Changing Qatar: Culture, Citizenship, and Rapid Modernization 9781479809547

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Changing Qatar

Changing Qatar Culture, Citizenship, and Rapid Modernization

Geoff Harkness

NEW YORK UNIVERSIT Y PRESS New York

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NEW YORK UNIVERSIT Y PRESS New York www.nyupress.org © 2020 by New York University All rights reserved Maps created by Maps.com, LLC. Portions of chapter 4 were previously published as “Hijab Micropractices: The Strategic and Situational Use of Clothing by Qatari Women,” Sociological Forum 34 (2019): 71–90 (copyright 2019), and is reprinted with permission from Wiley. References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Harkness, Geoffrey Victor, author. Title: Changing Qatar : culture, citizenship, and rapid modernization / Geoff Harkness. Description: New York, NY : New York University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019033759 | ISBN 9781479889075 (cloth) | ISBN 9781479854820 (paperback) | ISBN 9781479809547 (ebook) | ISBN 9781479894659 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Sex role—Qatar. | Women—Qatar—Social conditions—21st century. | Foreign workers—Qatar. | Qatar—Social conditions—21st century. | Qatar—Social life and customs—21st century. Classification: LCC HN667.A8 H37 2020 | DDC 305.42095363—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033759 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Also available as an ebook

For Ben, Emma, and Laura

Contents

Introduction

1

1. Welcome to Doha

21

2. Modern Traditionalism: Qatar and the Arabian Gulf

56

3. Inventing Traditions: The Construction of Sports Culture

93

4. The National Uniform: Strategic Uses of Clothing

124

5. Venus and Mahrs: Dating, Sex, and Marriage

158

6. Expats and Workers: Foreign Labor under Sponsorship

190

Conclusion: The Limits of Modern Traditionalism

225

Acknowledgments

241

Appendix: Researching Qatar

245

Notes

259

References

293

Index

315

About the Author

329

ix

Introduction

“Today, many governments and international powers act with impunity, without regard for human rights,” Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, current emir of Qatar, intoned during his remarks at the Munich Security Conference in February 2018. Dressed in a stylishly tailored suit and tie, rather than the traditional white robe and head scarf he wore at home, Al Thani was in Germany to convince attendees—including about thirty heads of states and one hundred foreign and defense ministers—that Qatar had been wronged by a lengthy embargo from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The conflict between these nations became official in June 2017 and continued unabated. The blockade included severing diplomatic ties and a complete halt to travel and shipments via land, air, and sea. Borders were sealed, ambassadors were expelled, media outlets were censored, and the UAE and Bahrain criminalized online expressions of sympathy for Qatar, punishable by fifteen years in prison. Underlying the dispute was a mosaic of tribal rivalries, some of which date back centuries. The feud’s latest iteration began during the Arab Spring of 2011–12, when Qatar provided $5 billion in support to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic political organization that helped overthrow the Egyptian government.1 Saudi Arabia and the UAE have accused the Muslim Brotherhood, and other Qatar-backed groups such as Hamas, of terrorism. Qatar denies the charge and calls the embargo a threat to its sovereignty.2 During Al Thani’s remarks in Munich, he wrapped his speech in secular, au courant expressions that espoused human rights, democracy, and freedom. “An audience such as yourselves must be able to see why many people, even entire nations, are losing faith in international accountability,” he proclaimed. “They think—arguably right—that many of the global mechanisms for conflict resolution and the maintenance of rights have been paralyzed and sidelined.” Al Thani added, “Suffering 1

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and injustice pave the way for terrorism to flourish. . . . Extremist religious doctrines pose an undeniable challenge to all of us.” Critics balked that the emir of Qatar—a country denounced for its abusive treatment of low-wage migrant workers, oppressive gender milieu, corruption, and support for fundamentalist Islam, a nation an op-ed writer for the New York Times once declared “Club Med for terrorists”— would lecture anyone on the finer points of human rights and social justice.3 Al Thani’s strategy of appealing to different audiences, however, is a family tradition, passed down to Tamim from his father and his father before him and dating back to the nineteenth century. Upon deplaning in Qatar, now bedecked in a traditional white thobe and ghoutra head scarf, the monarch was greeted by adoring crowds, who cheered and waved the national flag, some sporting T-shirts emblazoned with his visage. This book examines Qatar, a complex, sometimes contradictory nation located on the Arabian Peninsula of the Middle East.4 Qatar is an oval-shaped peninsula, 99 miles long and 60 miles wide, covering a total land mass of 4468 square miles. Most of the country consists of desert, and the weather is characterized by extreme heat and humidity much of the year. Although it is surrounded on three sides by the Arabian Gulf, Qatar has no natural drinking water supply and is dependent entirely on desalination plants. Since 2013, Qatar has been ruled by Tamim Al Thani, son of the previous emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Tamim is Qatar’s eighth emir and eighth consecutive Al Thani; a member of the Al Thani dynasty has ruled the nation since 1850. Tamim seemingly inherited his father’s ambition and capacity for strategic thinking. Hamad wrested control of the country from his father in a bloodless coup in 1995. At the time, Qatar was virtually unknown, a bit player that was happy to cash checks from its petroleum reserves and maintain a low profile. Hamad had higher aspirations, pouring millions into technology that boosted that nation’s production and distribution of natural gas. Today Qatar is the world’s top supplier of liquefied natural gas and holds the third-largest reserve of natural gas on Earth.5 It is also the wealthiest country in the world per capita, with an average annual income of nearly $130,000.6 Outside investments are a major source of this wealth. The Qatar Investment Authority manages the nation’s state-owned sovereign monetary

Introduction

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Doha, Qatar. (Photo by Alexander R. Wilcox Cheek)

fund, which spent more than $300 billion in the past twelve years to acquire or purchase stakes in foreign retail chains, sports teams, real estate, airlines, communications companies, and more. These ventures are designed to diversify Qatar’s assets and expand its revenue streams. Its portfolio includes well-known brands such as Volkswagen, Harrods, Barclays, and Heathrow Airport, as well as extensive real estate holdings in locations such as London, New York City, and Washington, DC. Among these properties is a 10 percent stake in the Empire State Building, purchased in 2016 for $622 million. In June 2017, the iconic New York City structure was lit up in Qatar’s national colors, maroon and white.7

From Oil to Knowledge Despite Qatar’s vast wealth, scientists predict the country will run out of petroleum in the future. Some forecast it will dry up as soon as 2030; others believe Qatar has a one-hundred-year supply.8 Regardless, the inexorable loss of hydrocarbon revenues has spurred a desire among the Qatari leadership to transform the country from a gas-dependent rentier state into a nation whose economy is fueled by knowledge workers.9

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Introduction

Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development, or QF, as it is known locally, is a government entity formed in 1995. QF’s task is to transform not only the nation’s entire system of schooling but also the Qatari people’s beliefs, values, and practices related to education. Its research budget is equal to 2.8 percent of Qatar’s annual gross domestic product.10 QF’s first endeavor was to overhaul the antiquated primary-school system. It then developed Education City, a twenty-five-hundred-acre campus that hosts satellites of eight elite US and European universities: Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgetown, Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC) Paris, Northwestern, Texas A&M, University College London, and Virginia Commonwealth. In Qatar, each of these institutions offers only a few specialties from the home campus, such as Cornell’s medical program or Texas A&M’s engineering degrees. The aim is to introduce Western-style higher education in Doha through fields of study most relevant to Qatar.11 In 2010, a graduate research institution, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, opened its doors, offering master’s and doctoral degrees in programs focused on the Arab world. Education City also houses primary schools, research centers, and Al Jazeera’s children’s channel. Additionally, QF has expanded its national institute, Qatar University; funded a branch campus for a Canadian technical school, the College of the North Atlantic; and forged a $45 million partnership with Houston Community College.12 Qatar’s strategic pairings with Western institutions raise its international profile and mark it as a purveyor of world-caliber education, a nation worthy of a position on the global stage. “The government knows that we are not going to forever continue having this oil,” says Salim, a Qatari who works for a government ministry. “They are moving from an economy that depends on carbon to a knowledge-based economy, through educating people. So they want to change the picture of Qatar. Instead of thinking of it as a source of oil and gas, it’s going to be a resource for scientific research and a place for students all around the world to come and study and have a good education. We are using our current wealth to build this new picture.”13 In addition to education, Qatar’s expanding wealth enabled Hamad (and now Tamim) to pursue a series of social, political, and

Introduction

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infrastructural projects that raised the nation’s global stature: providing free land for the Middle East’s largest US military base; mediating (and occasionally financing) regional conflicts; funding disaster relief; hosting mega sports events, including the 2022 FIFA World Cup; creating Qatar Airways and erecting a state-of-the-art airport; hosting conferences, multicultural fairs, art exhibitions, concerts, and film festivals; and building the Al Jazeera media network.14 By pursuing many of these initiatives simultaneously, Qatar hopes to establish itself, virtually overnight, as a global destination for business, education, sports, and culture, a world-caliber player in a “dynamic and increasingly borderless international economy.”15 In doing so, Qatar intends to boost tourism, stimulate outside investment, stabilize its currency, gain worldwide credibility and trust, expand its political influence, strengthen global alliances, and polish its public image.16 “We are trying to put Qatar in the picture,” explains Salim. “Many countries didn’t know about Qatar, but nowadays Qatar has become a well-known country. When you talk about sports, 2022, when you talk about culture, heritage, and art, you will find that this is part of what Qatar is building. In order to be a worldwide country, a more international environment, we have to have something from everywhere. It shows importance.” With a small indigenous citizenry, Qatar is largely dependent on foreign labor to staff these initiatives. In 1990, there were 420,000 inhabitants in Qatar. Since then, due to government and industry efforts to import foreign laborers, the nation’s population has expanded to nearly three million, an increase of more than 600 percent. Today Qatar nets a new migrant every fourteen minutes.17 Nearly 90 percent of Qatar’s inhabitants are expatriates who represent more than one hundred nationalities.18 Just 10.5 percent of Qatari inhabitants are Qatari citizens. Indians are the largest national group in Qatar, making up 21.8 percent of the population; Bangladeshis and Nepalese each represent 12.5 percent of inhabitants; 9.3 percent of Qatar’s expatriate population are Egyptians, followed by Filipinos (7.35 percent), Pakistanis (4.7 percent), and Sri Lankans (4.35 percent). Collectively, citizens of four MENA nations (Sudan, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon) compose 6.45 percent of Qatar’s population. There are about forty thousand Americans living in Qatar, 1.25 percent of the country’s total population.19 Some

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expatriate workers are wealthy; others earn as little as three dollars per day. Some are educated; others cannot read or write a word. Some were born in Qatar; most are recent arrivals. From street sweepers to brain surgeons, these foreign laborers are mutually responsible for helping turn Qatar into a globally competitive nation. The striking demographic imbalance between citizens and noncitizens lends increased salience to national identity in Qatar. Photos of Doha, Qatar’s capital, taken in the early 1980s show a handful of modest structures. Today, Doha is a modern boomtown whose futuristic skyline features a phalanx of more than fifty space-age skyscrapers, blanketed in neon and festooned with multicolored lights.20 Taxicabs rush passengers to and from king-sized shopping malls that flog the wares of Gucci, Sony, Starbucks, and Pizza Hut. There are museums, universities, sports arenas, concert halls, symphony orchestras, multiplex cinemas, and ice-skating rinks. Young people huddle together snapping selfies to post on social media, while others use their phones to binge on Hulu and hip-hop. “If you look back thirty years ago, it’s like we started from scratch,” a sixty-year-old Qatari woman explains. “There was nothing and now there is everything.”

Sand and Desolation In 1865, an English priest and journeyman named William Palgrave published a best-selling memoir of a year spent traveling throughout Arabia. His description of Qatar during this epoch provides an early account of its burgeoning towns and their inhabitants. At the time, Qatar was among the pearl capitals of the region, with an industry that employed thousands. Labeling the country in dismissive terms that have not changed much over the years, Palgrave characterized Qatar as “miserable,” “desolate,” and “melancholy,” with “twenty pebbles for every blade of grass” and little more than “clusters of wretched, most wretched, earth cottages and palm leaf huts, narrow, ugly, and low.”21 One hundred and forty-three years later, as if descended from Palgrave, the American writer Eric Weiner published a travelogue titled The Geography of Bliss, in which he opines that Qatar has “no culture” and describes the country as akin to “a good airport terminal: pleasantly airconditioned, with lots of shopping, a wide selection of food, and people

Introduction

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from around the world.”22 This sentiment is shared by a journalist from Vulture, who writes that Doha has “a downtown made up of Jetsonsesque urban clutter that’s at once very alive and totally dead. Cranes and scaffolding crowd the skyline, and imposing glass edifices shoot up from the concrete-covered desert. But the city center is almost entirely devoid of pedestrians and storefronts, or even proper sidewalks, for that matter. The interior of Qatar is primarily sand and desolation.”23 In portrayals generated by the Western media, Qatari nationals are often described as coddled, gluttonous, and resentful of foreigners. For example, an Atlantic feature titled “The Richest, Fattest Nation on Earth” asserts that Qataris “went from living modest, tribal lifestyles in the Arabian desert, to living in air-conditioned villas with maids, nannies, gardeners, and cooks.”24 The primary photograph for a New York Times story titled “Privilege Pulls Qatar toward Unhealthy Choices” depicts nationals in traditional attire gorging on Kentucky Fried Chicken, French fries, and Pepsi.25 The political geographer Natalie Koch points out, “Qatar has not been treated kindly by the Western press, which has overwhelmingly cast it as an overly zealous, young upstart, with reckless spending habits and dubious political alignments.”26 A more substantive media critique denounces Qatar’s treatment of its low-wage migrant workforce, the millions of laborers who travel from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa for employment in Qatar’s everexpanding construction, utility, and service industries.27 For example, in 2019, the UK paper the Sun ran a story under the headline, “Qatar World Cup ‘Slave Labour’ Shame as Stadium Builders Are Paid Just [$1.29] an Hour in Oil-Rich State.”28 The scrutiny of Qatar after it won hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup transformed the country into a worldwide symbol of exploitive Gulf labor practices.

Gender Distinctions Qatar also attracts unwanted attention over its alleged mistreatment of women. For example, the Independent ran a 2018 feature (“Female Athletes Dismayed at the Sport’s Deepening Relationship with Qatar”) that lambasted the Gulf nation for legally allowing polygamy, marital rape, and domestic violence. The Gold Medal–winning American pole vaulter

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Stacy Dragila decried Qatar’s hosting of a championship track and field event and was quoted as saying, “When you have people hosting who don’t comply with equal rights it doesn’t make any of us look credible as athletes. To go into a country where they have this thinking, this closed-mindedness? It’s not right for this to happen.”29 These and other headlines help cement negative perceptions about Muslim women from the Gulf. “The dominant Western stereotype of Arab women depicts them as passive and oppressed.”30 It is a stereotype that irks Qataris, who take offense at Orientalist tropes about the supposedly backward Middle East. Nationals and nonnationals describe encounters with Westerners whose assumptions about the Gulf are based on media caricatures. “They think women live in tents!” a Qatari woman named Wadha says. “When I went to the US, they were like, ‘Are you gonna be killed for wearing what you’re wearing right now? Shouldn’t you be covered?’ There’s all these different stereotypes: Women can’t do anything; women need to be home and cook. The only man in their life is their dad, brother, or husband. And I’m just like, ‘What?’ No, this is not how it goes. We don’t ride camels. They think we do everything. No, we have [domestic] helpers. We have McDonald’s.” Gender and nationality are the two most significant statuses held by every person who lives in Qatar. The anthropologist Sharon Nagy argues, “Nationality is more sensitive to global relations, while differentiation by gender is structured in accordance with local relations.”31 In this book, I explore how nationality is shaped at the local level in the context of Qatar’s rapid development. Public advocacy for female empowerment is part of Qatar’s effort to become a world superpower, so women feature prominently here, although this is not a book about gender per se. (I suspect research settings where men feature prominently are not viewed as somehow imbalanced or necessarily about gender.) Working alone and with coauthors, I previously published a series of articles that examine portions of my Qatar data with an explicit focus on gender and feminism.32 There have also been a number of excellent studies of women in Qatar published in the recent past that examine feminist issues.33 Those perspectives influenced this book but also motivated me to shift my analytical framework. Moreover, gender intersects with nationality and citizenship in ways that render some distinctions moot.

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In Qatar, as elsewhere, social life is organized around gender, with divergent spheres for men and women. This gender polarization is reflected and reaffirmed in innumerable facets of Qatari society, including, for example, the black-white contrast of “traditional” clothing. The attire is not legally required, but most Qataris wear it. This is partly because of social pressure but also because of incentives—the clothing instantly bestows its wearer with high status due to its association with citizenship. Sometimes beginning as early as childhood, most Qatari males begin to wear thobes—long, white cloaks over matching pants and a high-collared shirt, the entire ensemble stiffly starched, sharply pressed, and bleached. Atop their heads, males affix white scarves, ghutrahs, which are elaborately wrapped and held in place with a black cord known as an agal. Some men sport red-and-white-checkered head scarves in the winter months, replacing them with white counterparts in the summer. Most postpubescent Qatari females outfit themselves in black, fulllength body cloaks known as abayas. These are typically topped off by shaylas, which are long, black, rectangular scarves that wrap around the head and neck, camouflaging hair and skin. Although the word hijab is typically used in the West to refer to a head scarf, in Doha and much of the Gulf, hijab can refer to the abaya, the shayla, or both.34 There is disagreement regarding the role of Qatari women in society: traditionalists believe that a woman’s place is at the center of the family, while a younger generation of women wants to work and have an active social life. The Islamic feminist scholar Valentine Moghadam asserts that petrodollars and high salaries for men in the Gulf reinforced the “patriarchal gender contract—the implicit and often explicit agreement that men are the breadwinners and. . . . women are wives, homemakers, mothers, and caregivers.”35 Under this arrangement, men are the protectors of women and also their overlords. Beliefs and attitudes about gender shape gender roles but also influence cultural beliefs that are embedded into institutions such as marriage and the law. This stratifies men’s and women’s access to resources, rights, and mobility.36 Gender differences are reaffirmed via institutions such as the public education system, which segregates males and females, but also through cultural practices, such as socializing along gender lines.37 Similar to Gulf nations such as the UAE, Qatar does not demand strict gender

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Introduction

separation. Men and women work, dine, shop, and interact frequently, in both public and private settings. Despite this, however, gender segregation is normative, particularly for middle- and upper-class Qatari women, who enjoy less access to public space than men do.38 The Qatari government is unabashed in its support for gender equality. Women in Qatar are allowed to work, drive, and hold office. The country’s national development plan promises to empower women politically and economically. Qatar’s college campuses have four times as many female students as males, and the number of working women is rising. Qatar made international headlines in 2012 when it sent female athletes to the Olympics for the first time. These and other efforts attempt to counter stereotypes about oppressed Gulf women. Rather, Qatar promotes itself as a supporter of female empowerment through a comprehensive narrative intended to propel Qatar into the future.

National Vision Qatar’s economic transformation and the global reliance on oil and natural gas have brought foreign investment and Western workers to the country, spurring social and cultural changes that have proven transformative. The Qatari government’s embrace of communication and transportation technologies has led to a permeation of Western beliefs, values, and practices, particularly among young people in Doha. This has given rise to concerns that indigenous customs and traditions will be diluted or lost in Qatar’s relentless development. Doha’s rapid ascent has not been embraced by all factions of its citizenry. Some of Qatar’s most conservative voices are long-standing tribal leaders. The emir is powerful but is also required to rule in accordance with Islam and therefore “must retain the support of the religious community, which often asserts itself in such areas as media censorship, education regulations, and the status of women.”39 Within these factions, there are deep concerns about the rapid pace of change, and the attrition of traditional Qatari culture. It is erroneous, however, to presume that staunch conservatives of an older generation are the only obstacle to Qatar’s wholesale Westernization. Among some young Qataris, there is a burgeoning sense of nationalism, those who resent Qatar’s reliance on foreign labor and believe the country

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is being overrun by foreigners. Shunnareh, a twenty-four-year-old Qatari woman, tells me, “Being Qatari, sometimes I feel like I am a minority in a way.” There are persistent concerns about Western influence, even among those who embrace it. A Qatari woman named Rana says, There’s a lot of Western influence, and a lot of Qataris aren’t happy about that. It’s not who we are. It’s irritating and confusing to us. Why are all these Western ideas, ideologies, arts, culture—why are they affecting us now? Let’s take clothes as an example. Girls my age, we look to Western fashion trends to know how to dress.40 We’re dressing like Westerners. In weddings, going out, when we’re traveling, we wear clothes of the West. Language—my English is way better than my Arabic, and I know a lot of kids that speak to their parents in English and not in Arabic. Once we lose our mother’s tongue, what is left? No Arabic language—the Arabic culture just dissolves; it disappears.

“Our society is being opened,” a Qatari man named Abdullah adds. “A lot of things are happening. Education is increasing; people are being more aware. But sometimes it’s too fast. You don’t know when to stop: ‘Am I going too far?’ So we need to be aware of where the limits should be. I don’t want it to be too open, too liberal, to the extent that people forget their past.”41 To assuage such concerns, the Qatari leadership vows that modernization will only occur alongside cultural preservation. In 2008, Qatar National Vision 2030, a comprehensive national development plan, was launched, designed to transform Qatar “into an advanced country by 2030, capable of sustaining its own development and providing for a high standard of living for all of its people for generations to come.” Balancing the twin forces of tradition and modernity was the 2030 plan’s top priority: “Qatar’s very rapid economic and population growth have created intense strains between the old and new in almost every aspect of life. Modern work patterns and pressures of competitiveness sometimes clash with traditional relationships based on trust and personal ties, and create strains for family life. Moreover, the greater freedoms and wider choices that accompany economic and social progress pose a challenge to deep-rooted social values highly cherished by society. Yet it is possible to combine modern life with values and culture.”42

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Many Qataris believe that the government is keeping its promise, pointing to large and small public projects around Doha that integrate allegedly authentic Qatari traditions. “I don’t think it’s losing its culture,” a Qatari man named Kadar says. “You see new buildings—on the outside, it looks traditional, but on the inside, it’s modern.” Shunnareh agrees: “They’re following the 2030 vision. Part of the vision is to keep up with their identity and culture. Along with the development, they’re still preserving the culture and tradition.” Other Qataris, however, are concerned about the erosion of traditions under Qatar’s quest for international standing. Eisa, a Qatari woman, predicts, “There’s gonna be a lot more skyscrapers. They’ll try to infuse Qatari identity into those, like we’re seeing in some of those under construction. Economically, it might be better in the world sphere and the global playing field. Locally, there will be a lot of identity loss, like what happened in Dubai. The local community will just wither away.” Many Qataris advocate for a path that combines the most desirable aspects of tradition and modernity. “People think that being modern is taking the Westernized culture, and I don’t think that’s appropriate,” says Nahir, a Qatari woman. “You want to take the mentality, you want to take science, these things. You don’t necessarily have to take the culture. Because at the end, this is what we have that Westerners don’t.” Nahir’s selection and rejection of various facets of the West exemplifies what I call modern traditionalism. Modern traditionalism is a flexible narrative framework where customary and contemporary are strategically merged.43 The narrative simultaneously preserves conventional attitudes and behaviors while embracing present-day beliefs and actions, and it allows seemingly disparate social phenomena to coexist. Promoted by the state and echoed by inhabitants, modern traditionalism is found everywhere in Qatar, embedded into a myriad of cultural “texts,” from its architecture and sightseeing brochures to its clothing and marital practices. Modern traditionalism is central to Qatar’s brand, part of what Xavier Ginesta and Jordi de San Eugenio dub an “international image projection strategy” and Mehran Kamrava calls “the state leaders’ carefully crafted vision.”44 Modern traditionalism is employed in service of a sweeping effort to remake Qatari society.

