In a Middle East Forum (MEF)/American Jewish University (AJU) October 28 podcast (video), AJU’s Jeffrey Herbst moderated a discussion investigating Qatar’s financial support for Islamists and how Middle Eastern financial networks fund Islamist terrorism.
Guest speakers: Sam Westrop is director of Islamist Watch, an MEF project. Westrop has headed Islamist Watch since 2017, when MEF absorbed the counter-extremism unit of Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT). Benjamin Baird, director of MEF Action, is a public affairs specialist and U.S. Army infantry veteran who organizes grassroots advocacy campaigns in support of MEF projects.
Sam Westrop:
“Qatar likes power. It likes to influence, it likes to control, and it certainly likes its wealth. And we see that in the West. We see Qatari influence and money in everything from universities and schools to investment banks and real estate portfolios. Qatar works to impose itself despite its minuscule size in all aspects of the American polity.”
Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia are Wahhabi states. In the past, Saudi Arabia spent its wealth to spread its influence, as Qatar does today. However, the Saudis stopped spreading their “Wahhabist ideal” to the world some ten years ago after the kingdom’s power was threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. Saudi money funded U.S. and European mosques, and “American and Western Islamic institutions more broadly.” Now that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sets the direction of the Kingdom’s policy, Riyadh has taken a “hardline anti-Islamist position.”
We see Qatari influence and money in everything from universities and schools to investment banks and real estate portfolios.
Qatar thought the Saudis had “taken too broad an approach” with their patronage, and Doha opted for a different tack. Instead of directly funding Islamic institutions and “American Islam,” Doha decided its interests would be better served by setting up “an environment that is conducive to Islamist ideals.” Qatar’s wealth found its way into non-Muslim institutions, such as Western media, universities, and banks. In turn, the beneficiaries of Qatar’s largesse “became awfully friendly to domestic Islamists.”
One such example of a U.S. institution that received “billions of dollars of Qatari money” is Georgetown University (GU) in Washington, D.C. Qatar established GU’s Bridge Initiative to “identify what they call Islamophobic networks around the West,” using “Qatari patronage” to employ Islamists and “push Islamism.” Indirectly, GU’s initiative helps “spread radicalism and antisemitism through the country.”
The Doha-based Qatar Foundation runs Education City, a massive “campus of campuses” of American university satellite campuses there. In the U.S., Qatar Foundation International (QFI) “helps to manipulate and influence curricula” used to teach “public K-to-12 schools” and universities about Qatar, the Middle East, and Muslims. These well-funded partnerships not only bring in welcome “free gifts for cash-strapped education systems” in America, but also enable universities to work with the Qatar Foundation “whether these universities have bad actors or not guarding these decisions.” Qatar’s influence over U.S. academia is an “industry within an industry” among academics aligned with Qatari institutions. These academics have their journals, books, and papers published by Qatari-aligned publishers.
The U.S. has the tools to stop foreign funding of Western universities. Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 requires universities to report foreign funding, or any foreign agent lobbying to change policy. However, these rules are “not being enforced as tightly as they can.” Consequently, the true amount of Qatari money and influence was “under-reported” during the Trump administration.
Western media is another avenue of influence for Qatar. Al Jazeera is Qatar’s media arm, and its English language broadcast is geared to appeal to a Western audience.
“While Al Jazeera and these Qatari media efforts very much initially came from the left and pushed to [advance] this line, at least in their English language, Western programming, Qatar’s made a serious effort to influence conservative media over the last few years as well. Indeed, we found a number of very interesting pro-Qatar columnists in places like the Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, and indeed one of their columnists rather openly consorting with the Qatari royal family and seemingly taking money from them to run prominent puff pieces.”
Alongside Qatar’s success with Al Jazeera’s recruitment “from within Western newsrooms” is its influence on “Middle East studies and Middle East reporting.” The New Arab and Middle East Eye are news websites that target Islamism’s critics and push the Qatari view of the Middle East “in journalistic circles.” “Where you find journalism meeting Western Islamism is through the medium of the media, because that’s exactly where you find radicals tied to Hamas” and other Islamist terror groups that share opinions and writing with “reputable journalists and reputable academics.” By subverting these “once proudly reputable institutions,” journalists legitimize “mainstream radicals in the West.”
In the U.S., Qatar Foundation International (QFI) “helps to manipulate and influence curricula” used to teach “public K-to-12 schools” and universities about Qatar, the Middle East, and Muslims.
Some conservative politicians in the West believe that Qatar, like Saudi Arabia, can be moderated through diplomacy. Some in the security establishment believe Hamas networks can be used as “potential informants in pursuit of a greater counterterrorism policy.” Both assumptions are part of Western policymakers’ thinking “that they can appease their way to peace” by seeing Qatar as a “strategic asset.” Obama attempted this by “pouring support” into the Muslim Brotherhood, thinking he could “create a moderate political Islam” that the West could control. Obama and Biden took a similar approach with Iran, and Trump did so with Turkey.
