Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood: Pragmatism or Preference?

Qatar has been one of the most active states during the Arab Spring. It has broadly supported the uprisings with media coverage on Al Jazeera, the Doha-based news channel, as well as with financial, diplomatic and material support for protagonists. Often Qatar threw its support behind Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood to the extent that some kind of direct, intimate relationship was assumed to exist between the two.

Clearly, there are important and obvious links between Qatar and the Brotherhood. Qatar has long hosted one of its most influential clerics, Yusuf Al Qaradawi, and provided him with a platform on Al Jazeera to exponentially increase his influence. Qatar also assiduously supported the Brotherhood-led Mohammed Morsi government in Egypt with tens of billions of dollars and free liquefied natural gas (LNG).¹ Yet there is a puzzle at the heart of this apparent relationship, for it is not immediately clear why Qatar would support such a group. There is no groundswell of Brotherhood support in Qatar, and the local Brotherhood organization closed itself down in 1999. Indeed, the state's official creed of Islam is Salafi, which is distinct from that of the Brotherhood.

In lieu of any compelling explanations, analysts typically suggest Qatar's pursuit of "influence" as the key motivating factor. However, it is not clear what this quest for influence means, why it is worth undercutting regional relationships, or what Qatar gets out of such understandings.²

A historically based analysis highlights the formative role Brotherhood members played in establishing and staffing some of Qatar's early bureaucracies. As mirrored throughout the Gulf, they played a particularly important role in educational institutions. However, because the small, relatively wealthy Qatari state provided its people with necessary educational, health and social services — typical means by which the Brotherhood expanded its influence — the group remained present but aloof. Instead, with no real social inroads, the group in Qatar naturally developed an external focus.

A brief examination of the evolution of the education system in Qatar will not only highlight the importance of the Brotherhood but contextualize its place as one group of immigrants among others. Notably, for example, Palestinian immigrants played a similarly important role. Members of the Brotherhood were recruited at least in part for simple pragmatic purposes, as but one source of educated individuals who could fulfill a range of roles. Brotherhood recruitment had other tangential advantages, such as allowing Qatar to develop an educational system that did not rely on Saudi Arabia and allowed Qatar's elite to play politics, supporting different pan-regional causes at different times.

These Brotherhood links are part of a long Qatari tradition of playing host to anyone who needed respite. From the 1990s onward, a concerted effort directed by the (then) new elite promoted Brotherhood thinkers and expanded their reach; Doha's influence increased accordingly. Cultivated over decades, these multifarious links — not only with the Brotherhood — became exponentially more valuable during the Arab Spring. In lieu of a mature foreign ministry to guide new policy or establish new contacts as the Spring progressed, these links provided new diplomatic networks and allowed tiny Qatar to play a kingmaker role, for a time at least.

STARTING THE STATE

Understanding the importance of foreigners in the formation of the modern state of Qatar requires an appreciation of its level of underdevelopment in the 1950s. From a population of around 10,000-16,000 people in the 1930s and 1940s, approximately 25,000 people were living in Qatar by 1950.³ There were no bureaucracies; the state was desperately poor since its key industries — pearling and fishing — were ravaged by competition, economic depression and the effects of the world wars. Starting in 1950, oil income slowly trickled down, allowing rudimentary proto-ministries to be formed.

Until the 1950s, schooling was informal and local, based on religion in kuttab schools run by individual teachers. The only semi-formal school was also religious in focus, having been established in 1918, when the Qatari leader appealed to the ruler of Saudi Arabia for help. The Madrasah Al Sheikh Mohammed Abdul-Aziz Al Mana was founded by the eponymous Wahhabi cleric, who also became Qatar's only judge.⁴

During the 1950s, as elsewhere in the region, Brotherhood members came to dominate the education sector, in particular. In 1951-52, Qatar's only formal school had a total of 240 male and no female students, taught by six male teachers.⁵ Jassim Al Darwish, a former pupil of Sheikh Al Mana, led the committee to organise a school system in 1952-53 on behalf of the Qatari leader, Ali Bin Abdullah Al Thani (r.1949-60).⁶