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Cynics assert that the government’s efforts prioritize an economic agenda, rather than a social one. “They’re trying to attract tourists,” a Qatari woman named Mira says of her government’s nation-branding attempts. “They’re trying to get us some kind of symbols or well-known artifacts to legitimize how prestigious or how cutting-edge we are so that it can attract people. ‘We have world-class education; we have worldclass museums.’ ” The Qataris’ ambivalence illustrates the challenges of hyper development in the globalizing Gulf. This book examines how Qatar’s inhabitants are coming to terms with its rapid ascent under the context of modern traditionalism. To do so, I explore sociocultural realms such as sports and clothing practices, where modern traditionalism is foregrounded, and realms such as marriage, where modern traditionalism is implicit rather than overt. In these and other endeavors, the nation’s inhabitants reimagine conventional practices as cutting-edge and reconfigure traditional culture as modern. Through discourse, embodiment, and action, people play an agentic role in constructing, communicating, affirming, reconfiguring, and sometimes resisting the government’s narrative.

Petrofamilies In Doha, the ability to deploy modern traditionalism for personal gain is an elite activity undertaken by a small group of privileged individuals. In this book, I focus on the Qataris and non-Qataris who make up this exclusive body. The influx of hydrocarbon revenues into Qatar has transformed its surface appearance but also altered some of its most significant institutions. This includes families, which have undergone profound change in the oil age. During the Gulf ’s Bedouin period, family units tended to be large, due in part to their tribal structure and to harsh desert conditions that encouraged collectives. Extended families lived together in clusters of tents, usually formed in circles or squares that surrounded a central gathering area. Most of these desert-dwelling families abandoned the desert half a century ago. In the contemporary Gulf, families reside in futuristic petrocities, where tribal influence has waned and the odds of survival have vastly improved. The declining need for extended families has

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resulted in shrinking household sizes that have become more similar to a nuclear model.45 During three years of immersive research, 130 people were interviewed for this book. The majority of those interviewed are members of Qatari or Arabian Gulf familial units whose younger constituents are the direct beneficiaries of hydrocarbon revenues. These are the young people for whom Qatar’s 2030 development plan was created. They are tasked with developing a knowledge-based workforce in Qatar and carrying the nation into the postoil era. Because of the changing size of these families, their direct connection to hydrocarbon wealth, and their significance to the state’s economic and social agendas, I refer to them as petrofamilies. Petrofamilies are the direct beneficiaries of hydrocarbon wealth from oil-rich Gulf nations. Petrofamily members were born between 1971 and 2015, as wealthy Gulf nations developed modern infrastructures and institutions to serve them, particularly new systems of education. Petrofamilies are not necessarily citizens of the countries in which they reside. Petrofamilies share traits with nuclear and extended kinship models, but the idiosyncratic configuration of these characteristics results in a distinct familial type. Petrofamilies in Qatar are smaller than families in previous generations and also smaller than nonpetrofamilies. Petrofamily households consist of parents, children, and one to twelve domestic workers who reside in the same dwelling.46 In Qatar, this arrangement is not entirely removed from the era when slaves lived in their Qatari masters’ homes or from the nation’s impoverished preoil years, when household labor was performed by extended family members. While “a complex of interrelated changes in ‘Western’ countries has led to the gradual disappearance of resident servants from all except the wealthiest households, . . . in ‘less advanced’ countries, but also in some with a high immigration, being served is still taken for granted in the eyes of well-to-do families.”47 In petrofamilies, the extended family continues to weigh heavily, even though all members do not live under the same roof. Thus, in petrofamilies, kinship ties are retained. Members of petrofamilies tend to marry later than others. In petrofamilies, marriages that take place between citizens and noncitizens are overrepresented.48 Rates of consanguinity are relatively low among

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petrofamilies.49 Petrofamily wives may choose to work outside the home or not work at all. Petrofamilies have fewer children than nonpetrofamilies and begin having them about five years later. Members of petrofamilies attend private, international primary and secondary schools. Petrofamily members earn postsecondary, graduate, and professional degrees at established Western institutions of higher education. They work as creative-class professionals in fields such as engineering, law, education, technology, the arts, and human resources. Petrofamilies are globally oriented and residentially mobile. Their members travel regularly and spend long periods of time living abroad. “Full-time, Doha; part-time, everywhere,” an Omani expatriate explains. “I’ll go for a year, or I’ll go for a couple months.” Due to this geographic fluidity, petrofamilies are less likely to own homes. Instead, they take extended stays in flexible households that double as mobile engines of consumption. Petrofamilies are cosmopolitan in outlook and liberal compared to other Arab households in Qatar.50 They tend to be Muslim, with levels of religiosity that range across the spectrum. Muslim women in petrofamilies may or may not wear traditional Islamic clothing. Not every household in Qatar contains a petrofamily. Highly conservative parents do not travel abroad or allow their children to attend college. Other families isolate themselves in suburban areas or the smaller towns outside the capital city. With regard to size, outlook, and behavior, Qatar’s rural families tend to resemble traditional extended families. Conversely, there are many families residing in Doha that are not the direct recipients of petroleum wealth and thus do not fit the label. Letta is part of a petrofamily, but her aunt is not. Letta’s mother and aunt fight constantly about the direction Qatar is taking. Although the sisters grew up in the same household, their varying educational and occupational experiences as adults has produced distinctly divergent worldviews. Letta explains, “My mom finished her full education. She graduated from university and worked as an administrator. She traveled. She was an ambassador’s wife—she went with him around the world. My aunt, she left high school. She stayed here. She got married and had nine children. She’s conservative. She traveled, but traveling doesn’t mean you’re seeing the world.”

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The Qatari government supports petrofamilies because they represent a path to continual development. Petrofamilies—contemporary and global in their outlook yet rooted in traditional family values— exemplify the narrative of modern traditionalism. For the nation to embrace globalized modernity, buy-in from families is essential. Because petrofamilies reaffirm the significance of family as an institution, they provide Qatar with a strategy to move forward without appearing to have taken a step.

The Book’s Organization Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to Qatar and foreshadows the book’s primary themes. Set at a stand-up comedy performance, the scene provides a microcosm of Qatar’s transnational milieu. Reflecting Qatar’s conservative environment, most of the comedians are careful about what they say onstage. Qatar does not guarantee freedom of speech, and its government once sentenced a poet to life in prison for penning a few lines that it deemed offensive. The comedians develop strategic workarounds to subtly, and not so subtly, address controversial topics such as nationalism and citizens’ rights. There are also Qatari comedians whose status as nationals grants them considerable leeway onstage, illustrating the different worlds occupied by citizens and noncitizens in Doha. Contemporary Qatar cannot be understood without appreciating its relationship to the Arabian Gulf. Chapter 2 examines Qatar’s development in the context of the Gulf, the site of enormous human activity, trade, and commerce from ancient times until today. In this brief history, I consider how tribes influenced social and political systems in the Gulf, including the Al Thanis, the dynastic tribal family that has ruled Qatar for more than 150 years. For eons, the Gulf has been a key trade and shipping route, connecting Mesopotamia to the Indian subcontinent; during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the region became known for its pearling and fishing industries. The contemporary Gulf is characterized by modern petrocities whose enormous wealth services their nation-building aspirations. Doha vies directly with Dubai to see which metropolis can outdo the other, be it through sports, education, skyscrapers, shopping malls, mosques, or broken world records. To

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compete, Qatar brands itself using a narrative of modern traditionalism, drawing from an array of classic and contemporary traits. I explore the contours of modern traditionalism, unpacking its multiple meanings and characteristics, including generic but esteemed concepts such as freedom, authenticity, family values, and women’s empowerment. I also reveal how the government deliberately deemphasizes tribes and Islam in the narrative in order to curtail preexisting tribal power and replace it with a bureaucratic government structured to grant supremacy to the Al Thani dynasty. To conclude, I explain the reasons behind the narrative’s universality—and success. Mega sporting events, including the 2022 FIFA World Cup, align perfectly with Qatar’s economic agenda, which uses athletics as part of its nation-building ambitions. In chapter 3, I explore sports culture in Doha, where low-wage migrant workers are bused to soccer stadiums for televised games, so that it appears that the stands are filled with ardent fans, and where Kenyan runners are granted temporary Qatari citizenship in order to compete as nationals. The government has spent a fortune to erect state-of-the-art facilities, to host international sporting events, and to send athletes to compete globally. Sports are also a primary platform for modern traditionalism’s motif of female empowerment. Despite these efforts, however, rates of women’s athletic participation remain in the single digits. Interviews with players, coaches, and spectators reveal the social processes underlying these cultural practices. Finally, chapter 3 demonstrates how sportswomen overcome barriers to athletic participation by engaging with modern traditionalism, aligning their sports-related activities with empowerment, Islam, and family values. Chapter 4 examines the embodiment of modern traditionalism via clothing. In the day-to-day lives of Qataris, virtually all wear the national uniform: white thobes and ghoutras for men and black abayas and shaylas for women. These signifiers of nationality are “passports” in a nation where citizens are positioned atop the social hierarchy. Exploring these issues vis-à-vis the hijab, I trace the garments’ history in the Gulf, including its transformation from functional to fashionable attire. In contemporary Doha, many young Qataris sport abayas that are chic and form-fitting. These and other changes generate persistent grumbles—and social control measures—from other Qataris. In these

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and other interactions, the hijab serves as a site of resistance, conformity, and negotiation of social issues, including responses to modernity and Westernization. To assuage concerns about cultural erosion and maintain a sense of personal style, Qatari women modify, adjust, reimagine, and remove their hijabs to suit changing circumstances. These hijab micropractices—the strategic and situational use of traditional Muslim clothing—are at times so infinitesimal that they are easy to overlook. Yet they are significant because they enable women to align the elements of modern traditionalism into a socially acceptable national identity that maximizes autonomy. The hijab is typically viewed through a lens of constraint, but here I demonstrate its flexibility and the agency with which Muslim women engage in adornment practices. Hijab micropractices, however, may inadvertently uphold a dynastic power structure that does little to advance women. Chapter 5 considers the impact of sweeping socioeconomic transformation on dating, sex, and marriage. Public interactions between men and women, including married couples, are heavily restricted in Qatar, where it is against the law for two people to date until they have signed a marriage contract. This does not stop young adults from hooking up surreptitiously or gay and lesbian culture, which is illegal but as prevalent in Doha as anywhere else. The prohibitions related to dating contribute to high rates of marriage between first and second cousins, pairings that are typically prearranged by families. The persistence of consanguinity in Qatar is partly explained by the historical connections between families and tribes in the Gulf. During the Bedouin era, weddings were modest events that reflected the dire circumstances of that time; today, these events are Disneyfied fairy tales, with families competing to throw the “wedding of the year.” These cultural practices are shaped by changing expectations about marriage and the ubiquity of Western popular culture that venerates romantic love. Drawing on elements of modern traditionalism, Qataris utilize an array of rhetorical and behavioral strategies that situate arranged, inner-family marriages as in step with contemporary ideals about matrimony. Chapter 6 examines foreign labor in Qatar from opposing ends of the employment spectrum. On one side are professional-class expatriates with terminal degrees from prestigious Western universities; on the other are low-wage migrants who toil six days per week in Qatar’s

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service and construction sectors. These groups are physically segregated from each other, and a number of institutional and cultural mechanisms symbolically insulate Qataris from expatriates. This stratification is illustrated through everything from residential zoning laws and hiring practices to homes and clothing. Both sets of workers are part of Qatar’s sponsorship labor system, which gives them limited protections from deportation should trouble arise. Professional-class expatriates develop interactive strategies to attempt physical or symbolic affinity with Qataris, seeking whatever residual benefits such proximity has to offer. Low-wage laborers from non-Western nations have fewer options. On their one day off per week, these laborers are prohibited from entering shopping malls, among the few free, public, air-conditioned spaces in a country where temperatures regularly exceed one hundred degrees. The negligent treatment of low-wage migrant workers contributed to a tragic incident at a Doha shopping mall, discussed in chapter 6, that lays bare the disconnect between Qatari nationals and expatriates. To conclude, I explore the limits of modern traditionalism, how it enriches certain populations to the detriment of others. Because modern traditionalism fortifies national identity, it may inadvertently sustain some of the social conditions it was designed to alleviate. Furthermore, while classic modernization theory asserts that Qatar is becoming more Western under rapid development, Western countries are increasingly resembling nations like Qatar. In an appendix to the book, I provide an account of my research methods.

1

Welcome to Doha

“Some of you haven’t paid for tickets—the South Africans. I’m picking on South Africans because I am South African. Any South Africans here? One guy.” The comedian squints into the bright stage lights and continues. “People always look at me and say, ‘South African?’ When I came here, I went to immigration, and the guy was like, ‘Where are you from?’ And I said, ‘South Africa.’ And he said, ‘But you’re not white.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, South Africa is in Africa, you know, where black people come from.’ And he looks at me, and he says, ‘But you’re not black.’ So I had to explain to him that two hundred years ago, my great-great-grandparents got on a ship and immigrated from India. And they went to South Africa, and they stayed there, and my grandparents lived there, and my parents lived there. So I’m South African. And he looks at me, and he says, ‘Where is your Indian passport?’ ” The punch line fails to land. There are a few mild chuckles from the crowd but mostly silence. “Thank you for the one person in the audience who laughed,” the comedian deadpans. He gives a look of mock exasperation. “Is anybody not sure what comedy is supposed to be about? Do you need help? Does somebody need instructions?” The comedian is Nabil Hitchens, who goes by the stage name Nabil Asil. Nabil is the founder of a loose collective of funny men and women known as Qatar Stand-Up Comedy, or QSUC. The group’s aim is to develop a stand-up comedy scene in Doha. A mild-mannered thirtyyear-old from Cape Town, Nabil spent half a decade working as an office manager in Holland, developing an interest in stand-up on the side. After the financial crises of 2008, he moved to Doha to take a job as a producer for a local media company. QSUC began in a nondescript coffee shop in late 2010. Back then, it was Nabil and half a dozen hopefuls, known to each other from Twitter. 21

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They practiced in private and held monthly shows in cafes and restaurants, promoting on social media. “There’s no comedy clubs,” Nabil says of Doha. “You can’t just walk up somewhere and start doing comedy. So we had to start creating spaces for people to perform.” In 2011, the growing crew began holding shows at the newly constructed Katara Cultural Village, an $82 million, 245-acre beachfront complex intended to be a center for Arab arts and culture.1 Behind the scenes, Nabil and the QSUC comedians wrestled Qatar’s byzantine bureaucracy, which included seemingly nonsensical rules such as forbidding online ticket sales for their shows. Permits were required, but no one knew the procedures for issuing them. Each time the troupe performed, all the participating comedians had to submit copies of their passports and state-issued identification cards to the Ministry of Culture. Despite these obstacles, QSUC’s reputation flourished, and the ensemble began to draw larger crowds, fifty to sixty people at each performance. “It was quite organic,” Nabil recalls. “We literally created out of nothing a comedy scene—without really wanting to, but that’s what we did. It happened without any real master plan behind it. Now we’ve reached a point where this is actually a thing. There is comedy.”

Ethnically Confused Tonight’s performance takes place at Bistro 61, an upscale restaurant on the second floor of the Radisson Blu Hotel. Bistro 61 has a refined atmosphere, thirty-foot ceilings, ornate chandeliers, and subdued lighting. It is an odd venue for a comedy show, but that is Doha for you. “Chandeliers in a comedy club—only in Qatar can this happen,” Nabil muses from the stage, looking around the room. The QSUC stage consists of a makeshift five-by-ten-foot platform, about four inches high, located at one end of the restaurant; 150 padded chairs, most of them occupied, form a semicircle around it. The Bistro 61 audience offers a snapshot of Doha from a certain angle: a handful of Qataris whose traditional clothing and position in the front of the room set them apart from others. The bulk of the audience consists of professional-class expatriates, mostly Arabs from the MENA but also those from Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United

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States. The needs of both groups are attended to by a small army of service-class and middle-management workers, nearly all of whom hail from Southeast Asia.2 Dressed in jeans and an untucked, striped polo shirt, Nabil serves as genial host, coming onstage before each comedian and telling a couple of light jokes before introducing the next performer. “I must warn everybody,” he says to the audience, “we’ve got a good group of comedians, but most of them are not very experienced. So we don’t guarantee that our jokes are going to be funny. Anyone who came expecting funny jokes?” Nabil raises his left index finger, gesturing for a show of hands. A few go up. “Okay, you might be disappointed,” he replies. The audience giggles. “However, what we do guarantee is that you’re gonna have a good time. So, if you’re sitting there with your arms folded”—Nabil crosses his arms and screws his face into a sour-milk grimace—“if you’re not having a good time, it’s your own fault. Don’t blame us.” First up tonight is Rafi, whose red-and-blue Barcelona soccer jersey prominently features the team’s sponsor, Qatar Foundation, in gold lettering across the chest.3 Rafi takes the stage, pulls the wireless microphone from its stand, and greets the audience in a relaxed manner. “Hi, everyone. I will be your friendly comedian for the next five minutes. My name is Rafi. I have a habit of speaking many different languages, so my name is Rafi for the English speakers. And for the Lebanese people in the crowd with the severe delusion that your first language is French, Je m’appelle Rafi-ruh.” The punch line, which Rafi peppers with a lilting French accent, gets a big laugh. Like many professionals who live in Doha, Rafi is a globetrotter who seemingly hails from everywhere. “I’m half Egyptian, half Palestinian, born in Germany, raised in Doha,” he tells the audience, counting off the countries on one hand. “I think it’s safe to say at this point, ethnically confused is a bit of an understatement.” Rafi is the first of eighteen amateurs slated to perform tonight. All the comedians live in Doha, having relocated from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Pakistan, India, England, the United States, and elsewhere. “We have twenty comedians up on stage, twenty different nationalities,” Nabil marvels to me. “Is that possible anywhere else in the world?

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I doubt it. It’s amateurish and poor quality, but I think some aspects of it are really good.” The comedians perform in English—due to Qatar’s ethnoracial heterogeneity, English is the lingua franca. Doha’s street signs are written in English and Arabic, as are signs and printed materials in public spaces such as airports, restaurants, and shopping malls. At Bistro 61, each comedian is given seven minutes to perform. Rafi ends his set with a bit about friends who vacation abroad and return with speech and mannerisms they picked up traveling. He imitates a female friend who visits the United Kingdom. and comes back speaking like the queen of England. Then there is a buddy who spends time in America and returns talking like Snoop Dogg. “He comes back, and he’s like, ‘Yo, yo, yo, bro’! Fo’ shizzle my nizzle bodrizzle ya bizzle.’” Rafi grips the mic in one hand and punctuates the air rhythmically in mock “rapper” gestures with the other. The audience loves it. “Wazzup wazzup! West Side!’ ” he shouts. Rafi drops the “rap” dialect and, exasperated, asks his invisible friend, “West side of what? You’re from Doha. There’s Rumaila, there’s Sidra, you’re done.” Rafi’s final line—in which he name-checks a Doha neighborhood and a hospital west of it—takes a beat to connect with the audience. But as the comedian returns the mic to its stand and exits stage left, he does so to appreciative applause.

Call to Prayer Rafi is followed by Munir, whose neatly cropped hair, wire-rimmed eyeglasses, and gray business suit make him look more like the guy who does your taxes than a stand-up comedian. The son of a Lebanese diplomat and currently working as a newscaster, Munir has crisscrossed the world numerous times. “I’m a serious journalist, but I’m trying my hand at comedy,” he tells the audience by way of introduction. “As somebody who is half Arab, half English, I believe that I can help solve some cultural misunderstandings.” Munir’s travel-related foibles are the subject of his set, which favors storytelling over setups and punch lines. Munir continually avows that every word is true. He begins with a funny yarn about an Arab woman mistaking him for a checkout clerk at a London grocery store. He transitions to a story set in Doha, about a clueless British acquain-

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When the call to prayer sounds five times each day, Muslims in Doha are expected to stop soon after and worship. (Photo by Alexander R. Wilcox Cheek)

tance. “Expatriates, they got some issues they need to work on. Like my colleague—came to Doha seven years ago and suddenly discovered that they do the call to prayer.4 So he goes to the mosque next to his house, walks in, and asks the imam, ‘Can you stop doing the call to prayer?’ ” The audience laughs, incredulous. “I’m serious, true story,” Munir continues. “And I’m thinking, ‘What were you thinking would happen?’ Right? You’re going to walk in, and the imam would be right in the microphone, and you’d be like, ‘Wait, I pray thee!’ ” Munir adopts an over-the-top snobby British accent. “In the name of Her Majesty, I hereby officially request that thou does not perform the call to prayer.” He switches to a thick Arab accent and responds as the imam: “Oh, okay, since you mentioned Her Majesty. Party over, boys. Let’s go.” Munir reverts back to his regular speaking voice. “No, it didn’t happen like that at all. So my colleague comes out, and he goes, ‘Well, they were awfully nice chaps. They gave me some tea. They’re still doing the call to prayer, though.’ ”

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Welcome to Doha

Qatar operates under sharia law, the Islamic legal code used to determine standards for everything from criminal and culinary matters to family and moral edicts. Qatar has a reputation for being a restrictive, Islamic nation with some progressive leanings. Gambling is prohibited. Bringing playing cards, pork, or alcohol into the country is forbidden.5 Sexual relationships other than between husband and wife are banned. Public displays of affection such as kissing or holding hands, even between married couples, are considered taboo. Dating is illegal, as is homosexuality in any form.6 Qatar is thought to be less hidebound than neighbors such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, where, for example, women encounter heavy social control with regard to their employment, mobility, clothing, and behavior.7 But Qatar is described as more conservative than Gulf nations such as the UAE, where females supposedly enjoy greater freedoms and where restrictions on items such as alcohol and pork are somewhat relaxed. Qataris largely identify as Sunni Muslims, and many subscribe to Wahhabi Islam, a hardline branch of the religion that is most widely practiced in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.8 The Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs promotes religion and maintains the hundreds of mosques located throughout Doha. Airports, shopping malls, and schools are required to have prayer rooms for both men and women. Like people of the Islamic faith the world over, Qatari Muslims are compelled to dress and act modestly, pray five times per day, and fast in the daytime during Ramadan, the month-long religious holiday. “I’m very religious,” a Qatari woman named Tabina says. “I pray. Every Qatari must pray. That is something that is ingrained in you when you were born until death—you must pray. Five times a day you must get up, and if you can pray more, do more.” Levels of religiosity vary, however, and not every Qatari is devout. “I’m not very religious,” Nahir, a Qatari Muslim, says. “The Islamic world is not really talked about, and if it is, it’s often very negative. People think of Islam as being strict and conservative.” Less than half of Qatar’s expatriate population are Muslims. Once known to confiscate Bibles and crucifixes at the airport, the Qatari government has shown limited but increasing tolerance for nonIslamic religions, particularly Christianity.9 In 2008, the first Christian church opened in the newly built Mesaimeer Religious Complex,

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which some people call Church City. Located in the Doha suburb Al Rayyan, the multimillion-dollar complex houses sites of worship for several Christian denominations, including Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, Anglican, and Greek Orthodox. Hinduism and Buddhism are also widely practiced in Doha, albeit in more discrete settings. Qatar’s constitution allows freedom of worship, but proselytizing or promoting any religion besides Islam is against the law.10 Bistro 61 does not serve liquor—alcohol is illegal in most parts of the country and is a source of contention. Many restaurants and clubs feature elaborate freshly squeezed nonalcoholic juice “mocktails.” A handful of bars at five-star hotels sell spirits at exorbitant markups. Muslims are prohibited from patronizing bars (although some do), but $30 Bacardi-and-Cokes do not deter non-Muslim expatriates, who pack the hotel bars nightly. There is also a single liquor store, the Qatar Distribution Company, or QDC. It is stationed on the outskirts of town, hidden away in an industrial area. Muslims are prohibited from shopping at the QDC, but non-Muslim expatriates can apply for a license that allows them to legally purchase alcohol to drink at home. Obtaining a QDC card requires an Application for Permit to Purchase Liquor, which collects personal information such as nationality and religion. The paperwork must be accompanied by an official letter from the applicant’s employer and a one-thousand-riyal cash deposit. The deposit (about $275) acts as a barrier for low-wage migrant workers, many of whom do not earn that in a month. On January 1, 2019, the Qatari government implemented a 100 percent tax on alcohol, doubling prices overnight. A liter of gin now costs roughly $85, and a twenty-four-can case of beer runs about $105.11 The Qatari government strictly controls the spaces where people can possess or consume liquor. For example, once someone purchases alcohol, regulations state that it “must be taken directly to the permit holder’s residence and should be concealed from view in transit.”12 Purchasing or giving liquor to anyone for any reason is prohibited, making it illegal, for example, to bring a bottle of wine to a friend’s house for dinner. Such regulations mean “individuals are not free, not even relatively free, to make a wide range of choices about their public leisure behaviors in Qatar.”13

