By Andrew Warshaw
February 10 – The man leading Qatar’s 2022 World Cup organisation has issued another strong defence of his country’s right to host the tournament pledging it will act as a unifying force at a time when global divisiveness is very much in vogue.
Hassan Al-Thawadi, secretary general of the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy and the public face of Qatar’s stunning upset victory back in December 2010, addressed a group of Cambridge University students, historians and academics on Thursday and said his country would never give in to the “cynics” who question Qatar’s credentials.
Al-Thawadi had been invited to St. Edmunds College by the Woolf Institute and the Doha International Centre for Interfaith Dialogue to give their annual lecture.
This year the subject was ‘The Middle East’s first World Cup – a rebirth for La Convivencia through the power of sport’and al-Thawadi, in a cordial, non-confrontational atmosphere, took the opportunity to pledge that Qatar will pull together cultures from east and west, be a welcoming, inclusive World Cup host and shake off the west’s stereotypical image of the region.
“We will strive to ensure that 2022 serves as a platform for enhancing cultural understanding in this era where voices of extremism promote exclusion instead of inclusion,” al-Thawadi told his audience. “It is an opportunity for people to travel to the region, meet people, and delve beyond the stereotypes that have been perpetrated for decades and centuries.
“It is an opportunity for people of the Middle East to meet their counterparts from the West. The importance of people-to-people relations should not be underestimated and there is no more effective vehicle for this than football, and the World Cup.”
Despite serious ongoing concerns about human rights and overspending as well as the as yet inconclusive Swiss investigation into the bid process for both 2018 and 2022, Al-Thawadi not for the first time responded to those who question Qatar’s credentials.
“The Middle East and the Arab World deserves its chance to showcase its own special brand of hospitality to the world. We deserve our chance on the international stage to be in the headlines for reasons other than war and conflict,” he said.
“There are those that may look upon these initiatives and take a cynical approach, questioning whether the work we are doing is actually making a difference. But the cynics’ voices don’t touch us.”
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