Qatar: Futuristic City, Medieval Morals
22nd May 2025
Donald Trump’s recent visit to the Middle East has thrown a spotlight onto Qatar, an oil-rich emirate that punches above its weight in the geopolitical arena. While Qatar might be seen as a Western ally, especially given that it is home to the largest US military base in the entire region, it also moonlights as a chief financial sponsor and diplomatic patron of Hamas, the Islamist terror group responsible for the 7 October 2023 pogrom in southern Israel.
For more than two decades, the Qatari government, led by the Al-Thani monarchy, has provided billions in financial backing to Hamas. It has also thrown its diplomatic weight behind the terrorist group and provided luxury accommodation in the Qatari capital of Doha for Hamas leaders like Khaled Meshal, Ismail Haniyeh, and Moussa Abu Marzouk. It’s baffling—Qatar promotes itself as a modern, technological, even futuristic place, and yet it backs a mediaeval jihadist movement whose leaders have led the people of Gaza to utter ruin.
Hamas’s other main backers—chiefly the Islamic Republic of Iran, and to a lesser extent the autocratic regimes in China, Russia, and Turkey—deserve their own share of scrutiny. But Qatar’s case is unique.