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Penalties related to alcohol sometimes include corporal punishment. For example, in 2014, the government convicted a Muslim Indian expatriate of driving under the influence. In addition to suspending his driver’s license for two months, the man was subjected to forty lashes.14

Surveillance Society The independent watchdog organization Freedom House rates Qatar twenty-five out of one hundred on its aggregate freedom score, defining the country as “not free.”15 Censorship in Qatar is often overt. Customs agents supposedly examine every piece of printed material shipped into the country, searching for objectionable content. Books and magazines that raise red flags are held and forwarded to the Ministry of Culture for further review. This creates difficulties for colleges, universities, and libraries, which have an ongoing need for books. Long delays are common, and shipments sometimes vanish without reaching their recipients and without explanation from the government. Art and photography books are the most likely to go missing. The print and broadcast media outlets in Qatar are influenced by powerful ruling-family members and are “subject to state censorship. . . . All journalists in Qatar practice a degree of self-censorship and face possible jail sentences for defamation and other press offenses.”16 Sanitized versions of Western periodicals such as Sports Illustrated and Esquire are published exclusively for Gulf retailers. These titles are sometimes censored even further—it is not unusual to buy a magazine in Doha only to find that government agents have removed whole pages or blacked out objectionable images with a magic marker. The Ministry of Culture also censors most R-rated movies that play in Qatar. The government removes nudity and cursing but also nonsexual scenes that take place in bedrooms, religious content, anti-Muslim sentiments, and any hint of homosexuality. (Violence is almost never deleted.) Because of this, films screened in Doha theaters are sometimes significantly shorter than their uncut counterparts. For example, Martin Scorsese’s 180-minute cocaine- and sex-drenched The Wolf of Wall Street played at just 134 minutes in Qatar, losing more than 25 percent of its running time.17 A commenter on Qatar Living, a website that hosts a popular local forum, described his experience viewing it at a Doha

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theater: “Avoid this movie as it is extremely censored. All adult scenes removed. (Yes, I know that’s the norm out here.) The movie misses several scenes and jumps/skips constantly. All swearing has been removed and this movie is notorious for the amount of f-bombs that get dropped, so you can imagine how badly butchered this movie is after censorship. If it is not being bleeped out, it’s been cut so conversations are out of sync.”18 Surveys of Qataris find broad public support for government censorship of the media, including movies, TV shows, and music. If anything, most Qataris think the state should do more to prohibit offensive content.19 Some are convinced that Hollywood films, awash in sex and secularism, will corrupt viewers. There is a connection between such attitudes and a desire to preserve cultural traditions. “The new generation is more interested in the music and culture of the West,” says a Qatari woman named Rana. “We aren’t really emphasizing the importance of tradition and culture. And we need to do that because they will be responsible for keeping that tradition in the future.” The government also blocks access to some internet content, including most pornographic, political, and religious sites. As with the state censorship of printed materials, the filtering can be arbitrary. In 2014, the government passed a series of cyber laws that criminalized insulting someone online or invading one’s privacy in some manner.20 “While residents enjoy some freedom of private discussion, security forces reportedly monitor personal communications, and noncitizens often self-censor to avoid jeopardizing their work and residency status.”21 Many expatriates presume that the government tracks and records everything they do online.

Asil “Do we got any Palestinians in the house?” A few people cheer. “Make some noise, Palestinians!” The audience offers up a bit more applause. Riad, a rail-thin eighteen-year-old stand-up comedian with a crop of black hair, grew up in Canada before moving to Qatar, where he attends a gender-segregated high school. Riad sports blue jeans, tennis shoes, and an untucked black dress shirt topped off by a loose necktie. He paces the small stage comfortably and continues in a conversational tone.

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“I love being the son of Arab parents. We got unique things that happen to us. You know how they are. They bug me a lot for my marks and stuff. And they’re never satisfied. I went one time to my dad. I was like, ‘Dad, I got twenty-one out of twenty-five in physics.’ ” Riad replies as his father, adopting a thick Arab accent: “Why so low? Why not twenty-five?” A smattering of laughter. “Dad, I got the highest mark in my class. Everyone else got lower than me. I’m at the top of my class.” “Then your class idiots!” Big laugh. “As much as my parents bother me, there’s things that they’re cool with, thankfully. Like, my parents don’t mind if I have female friends. Which is good for me, right? But my sister broke it down to me the other day. It’s not that they don’t mind if I have female friends. It’s they don’t think I can get female friends. I don’t blame them. ’Cause, guys, that’s how we are now—honestly, my generation. I study with Indians.” Riad adopts a singsong Indian accent and pretends to talk to a woman, looking at his shoes the entire time. “Hel-lo, how are you? That’s a very nice shirt. I saw that shirt in Lulu Hypermarket.” Lulu Hypermarket is a popular Indian-owned retail chain that sells everything from groceries and electronics to toys and clothing. The reference gets a laugh. Riad continues in his everyday speaking voice. “But things are changing. Girls do a lot of lame stuff now. I don’t want to sound sexist or anything, but you got those blond girls that tweet a lot, like randomly, like so much that no one reads their tweets except the two or three guys that stalk them. Right? And they always retweet the tweet, right? I saw this girl. She tweeted, ‘Oh my God, oh my God. There’s a fire at the Pearl.’”22 Riad delivers the line in a high-pitched American voice. The audience titters. “And then one minute later she tweeted, ‘Oh my God, oh my God. There’s smoke, too!’ ” The audience laughs loudly and applauds. In Arabic, asil refers to a person of noble origin; the Nabil Asil stage moniker reflects the QSUC host’s belief in working clean, not offending Muslims in the audience. Most of the comics learned the conventions of Western-style stand-up by watching online videos of Chris

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Rock, Bill Burr, and Dave Chappelle. But the amateurs of the QSUC crew do not possess those pros’ outspoken abandon. Some of that is just being practical. Qatar does not guarantee freedom of speech. In 2012, a Qatari court sentenced the poet Mohammed Al Ajami to life in prison for writing a poem that was interpreted as insulting to the emir.23 Professional-class expatriates like Nabil are warned to observe the country’s cultural, religious, and social norms and obey all laws and regulations.24 This conservative environment creates a dilemma for QSUC’s more forthright or bawdy comedians. Stand-up chestnuts such as swearing, lamenting the government, and discussing provocative topics potentially violate Qatari law.25 The prohibitions extend to speech but also to writing, gestures, and social media posts. For the QSUC comedians, a lone complaint about an offensive joke, prop, or tweet might lead to trouble.26 This means some topics are off limits, according to Nabil. “There are things I won’t joke about,” he tells me. These include Islam, the emir, and Qatari citizens. “I’m not going to make Qatari jokes. I made a Qatari joke once in Katara [Cultural Village]; a guy got up in the audience and left. Then he tweeted the Katara in Arabic: ‘How can Katara let the scum of the earth come here?’ ” The audience at Bistro 61 is exceedingly courteous but also unsure about the give-and-take typical to stand-up comedy. Can you heckle a female comedian? Can you boo a Qatari? Is it okay to laugh at a joke about low-wage migrant workers? At times, the comedians seem uncertain too. A Palestinian woman opens her set by saying, “I’ve never seen such a dead audience. No offense.” The comment is met with total silence. She is followed by a ham-fisted Indian comedian, whose jokes about his “ugly” girlfriend fall flat. He bombs, but the patrons are steadfastly polite; there is no heckling of any sort. The comedians are polite too—most of the time. Ever looking to recruit new talent, during the show, Nabil offers the microphone to anyone in the audience who wants to give stand-up a try. One male taker, a European expatriate, does an entire routine about masturbation. Nabil is horrified. “There’s Qatari females in the audience! And a Qatari guy in the audience, older guy. They were quite upset. So we definitely need to be a bit careful.”

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Driving in Doha “Everybody’s talking about driving and stuff here, so I’m going to talk about driving as well.” With his black T-shirt, baggy camouflage shorts, Converse All Star high tops, baseball cap, and Buddy Holly glasses, twenty-something Fouzan resembles a workaday Western college student. He launches into his first bit. “I’m gonna start with my friend. He had a driver’s license test at the beginning of this week. As usual, you have to call to congratulate him.” Fouzan mimics putting a phone to his ear. “ ‘Dude, congratulations. When are you gonna take us for a ride?’ He said, ‘No, man. I fail.’ ‘Why, what’s happened, man?’ He said, ‘I got nervous around the cops, and I drove very well.’ ” The punch line earns a laugh. Urban legends detailing the travails of obtaining a Qatari driver’s license circulate among professional-class expatriates. As lore has it, there are Western engineers and scientists who have lived in Doha for years without being able to pass the government’s idiosyncratic road test. “For the new people here, let me give you a couple of tips,” Fouzan tells the crowd. “First one, the worse you are at driving, the better you are.” The audience giggles, knowingly. “No!” the comedian insists in mock protest. “It’s no joke.” Fouzan hones his routines at QSUC’s weekly workshops, where the comedians test out new material, give each other feedback, and play improv comedy games. An ongoing challenge is finding topics that Doha’s fluid, global audiences can relate to. A constant stream of expatriates coming and going from different countries around the world makes it difficult to find common references.27 Airports, taxis, social media, video games, cell phones, and dying batteries are popular topics, but no subject gets more stage time than traffic. At Bistro 61, Taqi, a Lebanese comedian, does a routine about the Arabic-dubbed Japanese cartoons he watched as a child. A few audience members chuckle, but most of the crowd has no idea what he is talking about. Taqi quickly transitions to a bit about driving. “I loved growing up in the region. You get used to craziness all around you. You get used to the crazy roads. Driving around, you see a lot of weird stuff on the

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road—especially here in Doha. The other day I was noticing a lot of interesting street signs that have been put up by the government. You get to the roundabout, you see this little circular sign with a picture of a cop on it, a cartoon.” Taqi’s observational humor and clean-cut everyman appearance are vaguely reminiscent of Jerry Seinfeld. With a big, frozen grin and bug eyes, he tilts his head and points with two fingers of his right hand, posing like the cartoon cop on the road sign. The imitation gets a few laughs. Taqi holds the pose for another beat and continues, making fun of the wording found on some Doha road signs. One sign, which discourages phone calls while driving, reads, “Catch your goal, then call.” Another warns speeders, “Slow down. Death is fastest.” Taqi leans back and takes a long pause, quizzical look on his face. “You know, it would be really easy to have someone who speaks English proofread these signs.” The audience laughs and claps appreciatively. This leads to a longer routine about the difficulties of parking at local shopping malls. The audience roars in approval, and Taqi departs the stage to a resounding ovation. “Someone was like, ‘Stop with the traffic jokes,’ ” Nabil tells me later. “We can’t. We can’t talk about stuff that happened two years ago. Someone who’s never been here for [the annual holiday] National Day, they’re not going to understand a National Day joke. As much as I hate the traffic jokes, you have to. It’s the one thing that everyone can relate to.” Nabil is not exaggerating. Everyone in Doha talks about the traffic; some of the most frequent expat social media complaints are related to the difficulties of driving. Walking outside can be difficult. Doha has few sidewalks, and crossing the street on foot can feel like a high-stakes game of chicken, with cars, trucks, and SUVs whizzing by from all angles.28 An unreliable bus system is used by few, but there are more than a million vehicles on the road—and counting: in Doha alone, the government issues an average of nine thousand new driver’s licenses and ten thousand new vehicle registrations each month.29 Because gas costs less than two dollars a gallon, the roads are dominated by mammoth trucks and SUVs.30 As foreigners stream into Doha from all parts of the globe, they bring with them whatever driving habits they acquired back home. It is not unusual to see cars parked sideways or careening the wrong way down a one-way street.

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Reporting on the driving environment in Doha, the US Department of State, in a rare moment of understatement, warns that expatriates “may encounter road conditions that differ significantly from those in the United States. . . . Informal rules of the road and the combination of local and third-country-national driving customs often prove frustrating for first-time drivers in Qatar. The extensive use of roundabouts, numerous road construction projects, and high-speed driving can be challenging. In rural areas, poor lighting, wandering camels, and roads without shoulders create hazards.”31 Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death in Qatar.32 “Driving absolutely scared the shit out of me,” says Steve, an American expatriate who came to Qatar three years ago to work for a marketing firm. “I would stay late at work just to avoid traffic. When I first got there, there weren’t even any stoplights installed yet in West Bay. And then when they did put them in, nobody knew how to follow them.” All of this is fodder for the QSUC comedians. Ahmad, an Egyptian comedian, tells the Bistro audience, “Qatar is so evolved into the future. I see it everywhere here in everything—except in driving. We are a small city with little tiny roads, and people suck at driving. I’m Egyptian. We are famous to suck at driving.” He pauses, then adds, “After Indians.” The audience groans. “Hey! No, no, no,” Ahmad says, raising his hands. “I’m not saying that Indians suck at driving, even though they’re competing with Egyptians. But you cannot really blame Indians. In India, the drivers sit on the right side; here they find it on the left side. They get confused; it take them a little bit of time to adapt. So Indians don’t suck at driving.” Ahmad pauses a beat. “They suck at adapting.” An experience familiar to almost every expatriate who drives in Doha is that of having a large SUV race up from behind at eighty to one hundred miles per hour, aggressively flashing its headlights as a warning to move right. This behavior is perceived to be the domain of Qatari males. It generates considerable criticism behind closed doors and on social media and symbolizes tensions between Qataris and nonnationals that have increased alongside the nation’s explosive growth.

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A local expatriate blogger, writing of her experiences on Doha’s roadways, snarked, “Oh Qatari Land Cruiser, how I have wronged thee. For five months, I have cursed your presence on the roads of Doha. I have mistrusted your ability not to rear end me as you hang two centimeters off my rear bumper at 100 kph while your driver talks on his cell phone. I have scoffed at your penchant for roaring up behind me in the passing lane, flashing your lights to warn me to move out of your way. I have stared with openjawed amazement as you careened through a roundabout on two wheels.”33 Responding to aggressive drivers is discouraged. The US Department of State warns Americans, “Avoid arguments over traffic incidents. Qatari citizens who feel insulted can file a police complaint that can result in your arrest and overnight detention.”34 These power differentials are reflective of the divide between nationals and nonnationals, two groups that rarely interact. “People back home constantly ask me about Qataris,” says Ethan, an American expatriate who has lived in Doha for three years. “I say, ‘Yeah, the Qataris are great if you can meet one.’ ”

High Status “We have a bit of a surprise tonight, someone who hasn’t been onstage in a long time,” Nabil tells the audience. “A very special act, all the way from the front row—please put your hands together for Ali.” The audience claps as the young comedian bounds to the stage, grabs the wireless microphone, and starts hyping up the room. “What’s going on, Doha? Make some noise, come on!” The crowd cheers, but it’s not enough for Ali. “You gotta do better than that,” he implores. “All the way in the back. Come on guys. Yeah, that’s what’s up. How you guys feeling? Good?” Ali is QSUC’s best-known comic, popular enough to garner local media attention outside the troupe. Among the few Qatari comedians, the twenty-two-year-old looks like a Westerner in his jeans, T-shirt, and two days of stubble. Clearly, he has absorbed popular American standup comics, and his routine blends their body language and vernacular with his own experiences as a Qatari. “Any Qataris?” Ali asks the crowd, cocking his head to the right and cupping a hand to one ear. “Come on, Qataris, what’s up? Make some noise, clap clap.”

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This generates an enthusiastic response from the few Qataris in the room, all of whom Ali seems to know. He continues, telling the crowd that he recently graduated from Texas A&M University in Qatar. More applause. “I’m the first member of my family to graduate from university,” Ali says solemnly. Even more clapping. “No, I’m just kidding,” he says, cracking up. “I always wanted to say that.” Ali tells the crowd about transitioning from college to the world of paid employment. He is just back from a summer in the United States. “I decided I wanted a vacation before I start work, so I decided California is the place to be. Anyone ever been to California before?” One person in the audience claps. Ali gives him an appreciative thumbs-up. “Weed smoker right there.” The crowd seems unsure how to respond. Ali continues his story. “For those of you who don’t know, in California weed is somewhat, kinda legal. I was told that all you have to do is just go to the doctor and tell him your back hurts, and he’s gonna write you a prescription. So I thought to myself, the sicker you are, the more weed you’re gonna get. I go into the doctor like this.” Ali staggers across the stage, pretending to be near death. “You can buy weed anywhere in California,” he continues. “Here’s the problem. Have you ever had a high person try to sell you weed? It’s bad. You’re walking around on the beach. They come up to you.” Assuming the role of a street pot dealer, Ali adopts a stereotypical California stoner voice. “Duuuude. This shit’s called Avatar. Dude, you smoke it, and everything turns blue.” The audience looks stunned. No one says a word. Ali goes on. “Here’s the thing with me. I buy weed, but I don’t have the guts to smoke it.” This receives a smattering of nervous laughter, but Ali ignores it, talking quietly at first and then slowly building to a crescendo. “I’m being honest with you guys. I sit around with my friends, like, ‘Yeah, it’s gonna happen today. Right now. Me. The weed. I’m gonna smoke it. It’s happening. Right now. Here I am. I’m doing it.’ ” Ali feigns someone passing him a joint. Wincing, he draws it cautiously to his lips before pretending to drop it, grossed out. “Ew, someone’s saliva’s on it!”

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Sensing he has pushed the audience to the breaking point, Ali downshifts to a story about his matchmaking Qatari mother. “My mom has been bugging me. She wants me to have kids,” he says, setting up the joke. Some women in the audience ooh and aah. Ali delivers the punch line. “I’m not even married! How am I supposed to do that? Bluetooth?” It gets a laugh. Ali continues. “Recently my mom has been coming up to me. ‘I have this very beautiful girl for you. I want you to marry her.’ I’m like, ‘I would want to see her before I decide if I want to live with her for the rest of my life.’ ” In the story, Ali’s mother shows him a photograph of the woman she wants him to marry. The woman is completely covered from head to toe, except for her hands. The audience howls at the thought of it. “I’m gonna need to see more than that,” Ali tells his mom. “She says, ‘You have to trust me.’ What is this?” he asks the audience, “Dr. Phil?” He receives loud, redemptive applause. “A Qatari could get away with making fun of Sheikha Moza,” Nabil deadpans to me.35

Qatarization Qataris like Ali have plenty to smile about. Beginning in the 1960s, with petroleum revenues on rise, the country’s leadership initiated a series of nationalization laws that steered financial benefits to Qataris.36 Today, these Qatarization policies require that private companies meet certain quotas of citizen employees, but finding Qataris willing to accept jobs in the private sector is difficult.37 Most Qatari women do not work, reducing the citizen labor pool further. In fields such as secondary education, which lack prestige and high pay, Qatarization quotas are impossible to fulfill. The government gives additional funds to schools to help attract Qatari teachers, who are required to be “paid considerably more than expatriate teachers.”38 Nearly 80 percent of Qataris work for the government, which is considered more prestigious, pays better, and offers more favorable working conditions. Those perks include hours that start at nine or ten in the morning and end just after lunchtime, paid holidays, and premium retirement benefits.39

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Regardless of where Qatari citizens work, or if they work at all, every one receives a package of government-funded entitlements: free education, up to and including college and graduate studies; cradle-to-grave health care; guaranteed employment for life; a pension; a free plot of land; an interest-free loan to build a house on that land; and subsidies that cover everything from petrol and utilities to groceries and child care. Qatar has no income tax, no sales tax, and no property tax.40 “Being Qatari means you’re blessed,” a Qatari woman tells me. “What doesn’t this country offer? They offer a lot of things and a lot of the best things, like education and jobs.” Desperate to fill Qatarization targets, private multinationals in Doha heavily recruit high-school-aged Qatari males, luring them with high-ranking managerial positions, exorbitant salaries, generous benefits, and duties that require little effort. This setup helps explain why there are so many more females than males in Qatar’s colleges and universities—college-aged men do not need postsecondary degrees to secure high-paying employment.41 An education increases one’s salary, but eighteen-year-old Qatari males who do not enjoy schooling have few incentives to attend college. They can earn good money in prestigious jobs right out of high school. Ali’s status as a college graduate means a management position in the state-owned petroleum industry, with a six-figure starting salary. Everyone at his office is a manager, Ali jokes from the Bistro stage. “Manager of Transportation—that’s the bus driver. Manager of Hospitality—that’s a tea boy.”42 Ali tells the audience that his job sometimes involves firing people. “People react differently when you tell them they’re fired. For example, an Indian would have a completely different reaction than a Qatari when they know they lost their jobs.” Ali describes a scenario in which an American office manager requests a meeting with Kumar, a longserving Indian accountant. Kumar is riddled with anxiety because in twenty years, he has never been called to the boss’s office. They meet, and the manager fires Kumar, who instantly begins sobbing. Setup complete, Ali continues. “With a Qatari, it’s a different story. Let’s say the same American boss wants to fire the Qatari employee. The boss goes, ‘Abdulrahman, can I see you in my office, please?’ Abdulrahman’s sitting in his office, reading the newspaper. He looks up.” Ali

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switches to a stereotypical Qatari voice. “‘Okay, when I finish newspaper, I come see you. Go bring a coffee for me.’ Forty-five minutes later, Abdulrahman goes to the boss to see what’s up. The boss goes, ‘Abdulrahman, we’re going to have to fire you.’ Abdulrahman looks at him and goes, ‘Huh. You fire me, I fire you.’ ” The audience claps. Qatarization policies have increased the wealth of citizens, but this arrangement has its drawbacks. There are relatively few Qatari doctors, lawyers, engineers, and educators, let alone journalists, artists, and musicians. Given Qataris’ elite status, a Qatari cab driver, cook, or retail clerk would be preposterous. The country has to import labor at great expense to keep itself running. As Qatar continues to grow, more and more outside workers are required, resulting in fewer and fewer Qataris relative to the swelling population. The Qataris’ sense of being “reduced” by this mass influx of foreign workers helps perpetuate an undercurrent of mildly aggrieved nationalism. “A lot of jobs are taken by people that are brought from outside,” says a Qatari woman named Akeelah. “It’s kind of hard for a Qatari guy or girl to get a job now.” Nahir, also a citizen, agrees, decrying the government’s hiring of professional-class expatriates over nationals. “If Qatar just used the youth, us, the ones that are here, instead of bringing old people from all over the world, it would be so much easier. Because all of us have ideas. They never give us the opportunity. If they want Qatar to change to be modern, they should just go to the youth. We have the answers.”