Initially, Darwish tried but failed to secure the services of Mohammed Fathi Osman, a Brotherhood writer "growing in prominence" at that time, as Al Qaradawi put it, to run Qatar's education department.⁷ Then Darwish consulted Sheikh Muhib Al Deen Al Khatib, an important contemporary of Brotherhood founder Hassan Al Banna, who chose fellow member Abdul-Badi Saqr for the role in 1954.⁸ A leader of the Brotherhood who was even in prison with Qaradawi for a spell in 1949, Saqr played an influential role as the joint director of the department of education alongside Al Darwish. Saqr, with other Brotherhood luminaries like Sheikh Zuhair Al Shawish, oversaw the expansion of official schools and the bureaucracy of the department and personally sought to bring girls' education under the department's auspices.⁹ By 1956, there were 1,455 students at the primary stage, 37 at the preparatory stage and none at the secondary stage in Qatar.¹⁰

Kobaisi notes that "most of the teachers who were brought in to run the Qatari schools [primarily by Saqr] were ideologically in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood party,"¹¹ while key administrators came from Brotherhood ranks, too. But domestic and international politics affected those who were recruited; different parties reacted differently to modulating currents of growing and waning Brotherhood, Baathist and pan-Arab influence.

By 1957, Khalifah Bin Hamad Al Thani (r.1972-1995), who was mired in intra-elite competition along with other opposition members within the ruling family, had sufficient momentum to force Saqr's removal.¹² Khalifah replaced Saqr with the Syrian Abdullah Abd Al Daim, Ph.D., a pan-Arab nationalist who subsequently became a minister of education and information in Syria in the 1960s. Khalifah had a plan to use education "to put himself forward as a mild pan-Arabist…using his responsibilities for finding foreign teachers to dabble in foreign affairs."¹³ This plan was thwarted by the British resident who forced Ali to pull rank and fire Al Daim, lest he whip up too much nationalist sentiment in country.¹⁴ The education portfolio was taken over by Khalifah's brother, Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, who held it until 1975.

Despite such instances, recruitment from the late 1950s onwards tended to focus on Brotherhood members, likely a reaction to the increasing vehemence of pan-Arabist sentiment visible in Doha. In 1958, Ezzeddin Ibrahim, a regionally respected Brotherhood scholar, was appointed assistant director of knowledge in charge of devising a school syllabus.¹⁵ In 1960, the head of Islamic Sciences in the education department, Abdullah Bin Tukri Al Subai, went to Al Azhar in Cairo to recruit Islamic teachers and officials. Most famously (today at least), Al Subai recruited Yusuf Al Qaradawi, who left Egypt for Qatar in 1961. Initially he ran a revamped religious institute; subsequently he established and became dean of the College of Sharia at Qatar University. Ahmed Al Assal, a close friend and contemporary of Al Qaradawi, arrived in Qatar in 1960 and taught in schools, lectured in mosques and helped form Brotherhood groups. Abdel-Moaz Al Sattar — Hassan Al Banna's personal emissary to Palestine in 1946 — became officially sanctioned by Al Azhar as the president of its mission to Qatar.¹⁶ He worked as a school inspector and then as director of Islamic Sciences at the Ministry of Education and co-authored numerous textbooks for the nascent Qatari school system in the early 1960s. Indeed, Egyptian textbooks came to dominate Qatar to the point where, from 1959 to 1974, secondary exams were both set and marked in Egypt for Qatari students wanting to go to university there.¹⁷ Another Brotherhood member, Dr. Kemal Naji, took on various roles, including director of education from 1964 to 1979 under Jassim, the head of the publication committee and the foreign-cultural-relations advisor of the Ministry of Education.

Aside from filling influential spots in the educational system, over the years these men used their positions to invite a variety of Brotherhood luminaries to Qatar for lecturing stints of varying lengths. Key examples include Mohammed Qutb, Sayyid Qutb's brother; Mohammed Al Ghazzali, a leading member of the Brotherhood; and Abdul-Wafa Al Taftazani.

As important as the Brothers were in Qatar, they were not the only source of imported intellectual expertise; in the early 1950s, the first wave of Palestinian intelligentsia arrived.¹⁸ Indeed, Qatar was to rank alongside Kuwait as a key locus of a range of Palestinian expatriates in the 1950s and 1960s who subsequently returned to prominence as leaders of the Palestinian Liberation Movement (PLO) and Fatah.

