may well be that Sheikh Tamim is absolutely right that at the precise moment of his remarks there were no card-carrying Muslim Brotherhood members being hosted in Doha, no one who was waiting on a check or a bag of money from Qatar, or whose work was being facilitated in some way by the Qatari state.

The remarks [ignore the fact that] the two Muslim Brotherhood-type governments in the world, the ones in power in Ankara and Gaza, very much do receive billions in Qatari support. [There is also] another Qatari favorite, the Islamist Nahda party of Tunisia, which held power until recently in that country.

Tamim’s remarks also [require] a carve-out for his mentor Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a longtime Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader but for many years now a Qatari citizen and connected to Islamist organizations created for him and funded by Qatar. . . . And while the Al Jazeera Arabic television network funded by Qatar and based in Doha is chock-full of Islamists, who is to say whether or not they are “active” Brotherhood members, perhaps just inactive ones who think exactly like them?

Interestingly, one place where it seems you did not see the emir’s words about the Muslim Brotherhood highlighted was in Al Jazeera itself. An Arabic-language news article on the . . . interview in Al Jazeera was headlined “Emir of Qatar: Doha’s Foreign Policy Aims at Bringing Views Closer Together.” The article included no mention whatsoever of Tamim’s remarks [about the Brotherhood].

Read more at MEMRI

More about: Al Jazeera, Hamas, Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar

 

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023