A Rude Awakening
The current events aren’t doing the Arab world any favors. Not that people as rich as them would need any. But anyway. There was the alleged murder of Mahsa Amini, who was punished for wearing “inappropriate” clothing but if their morality police is anything to go by there must be very few deaths in Iran that aren’t suspicious. Of course, what ensued was a global protest campaign that spilled over into the streets of Saqez, Sanandaj, Teheran and other Iranian cities. The local authorities added gas on fire when several protesters were murdered.
History teaches us that every problem has its breaking point beyond which things get out of control, like a rabid dog that tore away the leash. This was exacerbated not just by the wave of support for Mahsa Amini across social media, but even further when controversies, contract breaches and human rights violations in Qatar kept surfacing everywhere before the kickstart of the World Cup on Sunday.
As if that wasn’t already too much, Khalid Salman, an ambassador for the competition, condemned homosexuality as “damage in the mind” in an interview which was interrupted by an assistant before the German journalist got to react. The disconnect here is that “when in Rome” approach hits a wall in cases like this because you don’t serve meat at a dinner party if your guests are vegetarians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0UlWZNp6cI
Compromise is the prerequisite for mutual respect which makes things like these possible in the first place. But when you throw in a last-minute-tantrum just to spite your critics, you cross the line that starts a domino-effect involving sponsors, partners and other necessities. To top it off, Netflix popped out the documentary series Fifa Uncovered. Just in time before the festivities in Qatar to familiarize yourself with the nasty business that turned a global sports empire into Sepp Blatter’s private piggy bank. You could almost compare it to the hippie movement where the Summer of love turned into Helter Skelter. The inquiries uncovered corruption, fraud and resulted in a series of arrests, trials and lifetime bans. Suddenly the people’s game showed the face of a giant money laundry operation where the players were just tokens for lucrative marketing campaigns and international trade with hefty pricetags.
What happened to Amini was anything but a game though. It was an another rude awakening to what’s going on all the time, but we somehow push it down under the rug because we’re too busy to invest any interest into it. The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 sooner or later faded away from focus because it seemed it would satisfy Putin’s political appetites and we can all go on with business as usual. When that turned out to be an illusion, everybody jumped to the rescue, like running back into a burning building to save a baby.
But it was more about saving their own face and simultaneously bolstering Zelensky who grew into a leader whose teeth were much sharper than expected. The Russian overnight coup turned into Putin’s own Waterloo, an unneccessary exercise that used Ukraine merely as a stage show for what he’s still capable of. With a terrible cost in casualties on both sides, he still refuses sending whatever’s left of his troops back home. Retreating from a futile conflict doesn’t take away your dignity, it saves lives. And souls of butchers who find a line they won’t cross, one sacrifice too many.
The many Ukrainian women subjected to rape didn’t suffer for their supposed lack of deference to tradition, like Amini. But both are victims of something they didn’t incite themselves, designed to humiliate and dehumanize its targets. A campaign of protests spread across social media like wildfire, the ultimate contemporary frontline for causes that need more spotlight than what’s granted to them in the rabbit holes that devour our ability to focus like a digital Venus flytrap. This is the second death of young women like Mahsa Amini. Using the argument of respect for other people’s tradition is preposterous when it includes murder, persecution and slavery.
Islam never went through a phase of reformation like Christianity with Martin Luther. The closest it came to this was with the reign of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a Turkish 20th century president that tried to modernise the country and bring it closer to European standards. The current president Erdogan went in the other direction and holds an iron fist over Ataturk’s legacy by transforming the country into a semi-dictatorship where journalists often have to choose between freedom and freedom of speech.
When Fifa’s boss Gianni Infantino decided to silence his critics, he compared himself to an migrant worker. It sounded as stupid as when the celebrity actor Gael Garcia Bernal expressed sympathy with the plight of immigrants in America by saying he’s an immigrant himself. To add insult to injury you might say Infantino is right because he moved to Doha for a gig. But his only genuine connection to migrant workers in Qatar is the fact that he’ll be watching the game from the luxurious stadium boxes built by slaves from Nepal, India and Pakistan. Some of those will be serving him champagne.
At the bizarre press conference, he escalated into a tirade of pseudo-woke gibberish that was more embarassing than frightening. His PR in attendance, who emphasized that he was gay himself, assured the media minorities would be warmly welcomed and treated with respect. He didn’t say if he’d be so warmly welcome if he was an average Arab in a country which is the simultaneously Fifa’s geographically smallest host and one of world’s biggest gay closets fenced of by barbed wire of fear. Due to ever-increasing PR disasters, questionable quality and lack of international enthusiasm, we’re in for a ride exciting for all the wrong reasons. The dreaded legacy of the upcoming bacchanalia in Qatar might be summed up into something from Game of Thrones: winter is coming. Highly appropriate for a country that’s as used to snow as Harvey Weinstein to consensual sex.
It might be too early to anounce an Arab #Metoo, since the original one seemingly ran out of steam. That’s why cases like this are vital, to reinvigorate what it’s supposed to be about. Instead of shallow political statements, a grassroots campaign capable to tackle issues in their most severe form, like in Qatar or Iran. If cases like Mahsa Amini stay on the level of a headline in The Guardian nothing will change in a truly profound way. We will have failed her and many other young Muslim women who share the same plight but don’t get so much attention. The famous motto of ancient Romans used to be “panem and cercenses”, or food and entertainment. In a bizarre twist, spectators in modern Colloseums built in
Qatar will be certainly enjoying their entertainment. Those who suffered for it are hardly going to enjoy the fruit of their labor, because there’s no fruit in their empty baskets, let alone a decent paycheck. A rude awakening forprivileged guests who won’t be able to look away from it for much longer. Now that Hassan Al-Thawadi showed who’s truly calling the shots, the big party might end up with a messy hangover. It probably won’t help young women to escape the harsh Arab patriarchy, but it might ensure that something like this never happens again. Which doesn’t mean it won’t, but at least we won’t be as shocked as we seem to be. When money talks, it sings. If you can see beyond the fireworks, you’ll know. Better sink than stink.