From the early 1950s onward, Rafiq Shaker Al Natshah worked in Qatar's education department as a teacher and an author of textbooks, and subsequently as director of the office of the head of education. Because of this close advisory role to Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, he was granted Qatari citizenship before he left to become the PLO representative to Saudi Arabia from 1979 to 1991, a Palestinian minister of labor and the chairman of the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2003. Mahmoud Abbas, the current leader of Fatah, lived in Qatar from September 1957 until 1969, where he worked predominantly in the education department; indeed, he was one of the functionaries who signed Yusuf Al Qaradawi's official paperwork. In Qatar, Abbas met with a range of contemporaries who would join him in founding the PLO or taking senior positions in the broader movement. Hani Hassan worked in Qatar before serving in a variety of senior roles, including as a political adviser to Yassir Arafat and a minister of the interior. Also, two of the three members of the PLO assassinated by the Israelis in 1973 in retaliation for the Munich Olympic massacre had spent nearly a decade in Qatar. Mohammed Yusuf Al Najjar, a founding member of Fatah and the head of its security apparatus for a time, was a teacher recruiter in the education department; and Kamal Adwan, a key figure in Fatah's history, was an engineer in Qatar.¹⁹

INFLUENCE OF THE INFLUX

Despite the prevalence of Brotherhood members in Qatar, few would suggest that today's policies are a result of domestic pressure from Qataris inculcated into Brotherhood ideology. The lack of transference stems from a variety of factors.

Qatar is a country where the Wahhabi creed of Salafi, Hanbali Islam prevails. Its ruling family hails from the same central Arabian tribal group (the Bani Tamim) as Wahhabism's founder, Muhammad Al Wahhab, and Qatar's leaders have long adhered to its strictures. Even in the twenty-first century, when nothing about Qatar's orientation or policies jibes with a typical understanding of the puritanical Wahhabi creed, the national mosque opened in 2011 was named after Al Wahhab himself. Thus, though the state was receptive to the influx of the Brotherhood, the ground for proselytizating was not so fertile.

Moreover, Qatar limited the institutional opportunities available for religious scholars of any description to exert influence domestically.²⁰ The religious institute as (re)established by Qaradawi in 1961 remains a niche; from the 1960s until today, it has struggled to fill its student ranks, particularly with Qataris.²¹ For example, in 2008-09 it taught only 257 students, most of whom were not Qataris.²² Further, to limit institutional religious influence on politics, there is no office of Grand Mufti in Qatar, and the Ministry for Islamic Affairs and Endowments was only established in 1993.²³ Therefore, though textbooks were often chosen and written by Egyptians, these were vetted; institutionally it was not possible to promote any line but that of the state.²⁴

The Brotherhood's lack of penetration in Qatar is also explained by its inability to perform its usual social functions. Running local hospitals or schools, typical Brotherhood activities elsewhere in the region, is popular but inevitably undercuts the state's legitimacy.²⁵ Qatar is a wealthy rentier state that provides for its citizens' every need. In particular, since Khalifah bin Hamad Al Thani took over from Ahmed bin Ali Al Thani in 1972, he sought to widen his legitimacy and diversified his support to create a wider base than the Al Thani family. He did this through a budget splurge, creating jobs, building houses, augmenting pensions and increasing wages.²⁶

The state and the Brotherhood came to develop a mutually beneficial relationship as long as the Brotherhood was outward-facing. It is no surprise that the Brotherhood from the early 1960s began to use Qatar as "a launching pad for its expansion into the Emirates and especially Dubai."²⁷ The Brotherhood's search for an outward focus found particular traction with the influential Al Jazeera platform afforded to Al Qaradawi from 1996 onwards.

