Break with Qatar

source: Chronicles of Omar Saghi
            June 14, 2017

translation: doxa-louise

Qatar, the Other Break 

In the Persian Gulf, at the moment, the real alienation isn’t between Qatar and it neighbors. That breakdown will finally resolve, through negotiation or balance of power. The real break is elsewhere, and the froth of television news hides it for the moment. It is between states and their societies, and in reality a large abyss.

Officially, Saudi Arabia and its allies reproach Doha its support for terrorism. Under that banner, Riyadh and Cairo, the leading duo, bring together a large range of organizations, associations and parties, from the Muslim brothers to radical small groups. Even seen from Washington, such a massive condemnation might well appear overdone and blind to local realities. But in Cairo? There where the overwhelming majority of women are veiled, where the niqab wins everyday a victory in its claiming of space, where the Copts face a deaf hostility, if not worse? Cairo where cultural passage to Islam started in the the 1960s is now total? And Riyadh? There where the laws and media, popular mores and public education, official clercdom and dissident clercdom, all come together to impose a religious yoke never seen before on civil society?

Logically, and even among serious observers, one cannot but smile at the homage vice is making to Qatary semi-virtue. And everything comes down to a case of state hypocrisy: Saudi Arabia and its allies do not believe a word of their accusations and are trying to confuse the issue with exaggeration. And this is where there is a danger of offering an incorrect analysis. No, Saudi Arabia, like Egypt, like the Emirates or Yemen, really are fighting against political Islam. They are fighting to destroy the political potency of Islam, to impose on it that socio-political contract now victorious in Egypt and perhaps, soon , Saudi Arabia: to you, society, culture, women and children, for you the intellectuals and editors, yours the entire urban space; for me, the State, the security apparatus, economic returns, the army and diplomatic alliances. Egypt entered this alliance with Sadat. Make peace with Israel and let the rage in mosques go on. Become a schoolbook ally of the United States and let rabid anti americanism prosper within. This is the spreading model for the East. The case against Qatar is not that they sympathize with radical Islam, but making politics out of it. What is being reproached is that minimum of linkage between civil society and the politics practiced by the Emirate. We want that to stop, we want the Emir of Qatar, like the King of Arabia or the Egyptian general, to completely cut off his politics from his society.

So this breakdown is only superficially between Qatar and its neighbors. It is more profoundly a quasi-final divorce between societies sinking into the most reactionary form of Islam coupled with political helplessness, and States cutting themselves off from all social control to better align themselves with Western powers. Thus it makes sense that, beyond Qatar, it is Iran one is aiming for, and perhaps tomorrow, Turkey. Because the politics of Iran (or Turkey) is not totally foreign to society in Iran ( or Turkey). It is this link, at the heart of all true democratization, that Ryadh wants to break.