Racial Hierarchies “Anyone from India here?” Nabil asks from the stage. A lone voice from the back: “Woooo!” “Obviously, the one guy in the kitchen. You guys probably recognize us as fellow Indians.” The audience laughs lightly. “No, because we were Indians before we were South Africans.” The audience laughs a bit louder. Nabil gives them a look of mock outrage. “We were! I wonder what my grandfather was thinking. Imagine this was like 150 years ago in India, thinking to themselves, ‘We can-

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not stand discrimination against us because of our caste and our religion and the color of our skin. Let’s immigrate to South Africa.’ ” Nabil pauses. There is slow laughter and a smattering of applause as the punch line sinks in. “Okay, okay. Thank you to the five people who understood that joke. Others didn’t get the whole racism–South Africa thing. Google it after the show.” Qatari society is built on deeply entrenched social hierarchies influenced by factors that include its tribal history, political structure, and legal system. This results in what the urban studies scholar Nadine Scharfenort calls “islands of segregation and exclusiveness.”43 Qataris are the nation’s undisputed elites, and their position atop the social hierarchy obscures internal differences. Although Qataris are sometimes thought of as homogeneous, there is considerable variation among Qataris. Researchers describe at least seven types of citizens living in the country today: (1) the Al Thanis; (2) members of two indigenous Bedouin tribes (the Al Murrah and the Bani Hajr); (3) members of nonindigenous Bedouin tribes; (4) families and clans with direct ties to Bahrain; (5) clans with direct ties to Yemen; (6) Arab ethnics with direct ties to Iran; and (7) non-Arab ethnics with direct ties to Iran.44 In general, there is little cross-ethnic marriage among Qataris, helping to maintain distinct groups that are not publicly identified.45 Differences between Qataris are sometimes expressed informally but tend to be absent from the official and public discourse, which presents citizens as a unified whole.46 From a legal perspective, all Qataris receive full government entitlements. Qataris tend to downplay internal distinctions and describe a collective national identity akin to what the political scientist Benedict Anderson famously calls an imagined community.47 “What makes me Qatari?” a citizen named Nawal asks. “The Qatari history, the Qatari heritage, the fact that I am from Qatar. I can share that culture, that experience. A lot of my childhood memories will be similar to every other Qatari’s childhood memories, because you have that same kind of culture and background and you can share the same experiences, even though you’ve never really interacted. That’s what makes you Qatari.”

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The Qataris’ small size and exclusive status are reinforced by immigration laws that make becoming a naturalized citizen difficult. There are families that have resided in Doha for generations that have never acquired citizenship.48 Below Qataris on the social hierarchy are Arabs from other Gulf countries, particularly those that are friendly with Qatar at a given time. There is fluctuation due to a long history of tribal hostilities, territorial disputes, and behind-the-scenes power plays (see chapter 2). Arabs from non-Gulf nations within the MENA are next on Qatar’s social ladder. Below the Qataris and Arabs are white Westerners, especially those from countries perceived to be high status, such as the United States, Canada, England, France, and Australia. Below them are nonwhite Westerners from the same countries. Beneath this group are whites from eastern European and South African nations, followed by Asians from high-status locales such as South Korea, Japan, and China. At the bottom of the social hierarchy are citizens of East African nations, South Asian countries, and Southeast Asia. Of Qatar’s multiple ethnic groups, many of those from South Asia came to Doha for jobs near the bottom of its low-wage service and construction industries. Others work in fields such as technology and education; but collectively this group has the lowest status, and even skilled professionals from South Asia encounter degrees of prejudice and discrimination. Additionally, migrants bring with them the ethnic and socioeconomic divisions that stratify their home countries, reproducing them anew in Doha. Rather than bonding through the common experience of immigration, these groups sometimes become internally fractious.49 This informal stratification maps onto the formal procedures that structure migrants’ marginalization in Qatar, providing the government with a roadmap for handling diverse immigrant populations—and treating those groups differently.

Sponsored “Good evening,” says Norman, a Filipino comedian who sports jeans and a black short-sleeved Polo shirt. A pair of sunglasses hang from the shirt’s open collar, and a thin, white headphone cable snakes down his chest, where it is tucked into his pants pocket.

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Norman’s greeting barely registers a response from the audience. The comedian fidgets, shifts his weight from left to right, and begins. His English is halting, and he speaks in a heavy accent. “I’ve got sick sense,” Norman says, but it comes out sounding like “I’ve got six cents,” which confuses the crowd. There’s an awkward silence before he adds, “of humor.” The audience says nothing. Norman continues, “You see, I pretend I have an iPhone.” With a dramatic flourish, he pulls the cable out of his pocket and holds up the headphone jack for the audience to see. “It’s just . . . the cord.” The audience stares at him, silent, not getting it. Norman hurriedly moves to the next bit. “I see people, white people, lying on the sand trying to get tan. That rhymes.” It is hard to understand where Norman is going with this. “But I don’t see black people on the moon trying to light it up,” Norman says, leaning back as if sun tanning. He grins broadly, seemingly pleased with the punch line. There are a couple of mercy chuckles from the back row but mostly silence. Undeterred, Norman plows ahead. “I came from a broken family. You know, stove were broke, windows were broke, my parents were broke. On Christmas Eve, my mom used to give us pill, sleeping pill. And then I woke up January fourth. ‘Mom, what happened to Christmas?’ ‘You overslept, dumb ass.’ ” There is a polite murmur from the crowd. It is Norman’s secondlargest response of the night. The largest comes two minutes later, when he leaves the stage. In between, Norman paces back and forth, sprinting through a topical mishmash that includes the Stars and Stripes, SpiderMan, the Arabic alphabet’s lack of the letter p, Kuwait, Batman and Robin, logos, Mini Coopers, and a bit whose punch line is “the king and iPad.” The audience sits, glaring and silent the entire time. Qatar has been heavily criticized for the labor laws that govern its foreign workers. Known as kafala (sponsorship system), there are three fundamental components.50 First, entering workers must be sponsored by a citizen or company employer (the kafeel) for a predetermined period of time. This rule applies to software engineers and university professors as well as window washers and taxi drivers. Second, sponsors are legally and financially responsible for their employees, including

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Window washers work high above Doha’s West Bay neighborhood. (Photo by Geoff Harkness)

salaries, housing, and other benefits.51 Third, workers cannot quit their jobs or seek other employment without written permission from their sponsor. Employees who are treated unfairly by their employers have little recourse or power. The QSUC comedians occasionally reference aspects of kafala onstage. For example, Ahmad, an Egyptian expatriate, offers wry commentary on Qatar’s exit-visa system, which forbids noncitizens like him from

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leaving the country without written permission from their employer. “I moved here a few months ago,” Ahmad tells the Bistro audience. “Qatar is a nice country. Qatar is the only country in the world—they love their expats so much that if you ever want to travel for any reason, you need to fill out a form, an exit form. This is an act of love. They care about you. They want to know where you’re going, when you’re going, if you’re ever going to come back.” Qatar’s labor system sometimes leads to abuses by sponsors, who are known to change the terms of contracts without notice, to refuse to pay workers, and to abuse them physically and sexually.52 “Workers’ rights and human slavery issues, that’s a big one right now,” Desmond, an American expatriate and longtime Doha resident tells me. “I definitely see it. It is functionally slavery in terms of the institution and the way it’s set up, in the sense that workers come over and they can’t leave, and they work until the employer says that they can stop. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. There wasn’t overt racism or constant racism, but there was definitely racism. I see elements of that here. It’s not black versus white; it’s Arab versus Nepali or Indian or Pakistani. Do I see poor workers’ rights or people being treated poorly? Yeah, I do see it. But it’s not like every worker here is being treated poorly or being beaten. The media attention to that issue in particular is valid, but people assume that everyone who’s a construction worker is basically a fourth-class slave. I wouldn’t say it’s everyone. I would say there are some percentage that are.” Mistreatment of expatriates is thought to be widespread among bluecollar workers but unusual among the professional class. For example, many high-status workers are granted renewable twelve-month entry/ exit visas that allow them to enter and leave the country at will. That does not mean, however, that professional-class expatriates feel completely comfortable. Expatriates describe a pervasive sense that they can be arbitrarily kicked out of the country on a moment’s notice. Many perceive Qatar’s labor system as intended to create a workforce that is careful about everything it says and does. “Things are not forever here in Qatar,” a longtime Norwegian expatriate tells me. “People get comfortable, but all of the sudden something happens, whether it comes from the government or whether it comes from your own employer. People have to be prepared to leave for what-

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ever reason, because it’s such a volatile place in transition. You have to be ready for anything.” This wariness extends to QSUC shows as well, where most of the expatriate comedians tread carefully when addressing hot-button issues. “We all kind of police ourselves,” Lola, one of the QSUC comedians, tells me. “You have such a diverse audience; you know you’re going to offend somebody. Everyone underestimates the conservative element of this society. We all self-censor because there’s always this you-can-getdeported thing looming over everybody’s head.” The concern that they will be deported for offending a Qatari is so common among expatriates, it is the subject of one of Ali’s most popular stand-up routines. In the bit, the Qatari comedian pokes fun at the stereotype of the overzealous visa-canceling national. “Have you seen a Qatari go into a fight with an expat? The first thing a Qatari says is, ‘I cancel your visa.’ Like all the sudden he’s the department of immigration. I had a Qatari who tried to deport me once. He was like, ‘I cancel your visa.’ I was like, ‘I cancel your visa back.’ It runs in our blood. Qataris take pride in it. They’re like, ‘So far, I’ve canceled 645 visas and still going. I have the Qatari Guinness World Record in visa canceling.” Status hierarchies are reflected and reinforced through humor. The higher one’s standing, the more laughs one receives (e.g., doctors receive more laughs than nurses do).53 In organizations, workers “joke down” the status hierarchy. For example, doctors joke about nurses, and nurses joke about patients. Thus, humor helps maintain social order by reminding individuals of their social position relative to others. At Bistro 61, Qataris joked about expatriates, but the reverse scenario was far less common, illustrating the symbolic power differential between citizens and noncitizens. In December 2016, Qatar eliminated the kafala system but replaced it with regulations that were functionally similar.54 In 2018, Qatar again made adjustments to its labor laws, including removing some exit-visa restrictions. Critics pointed out, however, that the revised laws do not cover nearly two hundred thousand low-wage domestic workers.55 Survey data reveal that employers possess the passports of 90 percent of low-wage migrant workers in Qatar, despite laws that forbid this practice.56 Qatar has shown relatively more openness to high-status, professional-class workers. For example, in 2018, the emir signed leg-

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islation that allowed limited permanent residency, but not citizenship, for up to one hundred exceptionally skilled or important applicants per year.57 In response to ongoing international criticism, Qatar continues to revamp its labor laws. The various kafala labor schemes of the Gulf, however, historically have been accompanied by unofficial workarounds that enable employers to evade whatever restrictions governments put into place.58 Thus, in Qatar, kafala lives on, even if it does so under a different name with modified regulations.

The Villaggio Smoking Area Marwan is running late as usual. Ambling to the stage, the eighteenyear-old college student is dressed in a Chicago sports jersey, a tilted baseball cap, and a hoodie covered in patches of American heavy metal bands and Che Guevara. Equal parts confidence and nervous energy, Marwan grasps the mic and paces the stage like a rap MC, telling the audience that he has attention deficit disorder as a greeting. “I do a lot of accents,” he says to the crowd. “I’m going to play this game with the audience. Who’s got an accent?” Members of the crowd start to call out the names of countries: Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Britain, Scotland. Each time a name is called out, Marwan quickly improvises a few lines in a stereotypical dialect from that country before moving on to the next request. Chinese: Bowing, he says, “Hello! Very nice to meet you. You want a kung pao chicken? You want a Wu Tang Clan? For fifty cents only.” Australian: Marwan hops around the stage, yelling in an Aussie accent, “We play a lot of cricket, and we got kangaroos.” Mexican: “Eey, puto. Let’s smoke some weed, holmes.” Norwegian: “I don’t know where the fuck that is.” Members of the audience recoil visibly when Marwan curses, but he barely seems to notice. A few more “fucks” fly. He is doing it on purpose now, trying to provoke a reaction. The audience is not sure how to respond. “France,” a man calls out, trying to deescalate the situation. “Big hand of applause for France, ladies and gentlemen,” the comedian says.

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A group of French people in the audience clap. Marwan continues, “The most pretentious, arrogant people on Earth. ‘We are zee French people. We only smoke zee clove cigarette. Fuck your Marlboro. I spit on your whore Marlboro!’ ” The audience cannot believe it. No one knows what to do. “Qatar,” someone finally yells out. The room is deathly silent. Marwan takes a half-beat pause and plows ahead, speaking in his everyday voice. “This is what I love about the Qataris. If you want to go to another comedy show after this, just sit in the Villaggio smoking area and look at the people who walk like velociraptors and wear sunglasses at night.” The Villaggio is a Doha shopping mall. Qatari males are notorious for smoking inside malls, despite laws that forbid the practice. The Qataris are almost never stopped by the less powerful mall security, South Asian and African expatriates who are keen to avoid negative encounters with citizens. Non-Qataris who want to smoke at a mall have to stand outside. Marwan dons a pair of dark sunglasses and saunters across the Bistro stage, a Qatari velociraptor. “Uhhhhhhh,” he intones looking around the room. “I want to buy everything. Everything, yes,” he says in a mocking Qatari accent. “The Gucci, the Prada. I want to smoke. I will not go outside and smoke like everyone else. I will go to the Villaggio smoking area.” Members of the audience eye one another, aghast. “Sorry for offending you,” Marwan shrugs as he walks offstage. Nabil offers a lighthearted apology and quickly introduces the next act. “I believe in free speech,” Nabil tells me later. “If a comedian comes up and says, ‘I want to say “fuck you” in my punch line,’ I’m not going to stop them from saying it. But look at our audience. The audience is not going to appreciate free speech. This audience is gonna get up and leave if you make a joke that’s inappropriate.” Humor is a means by which individuals sometimes broach subjects that are controversial or off-limits during conventional conversations. “Joking provides a useful channel for covert communication on taboo topics. Normally a person is not held responsible for what he does in jest to the same degree that he would be for a serious gesture.”59 This helps to explain how some comedians get away with discussing taboo topics sans censure.

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Nabil has never been given an official directive about the content of a QSUC show. Instead, self-censorship is more common. “Nobody came and told us, ‘Oh, you can’t make fun of any Arabic leader ’cause politics is off the cards,’” he says. “If you want to make fun of the emir, by all means; I’m not going to stop you. But is the audience going to appreciate it? Is it really going to be comedy? If you want to do something that’s going to push boundaries, a protest might be more effective. Coming in front of 150 people and making a joke about the emir that most people are not going to appreciate, even though it’s politically challenging, there’s other ways of doing that.”

Lola “The funny thing about living here is that there are people here from all over the world, as we see tonight. There are people from Sudan; there’s lots of people from Egypt.” Lola holds the microphone comfortably and addresses the room with the ease of someone practiced at public speaking. She leans forward conspiratorially, as if confiding in a close friend. “Everybody wants to talk about the Indians. Now, you might find this surprising, but I am actually from India.” This generates a big applause. “I don’t sound like some of the other Indians. I forget that when people meet me, all they see is the Indian part. And they don’t know the rest. And white people, especially, in Doha, they get freaked out by this. “So you’re at a party. Someone comes up to you: ‘My name is Arthur. What is your name?’ And I’m like, ‘Lola.’ And then Arthur’s like, ‘You’re American?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I moved to the States when I was young. I went to school there.’ And he’s like, ‘But you sound like an American.’ White people get offended that there’s some brown people that they didn’t get over on. It’s always the Australians and the British that are like, ‘You’re American? There’s one of you that we didn’t get to in our colonial empire?’ They want to know how this happened.” Lola has lived in Doha for more than a decade, using her education as a pathway to a variety of pursuits: teaching classes at several universities, publishing academic journal articles, authoring fiction and nonfiction books, producing a television show, blogging, podcasting, and more. “Stand-up was the riskiest thing I’ve done in a long time,” she tells me.

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“Before I would go onstage, I would feel like I was going to puke. But it was really good for me to just do something risky, that I didn’t feel 100 percent confident about.” Lola’s onstage demeanor is friendly and unassuming. Her focus on the foibles of motherhood and expatriate life yields plenty of knowing applause, and being a woman in a mostly male lineup gives her routines a certain freshness. “I realized that I’m funnier than 75 percent of these guys on any given night,” she says. “In terms of a subcontinental female voice, there’s only me.” Lola was born in India but grew up in Florida, where she went on to earn a PhD in English. Her husband is the son of Asian parents and also grew up in the United States. All of this is incorporated into her stand-up routines. “I’m like a coconut,” she tells the Bistro audience. “I’m brown on the outside, white on the inside—’cause I grew up in the US. My husband’s like a banana, ’cause he’s yellow on the outside. His parents are from Laos, but he looks like he’s Chinese, so you know, yellow— white on the inside because he grew up in the US.” Lola incorporates gender and race in sharper ways too, commenting on her status as an educated Indian woman in a country where many Indian women are members of the servant class. On stage at Bistro 61, she tells a funny story about having a baby in Doha, poking fun at the lavish hospital room: “I’m pretty sure most hospitals don’t have bellhops or five-star in-room dining.” Virtually all Qatari families employ live-in domestic help, many of whom hail from South Asia. In Lola’s routine, the hospital staff assume that she and her husband work for a Qatari friend who stops by for a visit. Lola’s stand-up sets provide wry commentary on how Doha’s racial hierarchy maps onto its legal structure and immigration policies. “Everyone is talking about race, but nobody is really doing it in the way I do,” she tells me. “They’re like, ‘Indian people can’t drive, hahaha.’ My stuff is about these situations that are so awkward and racist. You think I’m Indian, but I’m not the kind of Indian that you know.” A popular convention among the QSUC comedians is telling jokes or creating characters using stereotypical regional and national accents, from the Gulf to every corner of the globe. Imitations of “funny” Indian dialects are common. Lola never resorts to the tactic. “I can do it, but I don’t break it out,” she says.

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Instead, at Bistro 61, she launches into a critique of race and stereotypes in Doha, wrapped in the sheep’s clothing of a sweet story about parenthood. “Baby number one is actually very white looking. He’s a very cute, white-looking boy. At the nursery, they got a new security guard; the guy’s Sudanese. So I go to pick up the kid, and the Sudanese guard looks at me and he’s like, ‘You? Your baby?’ And I’m, ‘No, I just ran in and snatched some kid, and I’m running to my car. Don’t tell anybody!’ ” As she says this, Lola wags her index finger. The audience loves it. Lola closes her set with a line that never fails to get a laugh. “I’m worried about number two, because he’s going to have to explain to all of his friends why he has a white brother, an Indian nanny for a mom, and a Filipino driver for a dad.” According to Lola, the Qatari government benefits from having performance troupes like QSUC because stand-up comedy is just another drop in the cultural bucket that Qatar hopes to fill as soon as possible. Globally competitive cities such as New York, Chicago, and London are famous for stand-up comedy, and Qatar is eager to join their ranks. “The government wants this perception of culture,” Lola says. “The powers that be like stand-up because it makes Qatar look like the kind of place where these types of things happen. There are these official structures of power that are creating culture. And there’s these grassroots movements, like comedy. They’re the closest thing to sustainable alternate incubators.” Lola and the other QSUC comedians generally eschew any notion of creating some new form of stand-up, a blend of the Arab world and the West. A few comedians have tried out jokes in Arabic, but they have generally failed to connect. “Comedy is still comedy,” Nabil tells me. “You say something funny, and people are going to laugh. We haven’t come up with our own form of comedy. This is not Arabic comedy. It’s still a Western-developed model: setup, punch line, timing, atmosphere.” Getting Qataris involved is essential, according to Nabil, who loses money on each QSUC show. The host pays for the overages himself, which he says runs one to two thousand riyals ($275–$550) per event. Still, he is encouraged by the increased interest from Qataris. “They’re

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coming out slowly,” he says. “You see the Qatari girls in their abayas and the guys in their thobes. They’ve been living in their own world; we’ve been living in our own world. This is a rare occasion where there’s a Qatari onstage and there’s Qataris in the audience. They’re just like normal people; they’re laughing. Maybe that means something; maybe that has an impact on society.”

Flashy, Flashy The comedian wears a traditional white thobe and ghutrah head scarf, augmented by jet-black aviator sunglasses. Striding leisurely to the stage, he peers at an iPhone. He takes the microphone from the stand. “One moment please,” he intones to the crowd in a thick accent, holding up an index finger. He sends a text, back turned to the audience, then another. A few moments later, still in sunglasses, he turns and points out that it is dark in the restaurant. “We need more light,” he calls out, flagging down an imaginary staff person. “I give money. Light, please.” The line gets a laugh. The comedian removes his sunglasses and takes in the lavish venue. “My house isn’t even as nice as this—and I’m Qatari!” The comedian’s name is Kareem, and his routines play on and poke holes in expatriate stereotypes about Qataris—that the nationals’ wealth makes them arrogant, distracted, and entitled. “Expats will laugh because it’s something we see all the time,” Nabil explains. “Qataris laugh because they go, ‘I know this guy. It could be my uncle, it could be my brother, it could be me.’ ” Beaming magnanimously, Kareem steps down from the stage and walks among the Bistro 61 crowd, all eyes on him. “I have Land Cruiser,” he tells the room. “But there is problem. My not Qatari friends, you, white, expat.” Kareem gestures to the audience with his free hand, inching closer to a group of white American women. “What is problem? Why you don’t like Land Cruiser?” he asks good naturedly. The audience loves it. “Land Cruiser very good, very big, satellite TV. And now you complain when Qataris come very fast and flashy, flashy.” The line receives a huge laugh. Kareem presses forward. “Why you no move when I flashy, flashy?”

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One of the American women responds, semijoking, “I hate you when you do that.” Kareem’s act is built around the symbolic power differential between Qatari citizens and expatriates. At Bistro 61, he approaches some audience members in the front row: “One of you is going to have to get up so I can sit down.” They eat it up, roaring with cathartic laughter. But Kareem also tackles common Qatari complaints about expatriates: they only care about money; they are treated better than Qataris; they throw loud, drunken parties. Many Qataris take umbrage at a perceived lack of respect from the professional-class expatriates, whose high salaries and lavish lifestyles are paid for by the Qatari government. Citizens are critical of this group of mostly Westerners, alleging that they reap the rewards of Qatar’s generosity, give back little, and reside in the country only when absolutely necessary. After a few years, they’re gone, adding insult to injury by complaining about the hot weather and bad driving. Offended by this perceived lack of gratitude, Qataris keep to themselves. “Where are my expats? Where are the English people?” Kareem asks. A few audience members applaud, including a woman from London. Kareem adopts a thick British accent and continues, teasing playfully. “London! That’s brilliant, innit? Do you like it here? How long have you been here?” “A year,” she replies. “A year,” he repeats flatly, accent holding strong, a gleam in his eye. “You said it in such a way that you’re mixed. You wanna go home, but you kind of like it, but it’s humid.” The comedian pauses, scanning the room beatifically. The audience leans in. He has got them in the palm of his hands. Kareem continues, loudly, his British dialect even more pronounced. “But then ya went home for Ramadan, didn’t ya?” The woman nods, cracking up, as she brings her hands to her face in mock embarrassment. The audience turns to look at her and bursts into spontaneous laughter. Western expats fleeing Doha during religious holidays is so commonplace that it is all but assumed for many. Kareem prods further, mock shouting, his accent completely over the top. “Ya can’t drink. Ya can’t go out. ‘I’m goin’ home!’ ”

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The line brings the house down. On a roll, Kareem moves to the next table. “Where are you from, kind sir?” “Qatar,” the man replies, giving Kareem a stern look. “You’re Qatari?” Kareem asks, double checking. The man nods. Kareem immediately moves on to a different table. “Please, I like it here,” he says under his breath.