PREFERENCE VS. PRAGMATISM

The core motivation for the importing of Brotherhood members into Qatar was the basic need for educated employees to undertake a range of roles, from teaching Islamic studies, mathematics and other subjects, to establishing and managing emerging bureaucracies. The turn to the Arab world's most respected educational institution — Al Azhar — is not surprising; it retained a "virtual monopoly of training facilities for advanced Islamic studies."²⁸ Moreover, in the 1950s and 1960s, Egyptian soft power was at its zenith and the Brotherhood was the most prestigious new movement of its day.²⁹ An inclination towards Egyptian scholars is thus unsurprising; they were also, after the Nasserist crackdowns, easy to recruit.

In addition, religious Qataris like Al Subai and Al Darwish did the initial recruitment (often of Brothers who would then carry on the recruitment themselves). Their preference for a religiously oriented recruitment solution was to be expected. Though these men were Salafi Wahhabis, the particular form of Wahhabism in Qatar has seldom been as austere and conservative as in Saudi Arabia. Al Darwish, for example, would receive a variety of visitors at his Majlis, including Mohammed Hussain Fadlallah, often described as the spiritual mentor of the Shia militant group Hezbollah, and Mahab Al Deen Al Khuteeb, one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood.³⁰

Similar reasons apply to the recruitment of Palestinians. The aftermath of the Nakba, the 1948 catastrophe, drove many into exile; their education under the British mandate made them desirable potential teachers.

Recruitment was affected by elite rivalries. The sacking of a Brotherhood head of education (Abdul-Badi Saqr), his replacement by a pan-Arabist (Dr. Al Daim), and the latter's subsequent sacking the next year speaks to the primacy of political over ideological preference. Later, Khalifah bin Hamad's intake of Brotherhood members matches the political context of the time. The 1960s in Qatar were turbulent, involving numerous strikes and increasing popular resentment of Al Thani impunity and their entrenched economic advantages. Notable citizens, such as Hamad Bin Abdullah Al Attiyah and Abdullah and Nasser Al Misnad, agitated along pan-Arabist lines, criticizing the Al Thanis; they were arrested, jailed and exiled as a result.³¹ That Khalifah bin Hamad, the next in line to the throne at that time, had to carefully calibrate his reactions, empathizing with their plight, but preferring to recruit Brothers so as not to give the agitators more potential fodder, was logical.

A preference establishing non-Wahhabi religious links made sense. As a practical matter, there were not enough Saudis to meet their own employment needs (let alone Qatar's) though doubtless one or two Saudi sheikhs might have been dispatched to direct affairs. But to enhance the status of Wahhabism in Qatar, to explicitly promote it through the education system or to give its religious scholars an official place in government, would have been to instill deference to Saudi Arabia as the custodian of the two holy places and the Al Wahhab legacy. When Qatar had no choice and needed a judge as in 1918, it sought help from Saudi Arabia, but when it had the option — a matter of finance as much as anything else — it looked elsewhere.

Moreover, the hosting of Brotherhood scholars allowed Qatar to augment its regional status; Brotherhood ideology was more widespread than Wahhabi thought. Practically speaking, Qatar had no status whatsoever on any identifiable international level. It sent no representatives to any of the initial World Muslim Congresses at Mecca in 1926, Jerusalem in 1931, Karachi in 1949 and 1951, or Baghdad in 1962; Kuwait and Bahrain sent representatives as early as 1951.³² A £50,000 donation to the Muslim Congress in the early 1960s indicates some desire to play a role in such forums.³³ Hosting the Brotherhood, the prestigious agitators of their day, allowed Qatar to make itself a key spoke in the Brotherhood wheel. Later, the promotion of Brotherhood ideology through Al Jazeera furthered this goal of carving a place for Qatar in key debates. The ultimate result of this logic came with the Arab Spring, when a number of contacts that Qatar had been cultivating over the decades proved, for a time at least, to be useful in facilitating Qatar's involvement around the region.

KAABA OF THE DISPOSSESSED

Qatar's founder, Sheikh Jassim, once wrote a poem referring to Qatar as the "Kaaba Lil Madiyoum," the Kaaba of the dispossessed. To those looking for respite from persecution, Qatar is what the Kaaba — the black box in the center of the grand mosque in Mecca — is to Muslims: their direction of focus. This concept grew up in part because of the lawless nature of the peninsula. When someone had cause to flee, he could go to Qatar knowing that there was no meaningful authority there. Equally, he could rely on a basic tenet of life on the Arabian Peninsula: giving hospitality and protection to a stranger.

