Hate groupsQatar continuing to back extremist preachers and anti-Semitic incitement
In preparation for the Qatari Emir’s visit this week to Washington, the White House last week thanked the monarch for his country’s “continuing commitment” to countering extremism. However, in the last year Qatar’s government has actually continued to use its prominent platforms to promote strident anti-Semitic preachers.
In preparation for the Qatari Emir’s visit today to Washington, the White House announced last week that President Trump thanked the monarch by phone for his country’s “continuing commitment” to countering extremism.
However, in the last year Qatar’s government has actually continued to use its prominent platforms to promote strident anti-Semitic preachers, a practice President Trump and Congressional leaders should raise with the Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani during his visit.
Most notably, Qatar’s state-controlled Grand Mosque featured a Friday sermon in December 2017 by preacher Muhammed al-Muraikhi in which he sought to tell the world’s Muslims that Jews have “enmity and hatred to you in their blood and their veins”. He described the Jewish people as “your deceitful, lying, treacherous, fornicating, intransigent enemy” who “has despoiled, corrupted, ruined, and killed, and will not stop.”
Muraikhi’s sermon dismissed the Jewish religious connection to Jerusalem and the Holy Land as an “invalid, falsified historical claim.” He further charged that the Jews “betrayed God,” tried to kill Jesus and Muhammad, murdered other prophets, and broke important covenants and charters.
In this regard, Muraikhi commended the Palestinian people for opposing the Jews, “despite all that the Zionists do and all that Satan helps them with support and assistance and providing weapons and everything they ask for.” It was not clear whether he was referring to Israel’s main backer, the U.S., as Satan in this regard.
ADL says that far from countering extremism, Muraikhi’s sermon encouraged it. He declared that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “cannot be solved with promises or conferences or turning east or west” because he said Jews would never be satisfied with concessions from Muslims or with “so-called coexistence.” Instead, he called upon all Muslims to “cleanse” al-Aqsa from “the filth” of the Jews.
As ADL documented last year, this kind of hateful language about “cleans[ing]” al-Aqsa from supposed Jewish desecration was also a common message among U.S.-designated terrorist groups such as Hamas as well as by a broad swathe of extremists on social media.