Reinforcing the National Hierarchy Qatar’s economic ambitions require a nation whose history is one of regional focus to incorporate itself into global labor flows, bringing a massive influx of foreigners on board. Petrodollars and demographic transformation, combined with strict immigration and labor policies, have created a nation where a small, wealthy, powerful citizenry rule over millions of foreigners. The Qataris need the expatriates to build and run the country but resent their presence. Expatriates are treated differently, depending on nationality, but are universally fearful of being deported for inadvertently crossing a Qatari or accidentally violating a social norm. Feeling disrespected and outnumbered, the Qataris stoke these fears from time to time. In Qatar, there are formal mechanisms that explicitly distinguish Qataris from foreigners, but this symbolic boundary is also reinforced informally. Humor is often used to convey somber matters, and “joking cultures” such as stand-up comedy shows are sites where serious issues are sometimes addressed.60 At Bistro 61, the Qatari and expatriate comedians deliberate citizenship, nationality, race, gender, and culture, generally using nonthreatening affiliative humor to skewer each other in subtle ways that enhance social interactions.61 Nabil’s droll comments on his transnational background and Lola’s charming stories about motherhood couch critiques that are implied rather than overt. Here, serious topics are framed as humorous cultural misunderstandings, rather than social ills. When the comedians are directly critical, they generally take aim at acceptable targets, such as uptight white guys, “blond girls,” or national groups ranked low on Qatar’s social hierarchy. Of course, no

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humor works unless it references widely agreed-on social constructs, such as bad traffic, aggrieved Qataris, and the Indian PhD everyone assumes is a service worker. While these topics are often treated in subtle ways, sharper critiques occasionally arise, such as Marwan’s imitation of the Qatari smoking at the mall. Such appraisals are overtly disparaging and provocative, as if daring government officials to intervene. Aggressive humor of this type is sometimes used to “manipulate others by means of an implied threat of ridicule.”62 Marwan’s efforts may be viewed as an attempt to reduce Qataris’ willingness to flout the rules. Regardless, in the end, his behavior, while offensive to some, was ignored. The provocateur was a teenage college student, and the authority-defying loudmouth is a well-known stand-up comedy archetype. In Doha, there is always the possibility that a routine like Marwan’s could escalate into something more serious, but Qatari citizens and the government are often conflict averse and tend to overlook a good deal of deviant behavior. Nabil views stand-up as a means by which Qataris and expatriates work out their differences without resorting to name-calling or violence. “Comedy has always been a way for people to address difficult issues,” he insists. “You’re breaking down people’s misconceptions and bad blood. You’re bringing it out in the open, and people are laughing about it. As countries open up and they get more foreigners coming in, comedy has continued to play an important role, not just in the Gulf but across the Arab world.” Salim, a citizen, appreciates comedians like Ali and Kareem, Qataris who playfully defy stereotypes about serious, unapproachable nationals. “People think of Islam as terrorists and all evil stuff,” he says. “They think we don’t laugh and we’re always serious.” At the same time, when Qatari comedians build their acts around their elite status as citizens, they affirm the divide between citizens and noncitizens and the Qataris’ position atop the nation’s hierarchy. The expatriate comedians do something similar, continually calling attention to their position beneath the Qataris on the social ladder. Viewed from this perspective, Marwan’s curse-laden tirade was little more than an angry acknowledgment of the Qatari entitlement. In that sense, even cultural practices that appear to subvert Qatar’s nationbased hierarchy may actually reinforce it.

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It was not always like this. Qatari citizenship only became salient decades after the discovery of oil, when laws began directing surplus revenues to nationals. Claims to a collective Qatari identity are an even more recent phenomenon. To understand how the distinction between citizen and noncitizen came to dominate contemporary Qatari culture, one must consider the nation’s development within the broader historical landscape of the Arabian Gulf.

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Modern Traditionalism Qatar and the Arabian Gulf

Souq Waqif is an open-air market, located near Doha’s old downtown, that was rebuilt using faux vintage materials in 2006 to resemble a nineteenth-century Arab trader’s bazaar. Visit Qatar, the National Tourism Council (NTC) website, declares, “Souq Waqif provides an authentic taste of traditional commerce, architecture and culture,” although others say it looks more like a movie set. The Souq features hundreds of vendor stalls, where South Asian workers softly peddle everything from delicately hand-carved wooden sailboats to camelshaped refrigerator magnets.1 Visitors are encouraged to imagine life in Qatar’s Bedouin past, as they wander the Souq’s narrow passageways and maze-like structure, treasure around each new turn. Weary shoppers can dine alfresco at one of the Souq’s numerous cafes and restaurants, followed by a leisurely visit to a shisha lounge. “Traditional music, art and cultural shows add to the ambience of this special place,” the NTC adds, although the fusty atmosphere is punctured by randomly placed ATMs and a Baskin Robbins whose entryway is done up in pink-neon Arabic lettering. Local opinions on Souq Waqif are mixed. Some Qataris praise the government’s efforts to re-create facets of allegedly authentic culture through high-profile endeavors like the Souq and Katara Cultural Village. “Souq Waqif is a very traditional place,” a Qatari woman named Nawal avows. “You can just go in and feel the tradition.” Other Qataris decry the Souq and similar endeavors as illegitimate, built not for Qatari nationals but for wealthy “visitor class” clients seeking to be entertained.2 “Souq Waqif is being specifically made to target Western audiences, basically tourists,” says a Qatari named Mira. “It’s not so for the locals or the nationals—maybe the expatriate community but not the locals. We know as locals that is not authentic in nature. It’s 56

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Souq Waqif. (Photo by Alexander R. Wilcox Cheek)

not actually an old building; it’s just made to look old. They tore it down, and they made it a modern old building.” Proponents and detractors agree that undertakings such as Souq Waqif are part of a government attempt to preserve and promote Qatari culture within a context of swift and comprehensive social change. “We’re still holding onto traditions,” says a Qatari named Ali. “You can see that through Souq Waqif. Even though it’s kind of modern and they have shops and everything, they have that structure that shows how it was before. It’s very traditional—the architecture, the way it’s made, the way it looks. But at the same time, it’s modern.” Visitors to the Souq can sit for an allegedly traditional Qatari tea service, which takes place in large veranda-style tents, outfitted with couches and low tables. The wait staff proffer trays of antique-looking silver teapots. Guests sip the spicy beverages and stare at large flat-screen televisions, which broadcast cricket and soccer matches at top volume. This juxtaposition of the venerable tea service and the gleaming satellite TV exemplifies modern traditionalism, an amalgam of the customary and contemporary that is foregrounded in Qatar. The TV in the tent also

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Visitors to Souq Waqif can partake in a supposedly traditional Qatari tea service as they watch soccer matches on a flat-screen TV. (Photo by Geoff Harkness)

signifies the Qataris’ desire to maintain a collective identity and culture in an era of pervasive societal transformation. “There is sort of an identity dilemma now,” says Saud, a fifty-oneyear-old Qatari man. “It’s rapidly changing, so they are not sure about the identity of the country. Qatar is not the same as it was twenty-five years ago. It’s developing in education, health, tourism. This is a good thing. But the main drawback to that is the identity. They are not sure. Should they hold back to their old cultural identity or move on? And you can see this identity dilemma everywhere, even in that TV. A new TV is following a direction that is different.” It is difficult to comprehend the “identity dilemma” that accompanies Qatar’s ambitions, or the ambitions themselves for that matter, without understanding the nation’s historical relationship to the region.

The Arabian Gulf From ancient human history to an era dominated by pearling, fishing, and maritime commerce, through the oil epoch of the late twentieth

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century, to the impending postpetroleum age, the Arabian Gulf has always been a distinctive region with an identity of its own. For centuries, the area was a key trade and shipping route, connecting Mesopotamia to the Indian subcontinent. To this day, Qatar and its Gulf neighbors serve as a crucial transit hub between the West, East Africa, South Asia, and China. Then as now, wave upon wave of travelers pass through, contributing to an idiosyncratic transnational bouillabaisse. Indigenous peoples from the region sometimes self-refer as khaleeji (or khaliji), which derives from the Arabic word for “gulf.” All Gulf countries are ruled by long-standing dynastic tribal families.3 The six Gulf sultanates have the wealthiest Arab economies and enjoy some of the highest rankings of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita on the planet.4 All are reliant, to varying degrees, on petrodollars, which have transformed the region but also produced anxiety about a postoil world. The Gulf nations are dependent on foreign workers to staff virtually every sector of their economies, resulting in a tenfold populace increase from 1950 to 2005, the highest population growth anywhere on Earth during this period.5 The Gulf nations redistribute oil wealth to citizens and make it difficult for migrants to become naturalized, even those born into families that have resided there for generations.6 Most of the region consists of inhospitable desert, with hot, humid summers that stretch half a year. Despite these and other similarities, the Gulf nations tend toward heterogeneity, products of regional mobility, the area’s connection to the Indian Ocean, and trading links that date back centuries. With a history in herding (camel, sheep, and goat), fishing, pearling, and mercantile trade, the Gulf has attracted foreign workers for centuries. There are several indigenous ethnic groups in the region, including Kurds, Persians, Turkmen, and numerous Arab subgroups. The split between descendants of the Bedouin nomadic tribes (badu) and the hadar, descendants of settled villagers, also contributes to cultural distinctions between and within Gulf nations.7 Arabic is the official language of the Gulf states, but there are transnational and intranational variations in dialect: Classical, Modern Standard, Gulf, Kuwaiti, Najdi, Jejazi, and dozens more. These distinctions are as recognizable to long-term Gulf residents as thick southern or East Coast accents are to many Americans. English is widely spoken

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throughout the Gulf, but ability varies; and languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Pashto, Punjabi, Tagalog, and Urdu are used frequently. Islam is the official religion of the Gulf nations, but its interpretation and practice differ. Saudi Arabia and Qatar adhere to a strict Wahhabi interpretation. Among Gulf Muslims, the Sunni-to-Shia ratio varies by country as well. Sunni Muslims dominate much of the region, although not Oman, where the Ibadi branch of Islam has more adherents. Bahrain has a Sunni emir, but 70 percent of the population is Shiite, leading to accusations of favoritism and occasional revolts. The proportion of the migrant workforce also impacts religious culture in the Gulf. Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, and even Jews practice, with varying levels of autonomy. Key structural differences between Gulf nations include their governmental configurations, economies, population sizes, total land mass, gender split, degree of historical colonization, strength of religious institutions, relationship to the region, and associations with the West and the Far East. Table 2.1 compares five characteristics of the Gulf nations. Saudi Arabia has more land mass and total population than all the other Gulf states combined. The UAE has the third-largest land mass and the second-largest population.8 Qatar has a small land mass and a small population, relative to its neighbors, although it outranks Bahrain on both counts. Qatar’s geographical location between large, powerful entities such as Saudi Arabia and Iran places it at the epicenter of political clashes and struggle for economic control. No other region of the world has such a small percentage of citizens relative to the total population, a reflection of state economies, development plans, and ambitions. In four of the six Gulf sultanates (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE), nonnationals outnumber citizens, although the proportion varies. In the wealthiest Gulf nations, the UAE and Qatar, where enormous infrastructure and expansion projects are under way, respectively, 12.0 and 10.5 percent of the population are citizens. Because so many migrant laborers in the Gulf are men toiling in blue-collar jobs such as construction and maintenance, the sex ratio skews heavily male. In Qatar, there are 3.41 males for every female.9 The GDP per capita varies considerably in the region. By this metric, Qatar is the wealthiest Gulf nation, followed by the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. In Bahrain, the unemployment rate can

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Table 2.1. Characteristics of the Gulf Nations Land mass Total (square population miles) (millions) Bahrain

Percentage of population who are citizens

Percentage of the population who are male

GDP per capita (US dollars)

296

1.6

46.0

64

$24,051

Kuwait

6,880

4.1

30.0

60

$34,243

Oman

119,500

4.8

55.0

66

$16,419

Qatar

4,468

2.8

10.5

76

$69,026

830,000

33.7

70.0

58

$23,219

32,278

9.6

12.0

69

$43,005

Saudi Arabia UAE

Source: World Bank, n.d., Snoj 2019.

reach 15 percent. Saudi Arabia’s ability to provide for its citizens has been hampered by falling oil rates and a sizable youth population.10 Petrodollars only account for about 6 percent of tourism-heavy Dubai’s GDP, compared to 11 percent in Bahrain and nearly 50 percent in Qatar.11 Petroleum-rich states with high proportions of migrant workers, such as Qatar and the UAE, have large populations that earn very little and small populations whose wealth is high. Thus, the economic imbalance between the rich and poor (or citizens and foreigners) is obscured by these data to some degree. Although the stereotype of the region is one of lavish oil wealth, in reality the Gulf nations are inhabited by massive numbers of individuals living in dire poverty.

Qatar in the Bedouin Era Qatar has been home to humans for at least fifty thousand years, and coastal settlements date to the fourth century BC. Much of the nation’s history involves transient, migratory groups that left no permanent settlements. In pre-Islamic Arabia, there were no governmental structures or administrative bodies. Kinship-based tribes were the primary social and political units.12 Nomadic Arabian tribes, the Bedouin, did not wander the desert aimlessly. Rather, each tribe had a proprietary home territory, a dirah, where it held grazing rights and sovereignty over one or more sources of water.13 There was little effort to delineate national borders. Nomadic herding tribes used the land seasonally, journeying

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across the peninsula based on the needs of their flocks—the desert climate required near-constant pursuit of viable grazing lands.14 Each tribe was headed by a sheikh, who was responsible for the welfare of the members. Although sheikhs enjoyed considerable power and respect, their leadership could be contested at any time. Moreover, there were no standardized procedures for successions, which could be characterized by quarrels among competing family members with aspirations to lead. Throughout his reign, a sheikh was forced to economically and emotionally placate a cadre of blood relatives, who might challenge his authority or seek to unseat him due to the slightest provocation.15 There was considerable conflict over the region’s scarce resources, and warfare between rival tribes was widespread.16 Tribes were highly mutable, dissolving and reforming alongside other tribes under new names.17 Tribal alliances were common, including the sharing of water and other assets. These pacts were frequently cemented via cross-tribal marriages, nurturing a preference for strategic unions that still exists. Complicating betweentribe rivalries was the Gulf ’s proximity to powerful, established empires (Persian, Byzantine, and Abyssinian), none of which wanted to see political or economic power begin to amass nearby.18 During the seventh century, Islam swept Arabia and played a key role in the development of the Gulf nations. At the time, Christianity was the most prominent religion in the Gulf, although Judaism and animism were also widely practiced. Islam originated in what is now the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca, already a major center of commerce and religion; the city’s shrine, Ka’ba, became a site of annual pilgrimage. Throughout the formative years of Qatar, it was unsettled land that was under the control of various foreign entities, including the Al Munzir Arabs during the seventh century, the Abbasids from 750 to 1258, Portugal from 1517 to 1538, followed by four centuries of laissez-faire Ottoman rule. It has also been subject to innumerable territorial claims and disputes over millennia, along with a parallel history of resistance, violence, and bloodshed.

Rise of the Port Cities In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, significant commercial enterprises emerged in port cities in Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman,

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and the Iranian coastal city of Lingeh. These and other seaside trading centers formed an essential shipping passageway and commercial transit route that connected Europe, East Africa, Mesopotamia, the Near East, the Indian subcontinent, and the Far East. The Gulf nations’ shared coastline along shipping routes, combined with a mix of ethnoracial and religious groups, helped forge a transnational milieu that remains in place today.19 There was little infrastructure and few permanent settlements in the early port start-ups. Qatar was nothing more than “transitory nomadic camps” and “a few sleepy fishing villages governed informally by local Shaikhs.”20 Housing often consisted of modest huts made from palm leaves that could be dismantled and moved elsewhere. Indian traders known as banias sold rice, coffee, sugar, and spices and bought pearls to sell back home.21 Life in this clime was far from idyllic. Attacks, pandemics, and internal strife were frequent, and the threat of marauding inland tribes loomed constantly.22 Pearl fishing has existed in the Gulf for at least six thousand years.23 By the seventeenth century, pearls had become one of the region’s primary exports, and pearl fisheries dotted the banks of the Gulf coast. Prospectors were drawn to the region because there were no customs fees or levies—anyone could fish the Gulf pearl beds without restriction. A single valuable pearl was all it took to strike it rich.24 The name Qatar first appeared in print in a book published in 1660 by the Portuguese explorer Pedro Teixeira. Describing Bahrain’s fishing industry, Teixeira notes that “Katar” is another common nearby fishing locale. The author devotes the bulk of his brief description of the area to the pearls found in shallow waters that separate Bahrain and Qatar: “The pearls of that sea exceed all others in quality and weight.”25 Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the UAE were all involved in pearling in this era.26 A report from Kuwait circa 1763 estimated that there were eight hundred pearling boats off Kuwaiti shores.27 Half a century later, fifteen hundred vessels were working the coasts of Bahrain.28 By the 1840s, it was estimated that the Gulf was home to more than twenty-nine thousand workers manning about twenty-seven hundred pearling boats.29 The travel writer William Palgrave’s 1865 description of Bidda, a seaside village of six thousand that eventually became Doha, gives

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a sense of the social and economic energy generated by the pearl trade in this era. In this Bay are the best, the most copious pearl-fisheries of the Persian Gulf, and in addition an abundance almost beyond belief of whatever other gifts the sea can offer or bring. It is from the sea accordingly, not from the land, that the natives of Katar subsist, and it is also mainly on the sea that they dwell, passing amid its waters the one half of the year in search of pearls, the other half in fishery or trade. Hence their real homes are the countless boats which stud the placid pool, or stand drawn up in long black lines on the shore.

The sheikh of Bidda, Muhammad Al Thani, told Palgrave, “We are all from the highest to the lowest slaves of one master, [the] Pearl.” This notion was widespread according to Palgrave. Throughout the village, “all thought, all conversation, all employment, turns on that one subject; everything else is mere by-game, and below even secondary consideration.”30 Pearl fishing was seasonal labor—in the winter months, the Gulf waters were too cold for diving deep into the ocean, where the purest pearls were believed to be found. Conversely, the region’s long, hot summers were perfect for pearling. The main term ran from June to early October, although shallow waters were sometimes fished at other times of the year. Pearling boats were typically manned by crews of sixteen—sailors, divers, hoisters, cooks, and apprentices—who lived in cramped conditions and toiled in scorching heat under a long-established division of labor. The nakhoda, or ship’s captain, “was expert in finding the pearl banks, guided by the sun, stars, colours and depth of the sea.”31 Saltwater pearl diving is difficult, dangerous, and unpredictable. Sharks, jellyfish, and powerful currents are perpetual hazards. Due in part to these risks, as well as to generally low pay, it is estimated that about half of Qatar’s pearl divers were slaves or former slaves of African descent.32 Richard Bowen Jr.’s 1951 account of pearl divers in the Gulf illustrates the job’s structural and environmental hazards, as well as its physical toll. Diving without any type of equipment, not even goggles (the British government banned most scuba gear), the pearl fishers plunged as deep as seventy-two feet.

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To get to the bottom a diver puts his foot in a loop of rope tied to a stone or iron weight, releases a slip knot holding the rope to the sweep, and holding onto the rope plummets down. . . . The diver holds onto another line to which is tied an open-weave palm leaf basket for the oysters; sometimes the diver has the oyster basket tied to his waist or around his neck and has the line tied to his body. When the diver is ready to come up, he gives several tugs on the rope. Thus the diver does not have to waste his valuable energy in swimming up or down. When he first reaches the bottom, he attempts to go out perpendicularly from the boat, frantically plucking all the oysters he can see before his air gives out. The diver usually crawls on one hand and one foot, using the other foot to propel himself and his free hand to collect the oysters. . . . The diver stays under about a minute, then rests for two or three. Ten dives would consume about three-quarters of an hour, after which time the Kuwait diver is dragged out of the water and huddles in some spot on the ship looking more dead than alive. He may average four shifts a day, making a total of 40 dives. . . . During this time he has spent almost one hour under water. . . . Day after day and week after week the diving goes on—for four months. When the season is over, the diver has weathered the impossible; he has probably completed over 3,000 dives in from 30 to 50 feet of water and has spent over 50 hours under the surfaces of the Persian Gulf—that is, over a full forty-hour week without air, valiantly striving to gather all the oysters he can see through his blood shot and irritated eyes, which become less sensitive with each dive. . . . After they have been at it for many weeks, the divers are apt to get convulsive shivers when they come out of the water for their rest, even though the temperature may be 100 [degrees] F.33

The coastal cities of the Gulf ’s pearling industry were controlled by various tribes, and there was considerable conflict over limited commodities. This was exacerbated by an influx of newcomers, drawn to the region for its growing reputation as a site of commerce.

Tribes and the Trucial Coast During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, territorial disputes and economic incentives generated significant tribal movements from the Arabian interior to the commercially developing Gulf.34 The Al Thani

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was a nomadic tribe from the Najd region of Arabia, descended from the Banu Tamim, one of the oldest and largest tribes in the Gulf, and the Al Maadhid tribe of central Arabia.35 In the 1740s, the Al Thani settled in what is now Doha. Unlike prominent tribes such as Kuwait’s Al Sagah, which had been in power for generations, there was no history of dynastic succession in Qatar prior to Al Thani rule. Instead, power circulated among an assortment of prominent families, tribes, and sheikhs.36 In 1766, two merchant seafaring tribes, the Khalifas and the Jalahimas, both subsets of the larger Bani Utub tribe of Saudi Arabia, migrated from Kuwait to Qatar’s northwest coast.37 There, they established a settlement, Zubarah, that grew to be a regional center for pearling and key site of maritime commerce. At its height, Zubarah was home to five thousand inhabitants and buzzed with trade-related activity. So powerful was Zubarah that a string of smaller villages sprang up in its wake, populating Qatar’s barren west coast.38 Zubarah’s success also generated regional hostilities as villages, tribes, pirates, and political leaders claimed ownership of the lucrative hub. The Al Khalifas eventually relocated their substantial trade operation from Zubarah to the wealthier and more populated nearby islands of Bahrain, where the family has remained in power since 1783.39 The move, however, did not mean that the Khalifas relinquished their claim to authority over Qatar. Indeed, the battle over Zubarah and the surrounding territories that was waged between the Al Khalifas in Bahrain and the Al Thanis in Qatar continued into the twentieth century and remains a source of conflict today. The Al Khalifas’ abandonment of Zubarah reduced its importance as a trading port, and the Bani Utub’s pullout left a power vacuum in Qatar that was filled by a succession of transitory sheikhs.40 In 1811, Zubarah was attacked by the sultan of Oman, and in 1878, Jassim Al Thani sacked the village to dissuade further claims from Bahrain. In the early twentieth century, Zubarah’s well ran dry, and the town was forsaken. By the time archeologists began excavation in the 1980s, the settlement’s skeletal remains had been completely buried by desert sands.41 The Gulf of the late eighteenth century was characterized by rapid state formation and dissolution, with governmental rule emerging and then vanishing.42 This political instability presented concerns for colonial powerhouses such as Britain, Portugal, Spain, Holland, and France,

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Qatar’s leadership has exploited the symbolic value of Zubarah, a former pearling village, as authentic national heritage. (Photo by Geoff Harkness)

all of which were interested in commodifying the Gulf ’s lucrative trade route.43 Britain wanted to ensure safety along the shipping passageway for its East India Company, so that merchants could transport goods without interference from pirates. Britain allied with Oman, competing directly with the Al Qasimi tribe, a maritime power that remains one of the UAE’s most powerful dynastic families. Some scholars claim that accusations of piracy against the Al Qasimi were a way for Britain to legitimate its colonialist ambitions in the region.44 Beginning in the early 1800s, Britain signed a series of treaties with the tribal leaders of coastal towns and villages throughout the Gulf. Ostensibly, these “truces” ensured safer shipping corridors through what became known as the Trucial Coast. The General Treaty of Peace of 1820 and the Perpetual Maritime Truce of 1853 effectively gave Britain control over the foreign relations of several Gulf-area states, including Oman, Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, and Kuwait.45 In exchange, Britain promised to protect these small, defenseless nations from large, powerful neighbors and maintain order among the tribes. The Anglo treaties imposed national borders on the fluid boundaries of

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tribal territories and empowered local sheikhs, designations that were sometimes contested. In Palgrave’s account of Qatar circa 1865, he depicts the nation as vulnerable and under continual threat from pirates, “warlike” inland clans, and seafaring external tribes. These fears led the inhabitants of Doha to erect a series of crude thirty-foot safety towers and painstakingly wall off every inch of the town. Furthermore, Sheikh Muhammad Al Thani “protected his position with intelligent alliances.”46 In October 1867, defying the treaty with Britain, Khalifa factions in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi joined forces to attack Qatar. The nations sent a combined twenty-seven hundred men on ninety-four boats and all but destroyed two major cities, Doha and Al Wakrah.47 Qatar counterattacked the following year, sinking six hundred ships and killing more than one thousand.48 The region became entangled in hostility and violence. Britain was alarmed about the well-being of its trade route and sent an agent, Colonel Lewis Pelly, to resolve matters. In 1868, Pelly imposed a peace agreement between Bahrain and Qatar, significant because it legally recognized Qatar as a sovereign entity, specifying national borders that came to be immensely important later. Though the agreement did not grant Qatar complete independence from Bahrain, it laid the foundation for their eventual parting. Pelly’s accord also designated Muhammad Al Thani as Qatar’s ruler, a milestone because it formally acknowledged his reign over other Qatari tribes and territories. This external validation from one of the world’s superpowers bestowed Al Thani with heretofore unknown dimensions of authority. At the time, however, the treaty did little to reduce the sway of Qatari sheikhs who operated outside Doha. As late as the twentieth century, the Al Thanis were unable to successfully levy taxes on pearl fishers in most parts of the country.49 Nevertheless, Pelly’s 1868 declaration planted the seeds for generations of dynastic Al Thani rule in Qatar. In November 1869, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt, directly connecting, for the first time, the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The canal had an immediate effect on the Gulf, whose vital shipping corridor was rendered virtually obsolete.50 A once-thriving slave trade also diminished around this time due to growing pressures from Europe, although African slaves were still being sent to the Gulf as late as the 1950s.

