Anti-gay media adviser to Qatar: Homosexuality is ‘sinful, unnatural’
She says media and computer games expose children to content that promotes homosexuality.
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALA map of Qatar is seen in this picture illustration June 5, 2017(photo credit: REUTERS)
A media adviser to Qatar’s Foreign Ministry has launched a homophobic rant against gays in Al Sharq, a Doha-based pro-regime daily newspaper.The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a nonprofit organization based in Washington that monitors media in the Arab and Muslim world, translated the June article from Arabic into English on August 3.In her article, Qatari journalist Na’ima ’Abd al-Wahhab al-Mutawa’a wrote: “A grave issue that can already be described as a phenomenon, and which we can no longer keep silent about, is the warm attitude evident on many social networks – especially on Snapchat – towards homosexuality, [which] deviates from the nature Allah bestowed upon males and females, and towards [the phenomenon] we see in our society of young men looking like women and young women looking like men.”The title of the media adviser’s article is “Keep Deviant Ideas Away from Your Children.”“Qatari media periodically publish articles harshly critical of homosexuality and the gay community,” MEMRI wrote, adding that the article by Mutawa’a is one of several homophobic articles published in Al Sharq over the past year. In January, it published an article about a children’s book that it said promoted the “moral crime” and “sick phenomenon” of homosexuality; in July, it published an article by journalist Ahmad al-Muhannadi that likewise exhorted readers to fight this “perversion.”The travel website Asher & Lyric listed Qatar as one of the most dangerous countries for LGBTQ tourists, The Jerusalem Post reported last year. Qatar’s Sharia (Islamic law) system proscribes the death penalty for homosexuality.Mutawa’a wrote: “This is an issue that must not be underestimated and must be opposed, especially [when it comes to] protecting our children from these perversions, which take them away from the correct and normal path. For how terrible it is to see your son deviating from the natural [path] towards grave sin, or your daughter deviating from her path and following those who spread and encourage these perverted sights.”“What hurts us even more and causes us to lose sleep is that the filth of those who spread this phenomenon has reached even [the domain of] toys for girls, such as the famous [Barbie] doll, which we always give to our daughters along with all the toy accessories: everything a girl needs in life, such as a house, a bedroom and clothes,” she wrote. “They have manufactured a [gender-neutral] doll that can be changed from a girl into a boy in an instant by changing the hair and body, in order to accustom children to this idea.”In response to Qatari academic Abd al-Zaziz al-Khazraj al-Ansari, who blamed last week’s Beirut Port explosion on gays, Peter Tatchell, a LGBT and human-rights campaigner, on Tuesday told the Post: “On the issue of homosexuality, Ansari should look in his own backyard of Qatar, where homosexuality is just as prevalent as in Lebanon, but hidden behind a mask of hypocrisy. And, unlike racist Qatar, most Lebanese do not treat migrant workers like semi-slave labor.”