The Qatar World Cup: 'LGBTQ' and Western criticism of Islam (2022-11-10) ​

0:00:03 I notice from media reports that there's a growing chorus of voices in the west criticizing Qatar 0:00:11 which is hosting the World Cup which is due to take place very shortly for example the London 0:00:17 Times reports and I quote an official Ambassador for the football World Cup in Qatar has described 0:00:25 homosexuality as a form of quote damage in the mind during a German television interview before 0:00:33 he was swiftly cut off by a media advisor the Arab state where homosexuality is punishable 0:00:41 by up to three years in prison has struggled to fend off criticism of its record on LGBTQ rights 0:00:50 Khalid Salman a retired Qatari football star who is one of the ambassadors for the World Cup has 0:00:57 underscored this tension with his remarks on gay rights in an interview with ZDF a German 0:01:05 public broadcaster Salman 60 acknowledged that quote many things will come into this 0:01:12 country in the course of the World Cup let us talk about gay people for example he said 0:01:19 the most important thing is that everyone accepts they are coming here and they would have to accept 0:01:26 our rules unquote and the times continues he added that he was worried Qatari children might see gay 0:01:35 men and learn quote something that is not good unquote asked why homosexuality was banned in his 0:01:43 country Salman said it was Haram an Arabic term meaning forbidden under Islamic law now this is 0:01:52 very interesting and there's been a whole rash of Articles BBC Guardian the Times and many 0:01:58 other media platforms criticizing Qatar for its views on so-called LGBTQ rights and this 0:02:08 struck me as particularly significant what does it tell us about what's going on in the world well 0:02:14 firstly it tells us that the West believes it's right and Superior in the secular liberal value 0:02:22 system that it has and that everywhere else in the world especially Muslim countries must follow the 0:02:29 West and do as the West does in its ever changing ever evolving value system could never stays 0:02:36 still for long there's always a new moral code and new attitudes and no new mores that we in 0:02:42 the west are expected to adopt and everywhere else by extension must also accept and this this 0:02:49 points to the asymmetry of power in the world of course but more seriously than that it suggests 0:02:56 that the West does not respect Islamic morality it has completely ignored this I noticed this that 0:03:03 in the media reports the word Islam rarely appears but the teaching of Islam is directly contradicted 0:03:10 and condemned repeatedly but what is this teaching and I notice in the media at least as far as I 0:03:16 see it I rarely see an informed discussion of exactly what Islamic law teaches on this subject 0:03:22 of homosexuality but just to scratch the surface it's easy to find out there's plenty of resources 0:03:29 online and books that teach the truth about this the first thing that's not seems to that people 0:03:34 in the west don't seem to realize that is there is no agreed upon punishment for homosexual acts 0:03:42 for example the Hanafi school traditionally  has said that there is no capital punishment 0:03:47 for homosexual acts the often it's left to the discretion of the judge the Qadi 0:03:53 for example the other scores that the hand belief do mandate the death penalty for 0:03:59 homosexual acts this is true but the the the most commonly followed score the hanafi score does not 0:04:06 but what are we talking about him sorry to get a bit explicit and there's an explicit warning 0:04:12 here what are we talking about when we're talking about homosexuality precisely well the 0:04:17 Sharia seems to be concerned in the main with something in Arabic called you can look it up 0:04:25 what does it mean well an English equivalent a translation will be sodomy that's what it's 0:04:31 concerned about this particular act now the Sharia is concerned with public behavior and indeed 0:04:39 Salman himself said that the most important thing is that everyone except they are coming here and 0:04:44 that they have to accept our rules and these rules are public rules to do a behavior not 0:04:52 with private behavior this is a quite important distinction that's explicitly recognized in Sharia 0:04:59 so to be a crime in an Islamic context Qatar being an Islamic society in this in the sense that 0:05:06 it follows many aspects of the Sharia a particular act has to be done in public this is when 0:05:13 it becomes a crime and be witnessed by four people four upstanding witnesses so they can't themselves 0:05:20 have a criminal record or be a dubious character and then they have to go to court and testify in 0:05:27 front of a judge that they witness said alleged behavior taking place and the behavior itself the 0:05:34 act of penetration is what they have to see they can't just see two people vaguely doing whatever 0:05:38 they have to witness the act itself in a court and as I say there's no agreed punishment uh for this 0:05:48 now what is uh this is called uh the hadude punishments and there's more to be said about 0:05:54 them and they apply to adultery uh homosexual acts and and a cut just like one or two other 0:06:00 categories which we won't go into uh now but the central principle in the application of hadude 0:06:06 punishments as they're called is maximizing Mercy Mercy is the heart of this and this was clearly 0:06:15 formula it's not just a a modernist liberal kind of humanitarian idea this was clearly formulated 0:06:22 in a Hadith this is a saying of the Prophet Muhammad upon whom be peace and it was also 0:06:29 echoed by prominent companions among them his wife Aisha and the calebs Umar and Ali and the 0:06:37 best attested version of