It is foolish “to think that an ideology founded on opposition to the West could ever be controlled by the West,” yet the same approach is being taken towards Qatar. Conservative politicians are “wrong, and it’s a pity that we don’t really have a political force in the country that is taking a really sensible approach to foreign policy at the moment.”
Qatar and Iran are united in their support of Hamas and their hostility to the Saudis. Despite Qatar’s recent détente with the Saudis, there is likely to be “a resumption of some form of diplomatic hostility” between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. As for Qatar and Iran, they have a “complicated relationship,” with little cooperation in the West “between Qatari and Iranian proxies.”
The West can take steps to counter Qatar’s influence operations by “remov[ing] all military forces from Qatar, stop giving them the legitimacy as a non-Nato ally. Enforce the law, stop foreign agents such as Al Jazeera from manipulating and influencing Western policies. Go after other foreign agents within finance [and] within politics.” One example would be to start with DAWN, a Qatari think tank that operates openly in D.C. “and does a lot of damage.”
There are ways to counter Qatar, but “the problem is fundamentally shifting the West’s mindset about the problem of Islamism and the severity of Qatari influence.”
Benjamin Baird:
The fact that Qatar hosts both Hamas and a major U.S. airbase illustrates how it seeks to “navigate a tightrope” between Middle East Islamists and pro-terror regimes, while wanting to be linked to “Western-style democracies.” Its wealth funds terror movements around the world and is used to “sanitize its image” through “lobbying, attempting to influence Western education systems, and investments in Western corporations.”
When Qatar faced a blockade in 2017 from many of its Gulf neighbors who were backed by the Trump administration, Doha undertook a lobbying campaign to change U.S. policy. Prior to this campaign, Trump “was very outspoken” against Qatar for its international sponsorship of terrorism and for its hampering of efforts aimed at “anti-money laundering across the West.” Two political operatives connected to the Republican party presented Qatar with a proposal to fund trips to Doha for “Trump influencers” who had access to the Trump administration, including Mike Huckabee and Alan Dershowitz. Critics speculate that as much as $1.5 billion was spent to expose influencers to Qatar’s “perspective,” and it was successful. As a result, Trump changed his position, permitting Qatari investments in U.S. aviation, allowing joint partnerships in counterterrorism to move forward, and sending military assistance to Qatar.
Al Jazeera has more members of the congressional press corps than do the Washington Post and the New York Times combined,” and that should end.
Currently, Qatar wants the West to overlook its support for Hamas. Beginning in 2014, Qatari institutions funneled money to Hamas, supervised by Israel and the U.S., with the “foolhardy misconception that they [Israel and the U.S.] could buy peace with Hamas, which proved to be wrong in the long term.” Since 2021, the Biden administration has listed Qatar as a major non-NATO ally, but Qatar should be listed with America’s other adversaries such as Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia, and China. “Qatar is definitely an enemy of the United States and Western values, but it uses money, as I say, to fool the West and to reside in both camps at once.”
Qatar continues to exert its influence through its large media conglomerate, Al Jazeera, with its different divisions going about their influence operations in varied ways. While Al Jazeera International is known for its English language channel, Al Jazeera Arabic uses blatantly antisemitic, anti-American, and anti-Western rhetoric but hides its biases in more subtle ways when addressing Western audiences.
Overall, Al Jazeera is a “foreign-controlled, state-controlled media outlet” which has been asked by U.S. law enforcement and the federal government to reveal its foreign ties. It has refused to do so and faces no consequences for it.
The Biden administration refuses to hold Qatar accountable for one of its digital media outlets, Al Jazeera Plus (AJ+), even though the Trump administration had its Department of Justice seek its registry under the Foreign Agent’s Registration Act (FARA). Qatar “simply thumbed its nose at that request” and continues to do so to this very day.
Geographically, Sunni Qatar is situated across the Persian Gulf from Shia Iran, and there are traditional reasons to consider them rivals, but recently there was a “high level meeting between Qatar officials in Iran” that pulled them into a “dangerous alliance.” The October 7 attacks drew them even closer via their joint support of Hamas.
The Saudis, on the other hand, view Qatar’s support for global Islamist movements as a “direct threat” to the kingdom’s “legitimacy.” Although both countries announced that the U.S. was prohibited from “using its military facilities” to conduct any airstrikes against Iran, “until Qatar stop[s] supporting terrorism, Saudi Arabia will not be its friend.”
One option for the West to counter Qatar’s influence is for Congress to pass reforms “like the DETERRENT Act” which would require countries that are “ideological adversaries” like Qatar “to report any amount of financing in U.S. higher education institutions.” In the media, Al Jazeera has more members of the congressional press corps than do the Washington Post and the New York Times combined,” and that should end.
“We need to start upholding foreign influence laws in this country, and if we do so, we can curtail some of Qatar’s influence.”
