Soccer, Beer, and Hereditary Monarchies

The World Cup, the quadrennial global soccer (or, football, if you're one of 'them') contest for national bragging rights, kicks off (bad pun acknowledged) this weekend in Qatar.

For the geographically-less-informed, Qatar is a peninsula nation on the western side of the Persian Gulf. Its capital, Doha, is where World Trade Organization stuff sometimes happens.

For the politically-less-informed, Qatar is a hereditary monarchy. A real one, not the show monarchy that is the United Kingdom. Its current emir is Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who has the powers of a true king (i.e. legislative and executive authority, and control of the judiciary). Qatar is, by dint of its massive gas and oil reserves/exports, a very wealthy country, fourth-highest in the world in per-capita GDP.

For the Green-minded, per Wikipedia, Qatar is one of the world's largest exporters of liquefied natural gas and the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide per capita.

Of relevance to the World Cup, Qatar is a Wahabbi Islamic nation, and alcohol consumption is highly controlled (as in, a few hotels and restaurants that, I'd say it's safe to presume, cater primarily to wealthy foreign heathens whose dollars and euros are pleasing to the kingdom). Budweiser had made a deal to be a major World Cup sponsor, and presumably get the rights to beer sales at the eight stadiums where the tournament will take place. But, just two days before the first kickoff, Qatar banned beer sales therein. The luxury suites will still be "wet," and some sanctioned fan events will have beer, but I'm sure that the C-Suite types at Anheuser-Busch (AB InBEV, to be more accurate) are chewing more than a few wasps over having coughed up tens of millions of dollars for the right not to have their beer sold.

Of greater interest to me in all this is this business of hosting the World Cup in a theocratic autocracy, one where the rights of most citizens are a pale shadow of what the West considers basic, where women border on chattel status ("women in Qatar must obtain permission from their male guardians to marry, study abroad on government scholarships, work in many government jobs, travel abroad until certain ages, receive some forms of reproductive health care and to act as a child's primary guardian, even when they are divorced"), where male homosexuality is illegal and even protesting for LGBT rights is prohibited, and where the nation's wealth derives from the carbon energy that we are constantly told is destroying the planet.

I haven't seen much in the way of protests, here or there, and I'm sure that any protesters who try and disrupt the games will end up in bad, bad prisons.

Now, just as a thought exercise, ponder what sort of attitude the West's scolds would hold were Qatar a Christian theocratic monarchy. So we talk apples-to-apples, let's make it similar to the Republic of Gilead from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, excluding the infertility business, i.e. a hypothetical nation rooted in some sort of extreme and restrictive interpretation of The Bible. Women, even those in positions of esteem, were chattel, with limited or no rights, and subject to dress codes. LGBT folks were deemed "gender traitors" and imprisoned or executed.

We already know what the Left thinks of The Handmaid's Tale - protestors donned the handmaid costumes to protest Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court and his presumed views on abortion. We were warned that any appointment of a conservative Justice to the Court would lead America down the road to theocracy, and the hyperbole was strong.

Where are these protestors when it comes to Wahhabism or other radical forms of Islam, that real-life practice the oppressions in Atwater's fictional dystopian tale?

Oh, I know. Muslims rank high on the grievance hierarchy, higher than gay men in fact, as we learned a few years ago. Criticizing a repressive theocratic monarchy is bigotry.

After all, it's their culture, they should be free to oppress whomever they want, no?

China's Uyghurs could not be reached for comment.

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