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By the late nineteenth century, Qatar earned most of its revenues from the pearl industry and some limited camel herding, forming a subsistence economy beset with hardship, environmental hazards, and unpredictability. There was no merchant class, and political fragmentation was the norm.51 The Ottoman Empire had lay claim to Qatar for eons, but its interest waxed and waned. Having the Ottomans looming in the background, however, gave Qatar some protection against Bahrain’s ongoing proprietary claims or a more extensive British takeover.52 In 1872, the Al Thanis submitted to Ottoman rule, creating a formal relationship that was short-lived and fraught with turmoil. Six years later, Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani succeeded his father as ruler of Qatar.53 Jassim was an early supporter of the Ottoman pact but eventually worked to end it. When the Ottomans sent troops to Qatar in 1892, Jassim is credited with uniting Qatar’s assorted sheikhs, tribes, clans, towns, and villages for the Battle of Wajbah, driving the Ottomans out of Qatar for good.54 In 1916, in response to increasing threats from Arabia and Bahrain, Qatar became a British protectorate. Under this arrangement, it agreed to abide by British rule in exchange for protection from attacks via sea as well as increased bargaining power in the region.55 This agreement did not always work in Qatar’s favor. In 1936, Britain awarded Bahrain jurisdiction over several small islands, the Hawar Islands, about a mile off the Qatari coast, inflaming tensions between the two nations.56 A year later, Britain ruled that Qatar was to retain control of decimated Zubarah. Incensed, the Bahraini leadership imposed severe trade and travel restrictions on Qatar, foreshadowing the embargo that began in 2017.57

Liquid Gold In the 1930s, Qatar’s already-fragile economic position suffered twin blows. The first was the Great Depression, which gripped the United States and sent shockwaves throughout the world, as manufacturing and trade plummeted. The second was the rising popularity of cultured pearls, uniform gems manufactured under controlled conditions. Developed by Kokichi Mikimoto in the 1890s, Japanese cultured pearls eventually took over the global market, and Qatar lost its primary source of revenue.

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These economic upheavals, along with the 1937 Bahraini embargo, sank Qatar into a deep recession. Merchants declared bankruptcy and abandoned the coastline. Entire families and tribes departed. In 1908, the population of Qatar was estimated to be twenty-seven thousand inhabitants; by 1949, that number had shrunk to just sixteen thousand.58 Qatar was not alone—the entire Gulf region was devastated. Famine and malnourishment were widespread in Dubai during the 1930s and 1940s.59 The anthropologist Jane Bristol-Rhys’s description of Abu Dhabi in the 1950s gives a sense of the desperate conditions: “Terrible poverty with no medical care or schools and few opportunities other than trade, fishing and farming in the palm oases, [and] raising camels.”60 But a new resource had already been discovered, one that would transform the Gulf in the second half of the twentieth century. Beginning in the early 1900s, oil was located and commercially produced in Iran and Iraq, followed in the 1930s by Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.61 Other countries were slower to develop production: Kuwait and Qatar in the 1950s and Oman and the UAE in the 1960s. By the 1970s, oil came to dominate the economies of the Gulf, which was the recipient of what some scholars claim is the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the Earth. Today, oil and gas are responsible for about half the region’s total GDP.62 During the early stages of development, the merchant-era treaties signed by the Gulf nations gave Britain considerable power over the production of oil. Moreover, the treaties’ delineation of national and state borders became immensely important as oil came to be a prized resource. What was once wide-open nomadic terrain, and then loosely delineated tribal boundaries, solidified into precisely defined and strictly controlled national borders. “Distinctions among tribes also became more evident. A new sense of identity appeared in Gulf shaykhdoms.”63 The anthropologist Slayman Khalaf notes that in petroleum-rich Gulf states, each nation’s ruler passes on some portion of oil revenues to his citizens. He does so through modernizing the physical landscape, creating public works and assistance, and providing citizens with government jobs and the means to start their own businesses. “It is not surprising that this emerging type of welfare state, personified by the ruling shaikhly dynasties, has produced in the eyes of its underlying small

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population an image of a paternalistic, all-omnipotent, all-providing, all-generous giving father.”64 Early oil revenues in the Gulf were modest by today’s standards, with most of the profits accruing to the Western corporations that oversaw production. Mired in recession, Gulf leaders were in no position to bargain. The ruling families were the first to benefit. They spent most of the money on themselves but also disbursed it in traditional ways: gifts for family and friends and food for the local needy. Over time, the gestures of individual generosity became more formalized through the building of schools, hospitals, and highways. In Doha, a slow process of urbanization began in the mid-twentieth century. The first relatively modern elementary school for boys opened in 1949. Phone service began in 1953, and the nation’s original power plant started up four years later, followed by the installation of an airstrip. In 1959, Qatar’s first state hospital began operations. The following year, the Qatari government launched a settlement program, “urging the remaining pastoral population to exchange their tents for concrete houses.”65 By 1970, Qatar’s population reached over 111,000 as increasing numbers of workers came from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka to work in the oil and construction sectors and also as domestic labor for Qatar’s expanding middle class.66 Seven years later, in the wake of extensive growth, Qatar was home to more than two hundred thousand inhabitants, about 65 percent of whom were non-Qataris. Within a decade, the population would almost double again.67 Petroleum drove a development process in the Gulf whose defining characteristic was a demand for more and more labor. “Oil field workers, crew chiefs, drillers, mechanics, technicians, and geologists—all of whom were necessary to get the oil out of the ground—needed to be fed, housed, clothed, transported, entertained, and connected to their home countries; and so infrastructural development required more workers. Those workers then needed the same amenities as the oil field personnel, so development continued at a breakneck pace.”68 As the size and scope of Gulf oil became clear, contracts were renegotiated, and production soared. In 1960, five oil-producing nations, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, founded the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. Qatar joined in 1961, followed by the UAE six years later. OPEC, which works to stabilize energy mar-

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kets and advocate on behalf of its oil-rich nations, used collective bargaining to significantly influence global oil rates, bringing tremendous wealth and power to its member nations. In 1971, nine Gulf states gained their independence from British rule. Qatar and Bahrain remained autonomous, while the other seven formed the UAE.69 A new era had dawned. Political sovereignty, coupled with rising oil and gas prices, birthed a development project that continues today. Across the Gulf, a massive infrastructure began to be erected, with growth in Qatar and the UAE following patterns seen earlier in Kuwait, the first Gulf nation to experience oil urbanization. The expansion of the petroleum industry spawned economic diversification; skilled and unskilled laborers streamed in for jobs in the construction, education, medicine, and transportation sectors.70 Prior to the oil boom of the 1970s, more than 80 percent of foreign workers in the Gulf were Arabs from neighboring, relatively poor countries such as Egypt and Yemen. Gulf demographics changed dramatically beginning in the 1970s as laborers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and other Asian countries began to arrive.71 In response to the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, the members of OPEC boycotted oil sales to nations perceived to side with Israel, including the United States, Canada, and Japan. Within months, the global price of oil quadrupled, creating a gas crisis in the United States, memorialized by televised images of long lines of cars, whose drivers waited hours to fill up. OPEC’s maneuver shattered any remaining illusions about the power of the oil-producing Gulf nations, whose coffers were only enriched by the boycott. By 1977, Qatar was producing two and a half billion barrels of oil annually, virtually all of which was purchased by the United States.72 Oil prices peaked again in 1979 before declining precipitously. Development in Qatar was slow during the late 1980s and early 1990s, with several big-ticket projects delayed or canceled. During this time, however, Qatar shifted its focus from oil to natural gas, a move that proved transformative.73 In 1989, it began production at North Dome Field, the world’s largest source of natural gas, which Qatar shares with Iran. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, prompting Operation Desert Shield and then Operation Desert Storm, two US-led military responses from a coalition that included Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the

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United Kingdom. Qatar also sent troops in support of Kuwait, but its lasting legacy from this era was permitting allied air fighters to operate from a base outside Doha. On June 23, 1992, Qatar and the United States signed a bilateral defense agreement, which paved the way for a significant increase in US military presence in Qatar. This led in 1996 to the $1 billion building of Al Udeid Air Base. Four years later, a US Army base, As Sayiliyah, was established. This positioning was key to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the multiyear war that ensued. During these military operations, the US Central Command based its entire operation out of Qatar, where more than ten thousand US troops remain stationed today. The remunerative relationship between the US military and Qatar lent the small nation vast protections but contributes to present-day tensions in the region.74

Nation Building in a Transforming Gulf Over the past half century, as global demand for oil and natural gas has increased, the Gulf nations have become among the world’s fastest-growing economies. This influx of wealth has resulted in dramatic material transformations. Yet the hereditary ruling dynasties of the Gulf nations have remained virtually unchanged. In part, this is intentional—the ruling families have discouraged participatory, representative political systems while doling out various forms of largesse to their citizenry.75 Less understood is the continuing role of tribes in contemporary Gulf society.76 In Qatar, tribes remain at the center of the nation’s political structure, limiting the emir’s power and influence. “The old alliances and bloodlines of the desert and the fishing (dhow), the quid pro quo and the balance of power between the tribes those alliances created, were not destroyed by the sudden replacement of mud huts with concrete and of camels with ubiquitous Toyota Land Cruisers.”77 The academic literature suggests that as the Gulf nations modernize, tribalism will decrease. Despite sweeping socioeconomic transformation over several decades, however, tribalism remains active in Qatar and other parts of the Gulf. The “values and the customs associated with tribalism remain widespread, and are perhaps even increasing in importance in some parts of the Arabian Peninsula.”78 Set against the wealth

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and complex hierarchies of the contemporary Gulf, tribes provide a resource for young Arabs, signifying “racial privilege, social status, and exclusive entitlement to a share of national profits.”79 In Qatar, tribes have access to desirable government jobs, stateallocated resources, tribal land endowments, elected and appointed positions, and more. There is a positive, statistically significant correlation between income, education, and tribal solidarity. It is the wealthiest and best-educated Qataris (the most “modern,” in other words) who show the strongest attachment to tribes and tribal identity.80 Looking to home in on this valuable resource, groups that have not traditionally been defined as tribal in Qatar are redefining themselves as tribes and clans.81 In Khalifa Al Thani’s 1972 speech announcing his ascension to power, Qatar’s new emir promised to build “an illuminating bridge that links the glorious present with the ancient past.”82 This early example of the modern traditionalism narrative was problematic, however, because few traces of Qatar’s past existed in 1972. Qatar’s history is one of migratory tribes and seafaring merchants who left few enduring structures, historical records, or artifacts.83 “Not until the late nineteenth century did Qatar have permanent settlements of some importance, even a degree of central authority, and a history of its own.”84 Newly independent from Britain and flush with oil revenues, Emir Khalifa began to create Qatar’s founding myth, intertwining the nation’s history with selected members of the Al Thani dynasty. Qatar’s founding myth connected its nomadic desert past and maritime activities to its growing stature as a petrol colossus. For those who endured the poverty of preoil Qatar, there was little to venerate. Thus, the founding myth was marketed to Qatar’s youth, members of petrofamilies tasked with forging Qatar’s national identity. “The poverty and deprivation of the desert could only be romantic to the new generation which had never experienced it.”85 Khalifa commissioned a wide-ranging series of archeological studies and excavations, whose bounty served as foundation for a new museum. Opened in 1975, the Qatar National Museum’s centerpiece was a restored early twentieth-century palace that was once home to Emir Abdullah Al Thani. This strategic curation “linked the ruling family to all the other pasts displayed within: the stone age, the monadic days, the Islamic era,

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the pearling days, the oil boom, the state projects.”86 In doing so, it cemented the country’s history with that of the Al Thani family. In 2019, the monumental National Museum of Qatar opened, replacing Khalifa’s beloved original with an architectural marvel that continues the Al Thani mythmaking project on a grand scale. The 430,000-square-foot giant presents Qatar’s history from the Stone Age to today, using the latest digital technologies to sentimentalize the nation’s harsh desert climate and impoverished past. The museum’s centerpiece, however, remains Abdullah Al Thani’s royal palace, which, according to the National Museum’s website, “represents the heart of Qatari national identity.”87 The sociologist Peggy Levitt writes in her analysis of Doha, “An aspiring global player needs a museum commensurate with its new position, especially in time to host the World Cup. More than any other institution, the National Museum must do the difficult work of speaking to multiple audiences at the same time, reflecting Qatar’s traditions, introducing foreigners to the nation, and bringing both into the future.”88 Beginning in the mid-1990s, another oil boom brought tens of billions of dollars into the region. The Gulf nations, led by Qatar and the UAE, began a series of large-scale urbanization projects that would transform the small desert states into spectacular exemplars of modernity. Streets, highways, and state-of-the-art electrical grids were constructed. Breathtaking new airports were built; dazzling skyscrapers shot up. Museums were erected; sports stadiums opened. Behind the scenes, a banking and financial infrastructure was created, reducing the Gulf ’s reliance on external institutions and keeping its money in the region.89 Systems of education were reimagined from the ground up, with Western curriculums replacing rote memorization. Undoubtedly, some of this development was meant to dazzle, but there was a practical side as well—economic diversification. The collapse of the saltwater pearl trade was a painful reminder of the fragility of a narrow economy. Seeking to lure tourists to the newly erected attractions, the Gulf sultanates drew on the region’s legacy as a transnational maritime hub, claiming to be Arab nexuses that connected Africa, Asia, and the West.90 A challenge, however, was how the sultanates could distinguish themselves from one another. Nation branding was paramount—the country with the most desirable image was thought to have an indomitable advantage in the international arena. “A strong national brand can contrive

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significant global competitive advantages, attract skills and investments, together with endorsement of economic value and increasing revenues from selling products associated with the country.”91 The battle for differentiation between the Gulf ’s two wealthiest nations, Qatar and the UAE, has been the fiercest, with Qatar using its deep pockets to try to keep up with the Middle East’s most famous brand, Dubai. Qatar’s and the UAE’s quest for distinction has devolved into a high-stakes game of one-upmanship between two dynastic families, the Al Thanis and the Al Maktoums, to see which can import the most elite university, build the tallest skyscraper, erect the most grandiose mosque, cultivate the busiest airline, boast the largest shopping mall, or host the most prestigious sporting event. This competition both reflects and strengthens existing political divisions between these two nations. Dubai’s development is partly owed to its early start, a solid decade ahead of its Gulf neighbors. Dubai has a relatively modest oil supply, which compelled economic diversification early on. In the 1980s, Dubai founded a Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing and, in the three decades that ensued, established itself as a global brand to a degree that no other neighboring nation has matched. The Gulf is one of the fastest-growing tourist destinations in the world, with Dubai leading the charge. According to its Department of Tourism, Dubai was visited by 11.58 million international travelers in the year ending September 2018. Its top-five sources of tourism are India, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, China, and Oman.92 A good portion of these travelers pass through Dubai International Airport by way of Emirates, the largest and best-known airline in the Middle East.93 With Dubai’s international name recognition, it has a reputation for anything-goes partying, a freewheeling city of booms and busts with a sense of spectacle à la Las Vegas.94 Like Vegas, Dubai’s tourism industry is built around megahotels that double as attractions. Today, there are more than 350 luxury hotels in Dubai with a total of forty thousand rooms.95 In Dubai, alcohol and pork are readily available, as is prostitution, which is illegal but tolerated.96 Dubai’s prostitution scene is large and famous enough to attract short-term sex tourists and longer-term skilled expatriate workers, as well as business conventions, sporting

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events, and concerts. This system requires widespread human trafficking, and there are virtually no legal protections for sex workers. In 2001, Dubai began constructing a $12 billion artificial island, Palm Jumeirah, that resembles a date palm when viewed from airplanes. The island is home to more than fifteen hundred beachfront mansions, thousands of luxury apartments, and an array of high-end dining, shopping, and hotel options. Sports City is the name of a sprawling complex that houses a twenty-five-thousand-seat cricket stadium, a five-thousandseat rugby arena, golf facilities, and five sports-themed academies centered around specific sports. Media City is a government-led effort to attract print, television, and online media firms. Dubai has received worldwide attention for audacious architectural projects, including the world’s tallest building (the 2,722-foot, sailshaped Burj Khalifa, which featured heavily in Tom Cruise’s 2011 film Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol) and a shopping mall with its own indoor ski resort (Ski Dubai at The Mall of the Emirates). Dubai has also generated headlines for earning silly Guinness Book World Records, such as having the world’s largest chocolate sculpture, longest gold chain, and fastest game of Operation. By contrast, the UAE’s capital city, Abu Dhabi, has branded itself as a calmer, sophisticated alternative to go-go Dubai, hosting cultural events and festivals and opening local outlets of globally known elite brands such as the Louvre, Formula One, the Sorbonne, and New York University.97 Looking to capture a portion of the regional market, in 2000 the Qatari government founded the Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA), a state entity tasked with boosting tourism. At the time, there were eighteen hotels in the entire country. Four years later, the QTA crafted a $15 billion plan and set a goal that by 2010 Qatar would attract a million tourists per year. By building a new convention center and hosting business conferences, film festivals, art exhibits, sporting events, and other attractions, the QTA hit the target in half that time. By 2016, Qatar featured 115 hotels.98 In 2019, the QTA was renamed the National Tourism Council. To attract visitors, Qatar has borrowed liberally from the UAE, building an artificial island, launching its own airline, partnering with Western universities, wooing celebrity restaurateurs, and bringing luxury brands on board. Internationally visible ventures such as these are part

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of “an aggressive global branding campaign aimed at portraying the country as dynamic, progressive, stable and investment friendly.”99 But Qatar also faces the challenge of creating a niche that sets it apart from Dubai’s brand of glamorous partying and Abu Dhabi’s brand of sophisticated leisure. Qatar hit a home run with the 1996 launch of Al Jazeera, the Gulf ’s first credible broadcast news agency.100 The Doha Debates was a townhall deliberation, broadcast by the BBC, that featured frank discussion on controversial topics. The New York Times opined that the show “has made tremendous contributions in promoting openness, transparency and freedom of speech in the region.”101 Situated alongside Education City and the Qatar Foundation, these endeavors enable Qatar to credibly position itself as a regional thought leader, an incubator for the free flow of ideas and intellectual independence.102 The nation has also attempted to brand itself a sports capital with a good deal of success, most notably securing the hosting rights to the 2022 FIFA World Cup (see chapter 3). Qatar has been less effective as a cinema hub. In 2010, it launched the Doha Film Institute (DFI), which was tasked with developing a sustainable film industry à la Hollywood or Bollywood. DFI got off to a starstudded start, importing and glocalizaing Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival as the splashy Doha Tribeca Film Festival from 2010 to 2012. But the endeavor fell apart over insider bickering and accusations that too few Qatari films were being screened. This was followed by a series of leadership changes, layoffs, and event cancellations that hobbled DFI.103 Qatar has also branded itself as a conservative, religious alternative to profane Dubai, a country where even puritanical Muslims feel safe and comfortable. The fifteen million people who enter Saudi Arabia to visit Mecca each year serve as compelling evidence of religious tourism’s economic viability. Qatar’s national brand falls somewhere between contemporary Dubai and conventional Saudi Arabia, an amalgam I refer to as modern traditionalism.

Modern Traditionalism No house of worship in Qatar is more prominent or grand than the Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Mosque, named after the founder of Wahhabism. Like many government-financed endeavors in Qatar, its

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national mosque incorporates elements of the past and the present. According to Qatari Museums chairperson Sheikha Mayassa, “The complex task of bringing tradition and modernity together in a significant work of architecture is nowhere more present” than in the mosque’s design.104 The national mosque was inspired by a historic Qatari site, the Abu Al Qabib Mosque, which was erected circa 1878 at the behest of Emir Jassim Al Thani.105 At more than half a million square feet, the behemoth setting features ninety-three domes and can accommodate thirty thousand worshipers at once. Its size and splendor have made it a tourist destination since opening in 2011. The national mosque has also generated controversy for hosting Saad bin Ateeq Al Ateeq, a hard-line Saudi cleric whose Doha sermons have called for the death of Christians, Jews, Shiites, and other religious groups. Naming the state mosque after al-Wahhab and hosting Al Ateeq’s anti-Semitic speeches enables the Qatari leadership to appease conservatives at home and demonstrate a commitment to Wahabbi Islam. Yet when asked for comment, a spokesperson from the Qatari embassy in Washington, DC, denounced Al Ateeq’s talks, insisting that Qatar “faces the challenge of balancing the needs of a free society and freedom of speech with the need to take the strongest possible stance against terrorism and hate speech.”106 Aimed at Western audiences, this statement upheld Qatar as a defender of freedom, democracy, and tolerance. The government spokesperson reframed Al Ateeq’s calls for violence as a matter of free speech, despite Qatar’s legal limitations on numerous forms of expression.107 Furthermore, in addressing a controversial sermon held by a religious leader at a mosque, Qatar’s spokesperson never mentioned Islam. The response to the Al Ateeq incident illustrates the government’s use of modern traditionalism. Modern traditionalism is a flexible narrative framework in which customary and contemporary are strategically merged. Table 2.2 lists some common elements of Qatar’s modern traditionalism narrative. To produce the narrative of modern traditionalism, the Al Thanis, backed by the myriad branches of the Qatari government, strategically configure the modern and traditional elements to appeal to different audiences in assorted contexts. The elements are not conceived as Ori-

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Table 2.2. Common Elements of Qatar’s Modern Traditionalism Narrative Modern

Traditional

Nation

Tribe

Citizen

Tribal member

Democratic

Autocratic

Secular

Religious

Science

Faith

Freedom

Protection

Individualistic

Collectivist

Rationality

Community

Capitalist

Money gifted by ruler

Competition

Preservation

Business

Family

Critical thinking

Morality

Human rights

Hospitality

Civil rights

Courtesy

Justice

Respect

Feminine

Masculine

Empowered women

Protected women

New

Old

Technology

Authenticity

Innovation

Cultural heritage

Global

Local

Western

Non-Western

Cosmopolitan

Pastoral

Environmentally friendly

Artisan craftsmanship

entalist (forward-thinking modernity versus antiquated tradition) or colonialist (rich tradition overrun by ravenous modernity). Instead, the desirability of each trait creates a mechanism by which traditional and modern coexist in harmony. The categorization of the elements as either modern or traditional reflects their social construction. For example, there is nothing inherently modern about secularism or traditional about religion; they are defined in Qatar’s narrative that way. Because the characteristics sometimes coexist (e.g., Qatar is simultaneously religious and secular), there is overlap

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between and within these categories. Some traits (e.g., new and old) are commonly perceived to be opposites, but others (e.g., technology and authenticity) are not. Qatar’s narrative of modern traditionalism combines these and other elements, seamlessly integrating concepts that might appear contradictory.108 The aim is to concoct a national identity that preserves socalled conventional attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and simultaneously embraces those associated with the present day. The sociologist Ann Swidler proposes a “tool kit” model, in which individuals strategically choose and reject various facets of culture (symbols, stories, rituals, and worldviews) to suit a situation. As with a tool kit, one chooses from an array of options depending on the task at hand, “selecting certain cultural elements (both such tacit culture as attitudes and styles and, sometimes, such explicit cultural materials as rituals and beliefs) and investing them with particular meanings in concrete life circumstances.”109 Similarly, the Qatari government selects and rejects the various elements of modern traditionalism on the basis of context. Doing so provides what Swidler calls cohesive “strategies of action.”110 In this manner, modern traditionalism provides a roadmap that enables the Qatari leadership to appease different stakeholders in a variety of circumstances. Qatar’s narrative of modern traditionalism allows the nation to exist in a state of perpetual duality, as Western and non-Western, as innovative and technology driven, yet simultaneously defined by a rich cultural heritage steeped in old-world authenticity. Under the narrative, Qatar is both democratic and benignly autocratic, led by a genial father figure who provides for his citizens and guests. Collectivism is essential, yet a high value is placed on individuality. The family is the center of social life, but women are encouraged to leave the home and pursue careers. Critical thinking and scientific rationality, derived via rigorous education, are fundamental, as are religious faith, values, and morals. Capitalism drives the economy, yet health care and education are freely available. Qatar is among the world’s top producers of hydrocarbons and also committed to eco-sustainability. Its outlook is cosmopolitan and global, yet there is an emphasis on indigenous culture, artisan craftsmanship, and national pride. Finally, Qatar supports personal freedom and human and civil rights, and there is a prevailing sense of justice in all forms—social, economic, racial, and gender based.