Qatar has hosted a variety of exiles in addition to the ranks of the Brotherhood and proto leaders of the PLO. Khaled Mishaal, the leader of Hamas, has been a sporadic resident of Qatar since 1999, as have the controversial Indian artist M.F. Husain and former Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri Al Hadithi. Former Chechen leader Zalimkhan Yandarbiyev lived in Doha from 1999 until the Russians assassinated him in 2004. Other "guests" have included Omar Bin Laden, a son of Osama; much of Saddam Hussain's family; controversial Islamic preachers including the Canadian Bilal Philips and the American Wagy Ghoneim; Maaouya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya, former Mauritanian president, and his family since August 2005; Abbasi Madani, former FIS leader in Algeria; prominent Libyan cleric Ali Al Sallabi; and former Knesset member and avowed pan-Arabist Azmi Bishara.The diversity of this collection of regional strays indicates tolerance for exiles of widely varying types.

A nuanced understanding of political Islamic movements in the Arab world indicates that Qatar rarely works exclusively with the Brotherhood. In Tunisia, according to the logic of "we know it happens, but there is no proof," Qatar is widely assumed to support Rashid Ghannouchi's Ennahda party.³⁴ Bold assertions of funding links between the two led Britain's Independent newspaper to issue a groveling apology, even though an August 2012 report by the Tunisian Court of Auditors raised pointed questions about the provenance of Ennahda's funding.³⁵

Aside from presumed financial links, personal connections abound. Founder Raschid Ghannouchi has been a frequent visitor to Doha over the years (which have included audiences with Yusuf Al Qaradawi), and he has been a regular on Al Jazeera.³⁶ Indeed, his appearance alongside opposition figures including Moncef Marzouki (now Tunisia's president) on Al Jazeera in 2000 and 2001 prompted the recall of the Tunisian ambassador to Qatar.³⁷

After the Tunisia revolution, Ghannouchi stated in an interview with Al Arab newspaper that Qatar was a "partner" in Tunisia's revolution, not least because of the Al Jazeera coverage. Other members of Ennahda caused a storm by suggesting that the (now former) Qatari emir attend the opening of the new Tunisian National Constituent Assembly in 2011. Ghannouchi's son-in-law, Rafik Abdessalem, after working as the head of research at the Al Jazeera studies center in Doha, became the Tunisian foreign minister, further cementing ties between the two states.

Multiple high-level visits led to Qatar's offering substantial economic support and investment. Initially Qatar pledged loans of $500 million — matched by Turkey, but more than the EU and United States combined. This was later upped to $1 billion.³⁸ Qatar also invested several billion dollars in the Tunisian telecommunication, banking, tourism and hydrocarbon sectors, in addition to promising 20,000 jobs for Tunisians in Qatar. Apparently some Qatari backers also sought to buy out one of the new, popular Tunisian newspapers — Attounisia — established after the fall of Ben Ali.³⁹ Certainly, there are strong links between Ennahda and the Brotherhood, but they are not the same group.⁴⁰ Ennahda is willing to emphasize its independence by, for example, inviting Hezbollah to its first public conference as a political party, much to the anger of the official Syrian Muslim Brotherhood party, which was in the midst of bitter fighting with Hezbollah.⁴¹

It is the same in Libya, where Qatar channeled its support through the cleric Ali Al Sallabi and his brother, who, though linked, are distinct from the Brotherhood. Indeed, when Sallabi attempted to unite with the "official" Libyan Brotherhood group, his overture was rejected.⁴²

Another link to a person of interest concerns Azmi Bishara. Since his arrival in Doha, he has been a "near permanent" expert on Al Jazeera. He has also established a think tank (the Arab Centre for Policy Studies), developed a key role as a mentor and advisor for Crown Prince and then Emir Tamim bin Hamad, is consolidating his place in Doha by morphing his think tank into a government-backed, full-fledged university, and is the creator and editor-in-chief of Qatar's new multi-billion-dollar online and TV media foray, Al Arab Al Jadeed (the New Arab).⁴³ Manifestly, his influence is significant, and Bishara is far from an Islamist. He is a dyed-in-the-wool pan-Arabist, a Christian Palestinian who has served in the Israeli Knesset.