this Hadith because there are several versions is as follows in English ward 0:06:43 off the hadude from the Muslims as much as you all can and if you find a way out for the person then 0:06:52 let them go for it is better for the authority to ER in Mercy than to uh in punishment end 0:07:00 quote and within A Century Of The Prophet's death Muslim Scholars have digested this Hadith into a 0:07:08 crucial legal Maxim or legal principle which is as follows ward off the Hadoop by ambiguities 0:07:15 ward off the Hadoop by ambiguities so on the con in so different from the Western perception of the 0:07:23 enthusiastic application of her dude laws you're not supposed to you're supposed to find a way not 0:07:29 to implement them uh if possible to get people off using whatever strategy can be employed so 0:07:36 as I say there is no agreed upon punishment it's the act is supposed to take place in public there 0:07:42 have to be four witnesses and they have to testify in court not three not two not one but four and 0:07:50 if there's just any three doesn't matter it cannot cannot be brought to court so that is the first 0:07:56 thing I want to establish is actually virtually impossible to implement Hudood punishments 0:08:01 in Islamic law given these quite strict criteria and the bias in the law towards mercy rather than 0:08:08 severity I think that's an important point to grasp and secondly I just want to also mention 0:08:17 how can I put this politely that there seems to be a great disrespect towards Islam in the 0:08:22 Western media whether it be the conservative media or the liberals secular media that there 0:08:27 seems to be a disinclination to accept that other countries non-western countries like 0:08:33 Qatar and other Muslim majority countries have a different value system the West perhaps needs to 0:08:41 realize that Muslims have very different views on sexual morality especially homosexuality 0:08:49 and as a Muslim Khalid Salman this chap from Qatar is is surely entitled to express his sincerely 0:08:57 held views and this is not a position that is usually taken in the west uh we simply dismiss 0:09:04 Muslims and their faith whenever it contradicts uh the latest secular liberal values and the problem 0:09:12 with these values is they're constantly changing they seem to every 10 years or so or even more 0:09:18 quickly you'll get a new set of ideas and mores and values uh that the West suddenly Embraces and 0:09:26 then it expects the rest of the world especially Muslim countries to also accept these values and 0:09:33 if they don't accept them they can be punished they can be threats and people are calling in the 0:09:38 West for a Qatar no longer to host the cup or that it was a mistake to ever give them this because of 0:09:45 their so-called stance on lgbtq right rights but other countries are not treated like this the West 0:09:52 for example when it hosts the World Cup are they taken to task for their foreign policy for their 0:09:58 invasion of Muslim countries for the numerous casualties and deaths resulting from these 0:10:03 invasions and wars that Western countries like America Britain France Etc have been involved in 0:10:11 numerous Wars in recent years resulting in the in the deaths of Untold numbers the very least 0:10:18 hundreds of thousands of Muslims have died that's not mentioned Guantanamo Bay I mean the list is 0:10:24 rather long unfortunately are these countries held to vary the highest moral standards when it comes 0:10:30 to awarding them uh you know the World Cup or any other sporting event tennis or whatever they're 0:10:36 not are they and who would enforce it anyway who would enforce uh these rules on America for 0:10:42 example or Britain it wouldn't be possible I would imagine so uh this whole episode uh reeks suggests 0:10:52 um an asymmetry of power that the West being at the moment at the moment the hegemonic uh 0:10:59 Power uh the center of gravity when it comes to political cultural and economic power calls the 0:11:06 shots and it universalizes its morality it says well we now believe in this latest uh 0:11:13 um alternative lifestyle as a human right and therefore you Muslim countries and everyone else 0:11:19 must also accept it and if you don't accept it we will punish you we will take away your rights to 0:11:25 act host sports or we will withdraw foreign aid or we will sanction you or we'll apply 0:11:30 unofficial pressure on you which certain Western governments it has been disclosed do do they they 0:11:37 do unofficially uh put very economic pressure on people and political pressure on governments 0:11:43 to come into line with the laces Western View so this whole issue of Qatar hosting the World 0:11:50 Cup has opened up this can of worms unfortunately uh and the unwritten text the subtext seems to me 0:11:58 to be that Muslims can't be Muslims unless they agree with the West's uh secular liberal ideology 0:12:08 we're also told at the same time that politics and religion have nothing to do with sports no 0:12:14 no no no we must get no religion and faith and these have nothing to do with sports which of 0:12:19 course is not true if the religion in question is Islam and then the West comes in and starts 0:12:27 pointing fingers and making accusations and this strikes me as very unfair and unbalanced 0:12:33 and discriminatory and dare I say using the words often derided but nevertheless seems really really 0:12:40 opposite in this context the word is simple it is islamophobia it's this kind of irrational 0:12:46 fear of Islam not really understanding what is um actually teaches uh in detail and certainly 0:12:53 not respecting one of the great faiths of the world and the fastest growing religion in the 0:12:59 world as well the religion of Islam anyway that's my rant take it I'll leave it till next time