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Some of these efforts are no different from the boosterism in which most countries engage. The Al Thanis, however, have long maintained power because the family excels at placating conflicting stakeholders. From the mid-nineteenth century, when Jassim Al Thani unified Qatar, until today, the dynasty’s success is partly due to its facility at balancing multiple, intertwined, and oppositional tendencies, both internally and beyond. In doing so, the Al Thanis have retained power over a country whose history is one of tribal conflict and external control. The Qatari leadership strategically curates modern traditionalism for external audiences, emphasizing and downplaying different elements than it does at home. For example, Qatar’s 2030 national development plan includes the collective goal of balancing “modernization and preservation of traditions.” In its deliberate word choices, Qatar’s development plan aligns modernity with freedom, rights, equality, choice, achievement, growth, economic prosperity, competition, hard work, social progress, innovation, creativity, global partnerships, and the new. The 2030 plan associates traditional with family, national identity, culture, heritage, morality, values, belonging, trust, local, personal ties, and the old. The Qatari leadership frames modernity as fraught with “challenge,” “clash,” “stress,” and “intense strains.” Qatar’s goal, the plan states, is to embrace modernity while preserving tradition. “It is possible to combine modern life with values and culture. Other societies have successfully molded modernization around local culture and traditions. Qatar’s National Vision responds to this challenge and seeks to connect and balance the old and the new.”111 The Qatari leadership deemphasizes religion when addressing external Western audiences and non-Muslims in Doha. Aspects of Islam that may be unattractive to certain parties are reframed to make them more appealing. Under some circumstances, religion is muted altogether. For example, the word Islam is used just three times in the 2030 development plan, and Muslim does not appear at all.112 This does not mean, of course, that Islam has no significance in Qatar, only that religion has distinct use value for different audiences. Placing heavy emphasis on Islam, particularly in the post-9/11 era, runs counter to the leadership’s strategy of aligning itself with the secular, free-market nation-states that sit atop the global power structure. By minimizing, but not abandoning, Islam, Qatar is able to appease local conservatives while striving for international stature.

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Although tribes remain an essential aspect of Qatari society, references to its tribe-based political and social structure rarely appear in the narrative of modern traditionalism.113 For example, the words tribe, tribal, or tribalism do not appear anywhere in Qatar’s national development strategy. Conversely, tradition(s) or traditional are used forty-six times. Somewhat generic adjectives such as heritage, values, and culture are also present.114 By emphasizing the traditional, rather than the tribal, Qatar brands itself in broad strokes, making claims to authenticity, history, family values, and generational continuity that are as esteemed in Denver as they are in Doha. By doing so, Qatar aligns with global superpowers such as the United States, England, and China, where tribalism is absent from the social and political structures. Furthermore, the shift from tribe to tradition enables the Al Thani dynasty to amass authority from the existent tribal families that have long wielded power in Qatar. Stressing the importance of a collective national identity, treating Qatari citizens as aristocrats, and using language that prizes tradition over tribes are mechanisms that remove longstanding tribal distinctions and to increase governmental control. The Al Thani family has replaced the “segmentary system of power by lineage with a centralized, unitary state.” It has “bureaucratized traditional tribal leadership roles, putting local leaders and representatives on the government payroll.”115 This appeases tribal leaders financially, while stripping them of authority. It does so by consigning tribal members to a location within a bureaucratic hierarchy where the position, rather than an individual, holds command. All of this dismantles tribal rule and replaces it with a bureaucratic government, one that is structured to grant supremacy to the Al Thani dynasty. Modern traditionalism is more than a rhetorical device. It is omnipresent throughout Qatar, implanted into innumerable cultural texts by myriad groups and organizations. The Qatari leadership notes that its “emphasis on preserving Qatari culture also extends to the realm of preserving aspects of Qatari architecture and the traditional Qatari way of life.”116 Doha’s public artworks include “heritage” ephemera, such as teapots, pearls, and oryx, alongside Damien Hirst’s The Miraculous Journey, fourteen huge bronze statues that graphically depict human procreation, from conception to birth. In local advertising, the harsh desert life of the past is romanticized through photos of Bedouin tents, camels, falcons,

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Doha’s public artworks include “heritage” ephemera, such as teapots, pearls, tents, and camels. (Photo by Geoff Harkness)

and dhow boats, while contemporary Doha is glorified via images of awe-inspiring skyscrapers and luxurious artificial islands.117 Caricatures of contemporary Qataris are found throughout promotional materials from the National Tourism Council, which uses modern traditionalism to depict nationals in Orientalist terms: “Qataris celebrate their heritage in many areas of modern life: everyone wears traditional clothing and many are enthusiastic followers of ancient pastimes such as camel racing and falconry, as well as traditional poetry, music, dance, art,

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and handicrafts.”118 Such descriptions are written for Western audiences and portray Qatar as an exotic locale filled with friendly, hospitable natives, authentic folk art, and culture aplenty. At the same time, verbal and visual depictions of infrastructure, urbanity, luxury hotels, stateof-the art technology, and commitment to environmental sustainability paint a picture of a cutting-edge metropolis. The Corniche is a five-mile landscaped waterfront curved in the shape of a Muslim crescent moon. The walking path offers panoramic views of Doha’s skyline as it wraps around some of Doha’s most iconic architecture. This includes the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), a grand structure designed by late architect I. M. Pei. Modern traditionalism is embedded into the façade of the museum, which the MIA website describes as “traditional Islamic architecture meets the 21st century.”119 While the building’s exterior is ultramodern, a jumble of international styles and cutting-edge forms, its upper section is designed to resemble a covered woman, eyes peering from behind her niqab to the city below. Inside the MIA, there are gender-segregated prayer rooms, high-end cafes with wireless internet, and exhibitions such as Qajar Women: Images of Women in 19th Century Iran, which explore how “historic innovations continue to inspire contemporary artists.”120 Levitt asserts such endeavors are intended to situate Qatar as a world-caliber cultural center, one whose museums are on par with the Guggenheim and Louvre satellites in Abu Dhabi.121 Like so many of Qatar’s political, economic, and cultural institutions, its museums strategically deploy a narrative of modern traditionalism that fuses heritage, culture, and cutting-edge into an enticing package engineered for maximum appeal. Qatar Museums claims that the nation is pursuing a “policy aimed at preserving and enriching its cultural heritage in such a way as to make it adaptable to the spirit and urges of modernism.”122 Because of the multiple iterations of Qatar’s narrative of modern traditionalism before various audiences across manifold platforms, it goes beyond mere branding, in which organizations or entities such as governments apply corporate marketing techniques to places, cities, or countries in order to enhance their appeal or standing.123 Qatar’s use of modern traditionalism encompasses nation branding, but it also includes elements of social engineering, the production of culture, policy making, diplomacy, and revisionist history. These tools are designed to

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Designed by I. M. Pei, the Museum of Islamic Art’s façade resembles a covered woman. (Photo by Geoff Harkness)

do more than burnish the country’s public image. They are intended to remake Qatar.

The Empowered Woman Motif Revising history and inventing traditions are key strategies in the design and dissemination of the modern traditionalism narrative, but equally important is reconstructing the present. Included in Qatar’s strategically cultivated narrative is an “empowered woman” motif that situates women’s progress as central to the state’s agenda.124 Qatar’s 2030 development plan includes a commitment to “enhance women’s capacities and empower them to participate fully in the political and economic spheres, especially in decision-making roles.”125 The empowered woman motif appears frequently in three areas central to the nation’s economic agenda. Qatar regularly touts the number of females enrolled in higher education relative to males as evidence of women’s progress. In 1972, there was not a single female student in any college or university in Qatar.126 For the 2015–16 academic year,

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there were 12,978 Qatari female college students but only 3,356 Qatari male college students.127 The government also promotes the growing number of females in the workforce as evidence of a progressive gender milieu. In 2001, 27.4 percent of Qatari women over the age of fifteen were employed or seeking work. By 2017, this number had risen to 36.8 percent, an increase of 34 percent in a single generation.128 In addition to education and work, Qatar also uses sports to propagate its empowered woman motif. The empowerment motif is promoted heavily to external audiences. For example, a 2017 press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was titled “Qatar Stresses Commitment to Women’s Empowerment.”129 In order to appeal to global development organizations such as UNESCO and the World Bank, “the discourse surrounding women’s empowerment has increased in state documents.”130 The motif is repeated by scholars, journalists, and business entities with interests in the region.131 Internally, the promotion of female empowerment is sometimes tempered or adjusted to pacify Qatar’s conservative factions. Two prominent members of the royal family embody Qatar’s empowered woman motif: Sheikha Moza and her daughter, Sheikha Mayassa. Once dubbed the “undisputed queen of the art world” by Forbes magazine, Mayassa serves as chairperson for Qatar Museums, the government entity that oversees the country’s galleries, museums, and other public art projects. Famed for her multimillion-dollar purchases of legendary paintings, Mayassa topped Art Review’s annual “Power 100” list in 2013. Known for leading the Qatar Foundation, Sheikha Moza is widely credited as the driver of Qatar’s educational reforms. She is also recognized for her charity work, both domestically and abroad. Moza’s celebrity goes beyond Qatar. She appears frequently in the global media, where she is singled out for her clothing. Moza’s high-fashion outfits are nearly always linked to achievement. For example, the writer Emma Day describes Moza as “perennially elegant and put-together, a fact that’s made all the more impressive when you remember she’s a hardworking global ambassador for children’s education, as well as a mum of seven.”132 Modeled by two of Qatar’s most famous females, the empowered woman motif enables Qatar to proclaim itself to be progressive in an area that generates criticism.

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Why Modern Traditionalism? There are three key explanations for the prevalence—and success—of modern traditionalism in Qatar. First, Qatar is eager to join the global economy, and doing so requires modernizing. The nation’s inexorable loss of petroleum has sparked a desire to develop a knowledge-based economy that will sustain it in the post-hydrocarbon era. For Qatar to outlive its natural-gas supply, it will have to become a different nation, at least in the eyes of the world. Countries that aspire to join the global elite are “recruiting foreign technology companies, bolstering their highereducation systems, investing aggressively in research and development, and expanding their cultural and lifestyle amenities.”133 Doing so requires not just revamping infrastructure and institutions but making ideological changes as well. “Even some of the most repressive of political and cultural climates are giving way under the pressure of international flows of talent. Cities can no longer compete for that talent just by providing economic opportunity and high-paying jobs; people have come to expect a certain working environment and lifestyle, too. As a result, many of these places are for the first time becoming more open, not just to immigrants and techies, but to women, gays, artists, and other traditionally marginalized groups.”134 As a Qatari woman named Nahir says, “Qatar is trying to get to the top. If you want to get to the top, you have to be more modern, be more accepting of other cultures, everything.” Becoming a legitimate power on the world stage means at least appearing to abide by a set of principles that have historically been wanting in Qatar. These include democracy, human rights, personal freedom, women’s advancement, and environmental stewardship. Qatar’s aspirations to become a global superpower require a public-image overhaul. The modern traditionalism narrative provides a roadmap for that renovation. By adopting—at least on the surface—its principles, Qatar will have an easier time billing itself as a contemporary, global nation. Hence the 2030 development plan, which promises, “Qatari society is based on the values of justice, benevolence, freedom, equality, and high morals. . . . The country will promote tolerance, benevolence, constructive dialogue and openness toward other cultures. . . . Women will assume a significant role in all spheres of life, especially through partici-

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pating in economic and political decision-making.”135 Such sentiments are calculated to align Qatar with the attitudes, values, and beliefs expected of twenty-first-century superpowers. The second explanation for modern traditionalism’s prevalence in Qatar is that it enables the government to assuage local concerns about modernization. Many members of the Qatari leadership are educated, worldly, and determined to change Qatar’s culture.136 At the same time, this is a small nation still under the sway of conservative factions that are resistant to globalization, particularly when it resembles Americanization. “You just feel everything is fading away, everything is changing,” says a fifty-two-year-old Qatari woman. “It’s all about technology, very Western.” It is not just an older generation of staunch traditionalists that stands in the way of sweeping change in Qatar. Many young people in Qatar are wary of too much modernization, and a rising cohort of educated, worldly Qatari conservatives suggests that these voices are more heterogeneous—and complicated—than some people believe. “I see other countries, for example Dubai—it’s becoming really developed, especially with tourism,” Akeelah, who is Qatari, says. “But they’re not holding onto traditions. Things really changed there. You can see it in the culture. It’s not like Qatar. With Qatar, you can see that we’re still holding onto traditions. We’re making this new mall, and it’s going to be very traditional—the architecture, the way it’s made, the way it looks. But at the same time, it’s going to be huge and modern. So we’re holding onto traditions really well, and I like that.” There is a history of conservative backlash in the Middle East from fundamentalist groups that are opposed to perceived modernization, globalization, and/or Westernization. At times, this resistance has been widespread, such as the 1979 revolution in Iran or the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring.137 Failure to take seriously and address Qatar’s conservative elements could have ruinous long-term consequences. “There must be a middle; there must be a balance,” a Qatari woman named Heba insists, emphasizing the importance of harmonizing conservative and liberal forces in the face of increasing globalization. Modern traditionalism provides equilibrium, a middle path that stabilizes these oppositional forces. “I want it to be a country that has a lot of

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Qatar’s contemporary architecture sometimes emphasizes traditional culture, such as the Islamic crescent moon embedded into the Doha Bank Building. (Photo by Geoff Harkness)

Western development,” says Nawal, a Qatari woman. “I want it to be a developed country, a functioning country. I want it to have a structural transportation, business, economy. I want all that to be competitive and strong on the world stage. But I still want us to have and treasure that tradition and culture of ours and kind of represent that throughout the country and teach it to our expats.”

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A final explanation for the ubiquity of modern traditionalism in Qatar is its size. Qatar’s small footprint and population, combined with its lack of a military and reliance on a single natural resource, create vulnerabilities. Despite these liabilities, the Al Thanis have maintained power since 1850, through innumerable conflicts and coup attempts. One way Qatar has fended off would-be foes is by playing the middle ground. Qatar hosts a US military base and also a Taliban embassy. It is home to liberal American college professors and hard-line Saudi clerics. Qatar’s previous emir once affirmed to a reporter from 60 Minutes that the nation’s foreign policy was to “be friends with everyone.”138 This savviness, the emir said, was how a small nation with large, powerful neighbors retained its sovereignty. Qatar’s domestic policy is largely the same—play both sides of an issue and demonstrate loyalty to key stakeholders. In November 2011, Qatar’s lone liquor store, the QDC, suddenly began selling pork products, considered haram, or sinful, under Islamic codes. Bacon-loving expatriates were delighted, but the move incensed some locals who saw it as a sign of encroaching secular Westernization.139 Less than a month later, without explanation, alcohol was banned at the Pearl, Qatar’s man-made island. At the time, Pearl eateries were popular with the expat professional class because they were the only restaurants in Doha, outside of hotel bars, that served liquor. This irked conservative Muslims, who were appalled at the prospect of dining in the presence of drinkers. The Pearl prohibition caused several restaurants to go out of business, including Maze Doha, owned by the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. Ruth’s Chris Steak House scrapped plans for a Pearl location. “Not everyone will like to have a $100 steak with a glass of grapefruit juice,” a spokesperson noted dryly.140 The loosening of restrictions on pork sales at the QDC and the alcohol embargo at the Pearl may appear contradictory and random to some people. In fact, such maneuvers are strategic and are generated by a government whose domestic policies are rooted in modern traditionalism. Former Qatar Museums director Roger Mandle credits the Qatari leadership with finding a perfect “political balance. Every once in a while, there will be an article in the newspaper about Western women

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wearing jeans that are too tight. I think that is intentional. The country is inching forward in a way that keeps the abaya and the thobe but also allows for Western practicality to prevail.”141 These processes, however, are not simply top-down but also bottom-up. Governments and powerful elites shape public perception in Qatar and beyond, but for narratives to succeed, they require buy-in. Among Qatari citizens and expatriates, there is ambivalence about both modernization and governmental attempts to soften its blow. In the chapters that follow, I explore how the inhabitants of Qatar reproduce, reconfigure, and sometimes resist the leadership’s narrative of modern traditionalism.

3

Inventing Traditions The Construction of Sports Culture

Thursday, December 2, 2010, begins like any other day, except for the rumors. Throughout the morning, speculation about the impending decision over Qatar’s bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup circulates. Seemingly, everyone in Doha is talking about it. Soccer was introduced to the Gulf in the 1940s by early waves of oil workers; Qatar’s first team was founded in 1948.1 Today, soccer is the most-watched sport in the country, and there is excitement that diminutive Qatar made the short list alongside giants, the United States, Japan, and Australia.2 Few people in Doha believe Qatar stands a chance. The World Cup is the world’s preeminent soccer event, held in the height of summer, and infamous for rowdy fans, bikini-clad women, and alcohol-soaked hooliganism.3 The thought of picking a scorching-hot, conservative Muslim nation as host seems preposterous. That night, the announcement, held live in Zurich, Switzerland, streams to thousands of screens around Doha. To almost everyone’s surprise, Qatar wins. The 2022 World Cup will take place right here, in conjunction with an expected one and a half million international visitors.4 For certain holidays and other commemorative occasions, young Qatari males take the wheel to collectively celebrate in auto parades throughout Doha. At other times, these rituals appear to occur spontaneously. Within moments of the World Cup announcement, a beehive of vehicles swarms the roadways, filling the balmy December evening with car-horn cacophony. Doha’s main roads gridlock into a slow-crawling parking lot of elaborately decorated Toyota Land Cruisers, each of them “wrapped” in professionally printed images of soccer balls, World Cup trophies, the national flag, and the emir’s visage, all done up in Qatar’s signature maroon and white.5 The SUVs inch along, horns pumping, 93

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headlights and hazards flashing rhythmically. Onlookers line the edges of Doha’s roadways to take in the spectacle. They are not disappointed. The Qatari men perform tricks with their vehicles, popping wheelies and driving sideways on two tires. Others simultaneously floor the gas and brake pedals of their SUVs, causing the wheels to spin furiously without actually moving anywhere. This is accompanied by a screeching mechanical whine, clouds of black smoke, and the signature stench of burning tread. Passengers sit atop the Land Cruisers’ hoods and roofs or cheer from the windows, waving enormous Qatari flags, lighting firecrackers, and snapping selfies. Some get out and dance in the streets, music thumping from one high-tech sound system to the next. Others dress in masks to “shock pedestrians and passersby.”6 “I’m really proud of what my country accomplished,” says a Qatari man named Farid. “I always love to see my country succeed in its events. It’s showing itself to the world, that it’s capable of hosting such huge events in a small country.” In contrast to the jubilation in Doha, Qatar’s selection as World Cup host yields condemnation elsewhere. Within hours of the announcement, politicians and the global media blast Qatar for everything from its foreign policy to its treatment of migrant workers.7 US president Barack Obama declares that FIFA made the “wrong decision.” The UK newspaper the Telegraph opines, “In selecting Qatar, FIFA have made arguably the most controversial—and risky—decision ever in their history.” CNN asks, “What of the poor conditions faced by foreign laborers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh who will build Qatar’s grand World Cup vision?”8 There is widespread speculation that Qatar bribed FIFA officials to gain the hosting rights.9

Sports and Qatar’s Economic Agenda Economic development, status, and nation building drive Qatar’s sportsrelated endeavors, part of the government’s larger political and economic program. At the local level, Qatar hopes to attract wealthy athletes and tourists who are drawn to elite pastimes such as golf, tennis, and sailing.10 Hosting mega sporting events is one way Qatar has attempted to distinguish itself from other Gulf nations, diversify revenue streams, and

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claim a seat at the international table.11 South Korea, Brazil, and China have used high-profile athletic tournaments to launch comprehensive development projects, brand themselves, and integrate into the world economy. Qatar aims to follow suit. In 1979, state leaders formed the Qatar Olympics Committee (QOC) to pursue the country’s international sports agenda.12 The QOC views high-profile sports competitions as tools to “increase tourism, business and employment opportunities, and forge global friendships.”13 In recent years, Qatar has spent more than $2.8 billion on sports-related infrastructure and activities.14 To compete with the Al Maktoums’ Sports City in Dubai, the Al Thanis built Aspire, a state-of-the-art complex featuring a sports-themed high school for boys, a hospital that specializes in athletic injuries, an antidoping lab, the forty-thousand-seat Khalifa International Stadium, eight soccer pitches, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a two-hundred-meter running track, squash courts, and the world’s largest indoor multipurpose sports dome. 3-2-1 Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum is slated to open in time for the World Cup. Qatar hosted the 2006 Asian Games and the 2011 Asian Cup, both of which required vast investments to purchase equipment, hire personnel, and build stadiums, training facilities, housing, and meeting spaces. “The Asian Games were the turning point for sports in Qatar,” says Dawud, a Pakistani male. “That’s when widespread investment took place. They have meeting facilities now and all the [Aspire] facilities around Khalifa Stadium. All of that happened then.” On Qatar’s path to the World Cup, the country has hosted hundreds of athletic contests, often attaching its name to the event: the Qatar Open Golf Masters, the Qatar International Athletics Championship, the International Grand Prix of Doha Qatar Cycling Tour, the Qatar Desert Horse Endurance Marathon. The nation routinely pays top dollar to host exhibition matches between superstar athletes, such as tennis players Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.15 A Qatari man named Nasser believes that these efforts have spawned greater local interest in sports. “In 2006, after the Asian Games, everyone started to think more about sports. They bring all the sports here, so more awareness is spread. Now by hosting the World Cup, everyone is trying hard to represent Qatar in a good way. So everyone, all the orga-

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Doha’s mascot, Orry the Oryx, is a thirty-foot statue originally built for the 2006 Asian Games. The Qatari government has adopted the oryx as its national animal. (Photo by Geoff Harkness)

nizations here in Qatar, are now supporting the sports concept.” These organizations include the government’s innumerable sports-related entities: the Qatar Olympic Committee, the Qatar Swimming Association, the Qatar Shooting and Archery Federation, the Qatar Billiards and Snooker Federation. As further demonstration of the increasing centrality of athletics in the leadership’s nation-building endeavors, the Minis-