CONCLUSION

From the late 1950s onwards, Qatar provided a lucrative, stable and welcoming platform where Brotherhood members could safely base themselves, recruit fellow members and prosper. Blunted internally, Brotherhood attention inexorably focused elsewhere and in the Arab Spring, Qatar channeled support to certain groups, often associated with the Brotherhood.

A narrative thus emerged of Qatar as a perennially Brotherhood-boosting state. But the reality is more complex and involves circumstance as much as active choice. It must not be forgotten that from the mid-1950s onwards the Arab world was full of displaced Brothers seeking refuge. It would have been more surprising had Qatar not taken any in.

Similarly, Qatar was not discriminating in its approach. Numerous Palestinian nationalists were also taken in who later became significant players in the emergence of the PLO. These men too arrived, not necessarily because of some Qatari plan to host people with such ideas, but because of the context: both the Qatari pull and need for educators and the push of governments elsewhere in the Middle East looking to offload such individuals.

This kind of logic, of happenstance and context over calculated long-term decision making, also better explains Qatar's perennial hosting of regional waifs and strays from those with political connections and thus potential utility (Azmi Bishara) to those with no conceivable practical benefit for Qatar (Omar bin Laden).

Another important rationale for recruiting Brotherhood members often had more to do with intra-Qatari politics than the Brotherhood in and of itself and the struggles faced by Sheikh Khalifah in ascending to the throne amid the see-sawing regional tensions playing out on Doha's streets.

If Qatar was to avoid instilling an inexorable deference to Saudi Arabia by basing its education system on Wahhabi principles, practices and leadership, an alternative was needed. Similarly, if Qatar was to have a chance to escape the diplomatic orbit of Saudi Arabia or the Gulf region, it would need links outside the region, a reason for Arabs in the wider region to consider and interact with Qatar as a country by itself. Both of these questions were answered, at least in part, through the promotion of the Brotherhood within Qatar.

Despite important incidental factors, an active preference for supporting the Brotherhood can be detected, particularly with the prominent recruiting role in the 1950s and 1960s of religious men like Al Darwish and Al Subai. Recently, until the change of leadership in mid-2013, Qatar was dominated by four individuals: Hamad Bin Khalifah (the emir), Moza Bint Nasser Al Misnad (Hamad´s second wife), Abdullah Al Attiyah (the long-term energy minister) and Hamad Bin Jassim Al Thani (the long-term foreign minister and prime minister). It can be no coincidence that two of these three close confidants of Hamad were the son and daughter of two of the most prominent agitators in the 1960s: Nasser Al Misnad and Hamad Al Attiyah, who even spent time together in prison.⁴⁴ Moreover, it is tempting to infer that some of the revolutionary impulses of the fathers rubbed off on Hamad via his wife and long-term political ally (in whose house Hamad was raised).

From education through health care to foreign relations, Hamad revolutionised his country. Internationally, in lieu of a viable pan-Arab group to latch on to, as Moza's and Abdullah's fathers did, he instead sought to support a certain unity among Arabs through supporting moderate Islamists as a pan-Arab uniting concept.

When Hamad Bin Khalifah wanted to access these region-wide constituencies, he could not use Qatar's Foreign Service, for it was (and remains) too small and inexperienced. Instead, he used the resources at his disposal: his own contacts book of those resident in Doha and the voluminous resource that was a veritable who's-who of Middle East politics, Al Jazeera.

Many of these factors are not unique to Qatar. Other Gulf states rely on Brotherhood and Palestinian teachers and administrators, take in a variety of exiles and seek influence across the region. But only Qatar has as small, as rich and as cohesive a local population and can host a group like the Brotherhood, confident that its own security will not be undermined. The opposite conclusion has recently been reached by neighbours Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE, leaving Qatar isolated. Yet, as much as Qatar is pressed to lose its regional links, unless its leadership make a conscious choice to abandon decades of policy practice in maintaining its extra-Gulf alliances, implicitly accepting its place as a more limited state, Qatar will doggedly hold on and play, once again, for the long term.