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try of Culture and Sports was created in 2016, formed via the merger of the Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage with the Ministry of Youth and Sport. Sports are appealing mechanisms for nation branding because they enable political entities to align themselves with venerated behaviors and ideologies with which athletics are associated: teamwork, fairness, inclusiveness, and effort.16 Mega sports events convey “modernity, proficiency and innovation” as well as “universal ideas of peace and security.”17 Furthermore, in a region fraught with political and social upheavals, Qatar’s hosting of athletic tournaments is a claim to stability and cooperation. “Qatari authorities not only plan to engage with global sport for the sake of health and well-being per se but also understand the foreign policy returns on the creation of ‘positive’ sport policies and ‘world-leading’ institutions that validate the aptitude to successfully mitigate contemporary challenges.”18 The 2018 World Cup was viewed by 3.57 billion people, about half the Earth’s population. Hosting an event of this magnitude is a showcase for Qatar, a planet-wide proclamation that it is the Gulf ’s preeminent destination for international athletic events. For a small country with global aspirations, the world media coverage leading up to and surrounding the 2022 Cup presents the nation-branding opportunity of a lifetime. Rebuilding the country in twelve years to prepare, however, has hastened the pace of growth and required labor power like never before. From 2010 to 2019, Qatar netted an additional one million foreign workers, increasing its population by more than 50 percent and straining an infrastructure already taxed to its limits. Toiling in teams of thousands, the men are erecting stadiums, team facilities, and hotels.19 They are installing an elaborate citywide rapid transit system, Doha Metro.20 They completed an airport that had been under construction for nine years.21 And the workers perpetually rebuild Qatar’s roads and highways, partly to accommodate the continual influx of newcomers. To prepare for the World Cup, Qatar is spending more than $1 billion to construct eight outdoor, air-conditioned stadiums.22 The venues are strikingly modern: environmentally friendly, carbon neutral, powered by solar harvesting, and cooled with technology so cutting-edge that it was not invented when Qatar was awarded hosting rights.23 The new

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stadiums also satisfy the government’s cultural-preservation agenda. They are designed to resemble massive dhow boats, pearls, sea shells, and tents, romanticized images of Qatar’s Bedouin past upheld as historically significant national emblems. The first of Qatar’s new venues to be completed, Al Janoub Stadium in Al Wakrah, was inaugurated in May 2019.24 Created by the BritishIraqi architect Zaha Hadid, who died in 2016, the forty-thousand-seat stadium incorporates conceptual elements of dhow boats and maritime trade. The $576 million venue features a movable roof that Hadid’s firm says is “an abstraction of the hulls of dhows turned upside-down and huddled together to provide shade and shelter.”25 Qatar is never one to catch a break in the international press, and Al Janoub was ridiculed by multiple journalists and social media pundits as resembling female anatomy (sample headline: “The Design for Qatar’s First World Cup Stadium Looks like a Vagina”).26 Other preparations are less visible. For example, around the time of Qatar’s hosting announcement, the government began to rewrite zoning laws that impacted ethnic enclaves near Souq Waqif and the Museum of Islamic Art, long-standing neighborhoods that date to Doha’s early oil days. For example, Law 15 of 2010 prohibited “residence(s) for workers groups within family residential areas.”27 (The Minister of Municipality and Housing Planning defines and designates worker residences and family areas.) This legislation effectively barred low-wage migrants from living in neighborhoods that some had resided in for decades. With the World Cup coming, however, housing thousands of impoverished South Asians near some of Doha’s premier tourist attractions was out of the question. Increasingly, Qatar’s low-wage migrant workers reside in massive camps on the outskirts of town, hidden from the tourist gaze. The largest of these camps is known as Labour City, which opened in 2015. Located about nine miles from downtown Doha, Labour City houses one hundred thousand workers in fifty-five residential buildings.28 Despite Qatar’s efforts to promote its modern traditionalism brand via the World Cup, the event has mostly generated negative publicity outside the country. Op-eds decrying “World Cup slaves” appear frequently in the international media, and human rights organizations such

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as Amnesty International regularly take Qatar to task over alleged World Cup–related labor abuses.29 The criticism coalesces around four broad categories of concern: bribery and corruption, human rights and labor issues, safety for fans and players, and alcohol restrictions. In a 2017 interview with the New York Times, Hassan Al Thawadi, head of Qatar’s World Cup organizing committee, downplayed the criticism. Instead, he aligned the event with freedom, human rights, the global, respect, hospitality, and community.30 Directing his comments to an external audience, Al Thawadi never mentioned Islam or referenced religion. There would be dedicated “fan zones” where liquor would flow without restriction. Queried about homosexuality, Al Thawadi pledged, “Everyone is welcome to Qatar,” adding, “What we ask is that when people come, just to respect—we’re a relatively conservative nation. Public display of affection is something that’s not part of our culture.” Bribery and corruption? Ludicrous, Al Thawadi declared. “It is all hearsay and there is no evidence. We are confident in the integrity of our bid.” What about the low-wage construction workers? “The World Cup is an opportunity to be a catalyst for positive change, and to increase the momentum for initiatives that the government was already committed to. And of course worker welfare is one of them.” Al Thawadi promised a World Cup that would burnish Qatar’s legacy and hinted that it might inspire unity in a region rife with discord. “Sports is elevated from conflict. This is always a platform to bring people together,” he enthused. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and we’ve always focused on it being a regional World Cup. This is a World Cup beyond Qatar. It’s a cultural experience. . . . You look at the Olympics, it has that Olympic Village feel, that global, international, we-area-global-community feel to it. And that’s what this World Cup offers as well.” Among Qataris, however, there is ambivalence. Some say the government is ignoring the will of the people, who want nothing to do with the World Cup. Hosting an event that features alcohol and exposed female flesh runs counter to everything Qataris believe in. A citizen named Nahir says her fellow nationals are afraid. “A lot of people are against the World Cup coming here. They don’t think it’s a good idea. They assume

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alcohol is going to be available, and they don’t want kids to be open to that. It’s not even about religion anymore. It’s just about their personal opinion. They’re against it.” Other Qataris—and most non-Qatari denizens of Doha—are delighted. “I think it is amazing; I was so happy when we got it,” a Qatari named Maryam tells me. “It is going to have so many good impacts for us, especially since we are trying to develop as a sports capital of the Middle East, and especially because it’s good to develop other sectors of the economy. We rely so much on oil and gas. Now education is developing, sports is developing. So I think it’s going to stabilize our economy, not only now but for the future.” A Qatari man named Farid views the World Cup as symbolic of larger social and cultural tensions in Doha. “We hold on tight to our culture and beliefs,” he says. “At the same time, we’re developing really fast. So we’re staying in the middle. We’re just pulling the rope as tight as we need to, by addressing both issues. We host the World Cup, but Qatar won’t be open to an extent where it’s going to be [like] a Western country. Because our culture doesn’t allow us to do certain activities. We’re going to do it based on our culture.”

Inventing Sports Culture Qatar relies heavily on sports to promote its narrative of modern traditionalism. Some of the country’s iconic national emblems are embedded into supposedly authentic “heritage” sports such as falconry, sailing, and camel racing. In reality, these activities look nothing like they did in the Bedouin era. Falconry has evolved from a desert necessity to an ultraelite pastime, with birds that cost upward of $80,000.31 Similarly, in equestrian sports, the price for entry is prohibitively steep. A camel-racing track is located on the outskirts of Doha, but it is hardly a throwback to Qatar’s past. Until a 2004 government ban, the camels were jockeyed by migrant children, favored due to their small size and light weight.32 After wrenching reports of abuse and injury surfaced, the kids were replaced by miniature robots.33 During contemporary races, the robo-jockeys mechanically lash the camels as they race around a miles-long track, shadowed by a cavalcade of SUVs, whose passengers remotely control the bots from within.34

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Camels steered by robot jockeys race at a Doha track. (Photo by Geoff Harkness)

There are about thirty thousand racing camels in Doha, all of which have microchips implanted beneath their skin. This enables the animals to be registered with the Camel Racing Committee, which provides free dietary and veterinary services to owners. “Even vaccination is free of charge, as the government wants Qataris to keep racing camels and encourages people to raise them.” The leadership’s efforts to link Qatari nationals with camels means animals that were once part of the Bedouin economy “are now symbols of social status and Arab identity rather than sources of livelihood.”35 Prized racing camels can fetch a million riyals. The historian Eric Hobsbawm coined the term invented traditions in reference to cultural practices with some implied relationship to the past that are repeated ritualistically in order to instill values or norms. “Traditions which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented,” he writes.36 The political geographer Natalie Koch believes that Qatar’s heritage sports reinforce the boundaries between the elite citizen minority and the nonnational majority. Although camel racing and falconry draw on historical practices from the region, when promoted by the state, they function as fabricated traditions that affirm Qatarization, the sponsorship labor system, immigration laws,

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and other institutions that prioritize Qataris over nonnationals. Qatar’s heritage sports “reinforce contemporary territorial regimes and narrate nationalist—not cosmopolitan—claims to who truly ‘belongs.’ ”37 Olympics - Past and Present was a 2013 exhibition previewing the forthcoming Olympics museum. Described as a showcase for “ancient and modern Olympics,” the exhibit featured images and ephemera of world-famous competitors such as Jesse Owens, Michael Jordan, and Nadia Comaneci alongside relatively unknown Qatari athletes.38 For every superstar, there was a Qatari counterpart, to the point where about half the exhibit consisted of Qatari athletes, events, and memorabilia. The intent was clear. Although Qatar did not compete in the Olympics until 1984, it was rewriting history, casting itself in a starring role alongside the global superpowers it hopes to join. Exhibits such as this advance the notion of a singular national identity with common cultural attributes that date back in time. Popularizing a Qatari identity reduces the political salience of preexisting tribe-based power structures, which have slowly been replaced by a government bureaucracy that grants supremacy to the emir and his heirs. Heritage sports are components of a myth that justifies Al Thani rule as natural by aligning it with the nation’s traditions and history. Despite this mythmaking, some people believe that Qatar’s desire to be the sports capital of the Gulf is hindered by a dearth of sports culture. Other than soccer and cricket matches on TV, sports are not a big part of day-to-day life in Doha.39 FIFA diplomatically wrote in its World Cup bid response that Qatar has “limited potential in terms of the number of [soccer] fans.”40 In 2003, the government gave $10 million apiece to the fourteen soccer teams that compose the Qatar Stars League, to recruit famous world-caliber players from Europe and Latin America. It did not help—one hundred fans would show up to watch games held in a thirteen-thousand-seat stadium.41 In an ethnography of the 2016 Cycling World Championship, held in Doha, Koch notes that the tournament was “most notable for the marked absence of spectators.”42 When Qataris do patronize sporting events, many are subdued. An American expatriate who attended the opening of the 2011 Asian Cup, a match between Qatar and Uzbekistan, was surprised at the lack of crowd response. “Most of the Qataris were not that into the game,” he recalls. “No one was up cheering and stuff.”

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Ahmed, a Qatari soccer player who spent part of his childhood in the West, explains that many nationals regard sports as vulgar. “I guess [sports are] actually not viewed quite as well. They’re not quite as revered. There’s kind of a disenchantment in general. They’ll support a club, but they won’t go to the matches and actively support it. It’s not considered proper to go over the top. You’re not gonna see some Qatari guy sitting in the stadium with their shirt off and their chest painted in the team colors.” Qatar’s desire to generate publicity through sports sometimes results in embarrassing public gaffes. Looking to exploit the increased media interest due to the World Cup, the government began paying low-wage migrant workers twenty to twenty-five riyals, about five or six US dollars, to attend soccer and volleyball games. Organizers bused in workers by the hundreds and outfitted them with team-branded hats, T-shirts, and pennants. This was done to make it appear as if matches were well attended, especially when they were broadcast on television. Similar to accounts of other big-ticket sporting events in Doha, “it was clear that the athlete interviews, camera angles, and stunning photographs were all highly coordinated to hide the lack of spectators and guide the nonattending observer’s gaze to the most positive aspects of the event and various icons of Doha’s ‘modernity.’ ”43 In 2014, the press caught on at a Qatar Open volleyball match, and the country was instantly upbraided with headlines such as the Washington Post’s “Migrant Workers in Qatar Are Being Paid to Be Pretend Sports ‘Fans’ ” and the Guardian’s “Qatar Hires Migrant Workers as ‘Fake Sports Fans’ to Fill Up Empty Arenas.”44 The following year, the media had a field day with the Qatar Mega Marathon, where the country attempted to break a Guinness Book World Record by amassing fifty thousand runners to take part in a marathon. On the blistering hot morning of the event, however, not one soul showed up to race. Undeterred, the event’s organizers quickly rounded up a few thousand low-wage workers and forced them to run twenty-six miles, many of them wearing jeans and flip-flops or even jogging barefoot. Qatar’s toadying state-controlled media dutifully reported on the event in glowing terms, while international outlets such as the Daily Beast ran stories under headlines like “Slaves Forced to Run Marathon Shoeless in Qatar.”45 Qatar also attempts to brand itself a sports capital by sending Qatari athletes to regional and international competitions. A dearth of homegrown athletic talent means that the bulk of Qatar’s national sports teams

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consist of nonnationals. Anahita, an Iraqi expatriate, was a member of Qatar’s female table tennis team. The coaches would select five athletes to compete in international tournaments. “Out of those five girls, three of them were foreigners,” Anahita explains. “They were given Qatari passports when they traveled. So basically they bought them into it. You can be Egyptian while you’re playing here, but when you travel, you can be Qatari. They do that for all sports here.” To populate Qatar’s national teams, the government recruits athletes from countries such as Uruguay, Brazil, Somalia, Syria, and Ghana. It sometimes grants citizenship to the foreigners so they can compete as nationals.46 Sixty-five percent of the thirty-seven athletes Qatar sent to the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil were naturalized citizens.47 In 2005, there were thirty-eight track-and-field-related nationality transfers from Kenya alone. To obfuscate these maneuvers, some athletes are given new Qatari-sounding names. For example, Stephen Chrerono became Saif Saaeed Shaheen. Despite these naturalized athletes’ status as members of the national teams, they are not granted full citizenship, with its attendant benefits. Instead, they are paid $12,000 per year and given living quarters and performance bonuses.48 The minute these short-term Qataris lose a step or get injured, the government revokes their citizenship and sends them home.

Qatarization of Sports Qatar’s long-term goal is to develop sports talent internally, and there is a push to recruit and train citizens. Nasser, a Qatari, plays for the national squash team and has represented the country at dozens of regional and international sporting events. Nasser was introduced to squash when he was ten years old by his father. A year later, he was recruited to play for the national team. Ahmed, another Qatari, spent most of his youth in Western boarding schools. He returned to Doha as a high-school graduate with the specific intent of joining Qatar’s national soccer team. In order to meet with coaches, Ahmed drew on family connections. “My uncle, he knew an administrator for [one of the state teams]. He spoke with them, and then he took me there one day. I practiced with them for a few days or maybe

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it was a few weeks, like a sort of trial. Then after a while, they said, ‘We want you to be part of our team.’ ” Ahmed’s joining of the team was abetted by wasta. In Doha, wasta refers to social capital, the power to get things done through local networks. Qatari sports are heavily influenced by wasta, according to Sayed, a Pakistani player for one of the men’s basketball teams at Education City. “It’s highly politicized,” he says. “Wasta is—I don’t know if you can call it nepotism, but it’s similar to that. If you have connections, you will make the team. The problem is you need wasta to get an opportunity, unless you are so superamazing that it’s pretty obvious. Sometimes even in those cases, you need a very strong connection to get an opportunity to try out for a sports team here in Qatar.” Anahita, the Iraqi expatriate who played for Qatar’s table tennis team, recalls that citizen athletes made up about 25 percent of the team. The nationals received preferential treatment over nonnational players, including better equipment and travel and hotel accommodations. “They favored the Qataris,” Anahita says. “The officials and the coach had to. We were basically the backups. First Qataris, and then the non-Qataris— that’s how it is. For example, if there was some kind of tournament or official game going on, Qataris would play first. And if the Qataris weren’t good enough, they would choose the best players that were non-Qatari. It’s pure racism, inequality.” Evana, who moved to Doha from Syria as a child, spent a decade playing for one of Qatar’s national squash teams. Evana was among the few women athletes active in squash, and the government initially hired a private coach to give her personalized training. After a few sessions, the trainer was reallocated to the men’s team, which featured several Qatari citizens. “Of course, their priority was to them,” Evana says. “I thought that me being one of the only girls was something different, and they should be proud—especially because I am not a Qatari and I was willing to do anything. That didn’t work out. I got depressed for a while, and I eventually left [squash] for a year. It would have been different if I were Qatari.” Hamad, a Qatari who plays for one of the country’s second-division soccer teams, insists that citizens do not have it as good as everyone thinks. He describes a punishing six-day-per-week schedule filled with practices, workouts, and games, with Fridays set aside for prayer. In the off-season, the team members help scout and recruit new players.

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Hamad’s salary is not enough to afford Doha’s high rents. “You can’t live off playing sports here. For me, as a player, a professional football player in Qatar would not receive anything more than eight thousand riyals [approximately $2,000 per month]. Eight thousand riyals is a really low amount compared to any other normal job. You would be better off to go work somewhere else. Ninety percent of the players on my team have a primary job, and they play sports as an activity.” Hamad blames the lack of Qatari athletic talent on the nation’s prosperity. “Most of them are wealthy, and they don’t need money. In other parts of the world, sports is their goal, their future. So they pay their blood for the sport. Here in Qatar, they try hard but not as hard as other players.” Although Hamad says, “You can’t play unless you’re a Qatari,” his team currently features two Brazilian players who are in the country on short-term contracts. One of the players was recruited after winning an award in a local tournament. “Once they signed him, he was getting injured a lot and missed a lot of games. So it was a really bad decision. This year is his first year, and he signed a two-year contract. They can wait until the two years ends, and then they can sell him; but no one is interested in him because he’s not that good.”

The Empowered Sportswoman On the surface, Qatar is committed to increasing rates of sports participation for women and girls. The government funds high-profile programs and initiatives intended to promote and increase amateur and elite athletic involvement and achievement. In 2001, the Qatar Women’s Sports Committee (QWSC) was formed to advance sports at all tiers for the nation’s female citizens. Between 2001 and 2009, Qatar sent female athletes from a variety of sports to athletic competitions in the Gulf, the MENA, and Asia.49 It has hosted the GCC Women’s Games as well as the Qatar Total Open, an annual championship sponsored by the Women’s Tennis Association that regularly draws the top female players in the world. The Ladies Tour of Qatar is an international cycling contest. The country also holds multiple conferences and symposiums related to female athletics, including the Asian Conference on Women and Sport. Athletic spaces designed specifically for women are abundant, including the Ladies Tennis Hall and

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the Al-Wajbah Center for Girls’ Sports.50 According to one report, the number of Qatari female athletes grew by 23 percent from 2002 to 2008, greatly exceeding the 4 percent increase for males.51 Contradicting this rosy picture are studies that show a dearth of female sports and athletic activity at all levels in Qatar. The government concedes that rates of female athletic participation are “exceedingly small”—sportswomen constitute just 7.3 percent of athletes registered to sports federations and clubs.52 The QOC commissioned an extensive study that found that only 15 percent of female Qatari adults frequently take part in sports, and 60 percent of women are sedentary and “do not undertake regular physical activity.”53 Women’s limited involvement is found in the upper climes of sports as well. The government concedes that there is a “low level of participation of female athletes at the elite level.”54 Qatar tried to deploy citizen sportswomen to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, but none of its candidates qualified.55 The four sportswomen whom Qatar sent to the 2012 London Olympics did not meet the minimum requirements either but qualified through “wild card” bids furnished by the International Olympics Committee.56 In 2016, Qatar sent its largest-yet cadre of athletes to the Olympics—all but two of them were men.57 Such phenomena may contribute to obesity rates in Qatar, where nearly 70 percent of women are overweight and more than 40 percent qualify as obese.58 A large body of research demonstrates the prevalence of acute and chronic diseases related to dormancy in Qatar, diseases that represent, collectively, the number-one cause of death in the past ten years.59 Thus, while the empowered sportswomen motif permeates Qatar, it has yielded negligible changes to rates of female physical pursuits and has failed as a mechanism for bettering health.

Tara’s Comets The Eagles form a circle and begin stretching on one end of the court. Led by Jennifer, an American female faculty member who doubles as the team’s athletic director, the players call out twenty counts of deep knee bends. Between sets, the team executes syncopated double claps. Afterward, the players jostle one another and chat, an easy banter among them.

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“Most of my friends are on the basketball team,” smiles Safa, an Iranian player who grew up in Doha. “We all speak Arabic. We all understand each other. The other team members in other universities are really all separated. What makes us special is that most of us are really close friends. We go out all the time. So basketball is just another place for us to be together.” From the other end of the court rings the rhythmic echo of a basketball drumming against a polished wooden floor. A lone player steps slowly toward the bucket, the dribbling ball an appendage barely discerned. She stands at the free-throw line, face tense with concentration, her hair wrapped tightly in an ivory-colored scarf. She sinks the first free throw, then another, then a third. Months ago, when Tara first had the idea to form a women’s basketball team on campus, she knew it would not be easy. The twenty-yearold Tunisian college student has lived in Doha since she was eight. She played for one of Qatar’s national teams in high school. She understood how things worked. Still, Tara tells me, “To get a team, it was the toughest thing ever.” As a child in Tunis, sports dominated Tara’s family schedule. “Our life in Tunisia was based around sports clubs, going from one thing to another—swimming, ballet, karate. It was sports the whole time,” she recalls. “When we came here [to Doha], it was a big culture shock. I didn’t feel people were so into it, and whoever is into it, they are usually foreigners. Where is everybody else?” Opposite Tara, the Eagles begin practicing layups, the sound slingshotting off blue and gold ceiling tiles, two stories overhead. Despite the enormous footprint of the buildings that house the branch campuses at Education City, they do not feature athletic facilities. Most basketball teams practice two or three times per week in gymnasiums at Education City’s student and recreation centers. Games are held at Qatar Academy, a high school based on the Education City compound.60 Qatar Academy’s facilities are top of the line. A regulation-sized court with buffed floors and brightly colored paint lines is flanked by walls covered in long, thick, padded mats patterned in alternating royal blue and gold. A professional-grade scoreboard is affixed high on one wall. Qatar Academy’s athletic teams are called the Falcons, a nod to the nation’s past. “Welcome to the Falcons’ Lair,” reads a large red-and-white

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banner, located above one of the basketball goals. A banner hung over the gym’s seating area says, “Go Falcons.” Still shooting free throws, Tara glances around the room anxiously. Not a single member of her team has arrived. Tara claims that her quest to find basketball players in Doha has been hindered by a lack of spaces where amateurs can participate. “There is no place where I can find people playing in the playground and I can just join them,” she says. “It doesn’t really happen here, because there aren’t any playgrounds where you find girls randomly playing.” Tara tried her luck at Aspire but mostly found women taking aerobics classes or working out alone. “The problem is we don’t have a lot of sports clubs,” Tara says. “Whatever sports club we have, they shut it down eventually. There is no place to train for fun. You have to go to Aspire, have this membership, and people get lazy to do that. They used to have the Falcon Club, the Doha Club, and these things would help out a little; but now they don’t.” A foreign service major at Georgetown University in Qatar, Tara received faint interest from a handful of classmates but mostly came up short. Education City features lavish athletic facilities and countless opportunities to get involved in sports, but relatively few students participate. Men’s and women’s basketball and soccer are the most popular; volleyball, cricket, and squash teams come and go. “People here in the university, they tend to prefer studies over their sports,” says Hassan, a Bangladeshi engineering major. “They play sports as secondary, just for exercise. They don’t enjoy playing sports.” The dearth of athletes at Education City means that those who are partial to sports can participate in more than one. Hassan is a member of men’s soccer and cricket teams. But even those who play for university teams often describe their involvement as peripheral. “It’s not important to play sports,” says Haifa, a member of the Eagles basketball team. “It’s just an extra thing to do in your free time. It’s not an obligation to anyone.” The teams at Education City are in a constant state of flux. For example, in years when a university does not have the five athletes needed to form a basketball team, it bands together with players from another institution as a single-season hybrid unit. With competition in short supply, the Education City colleges frequently match up against local high schools.61 Even then, there are not always enough players. A female student at Carnegie Mellon University Qatar explains, “I wanted to play

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this year, except CMU doesn’t have a team. None of the girls were committed. Both basketball for the boys and the girls, so you have to join teams [at other schools] or just don’t have a team at all.”

Recruiting and Ramadan The turnout for tonight’s game is better than average, about sixty spectators, forty of them students and the rest faculty members and staff from the two universities.62 The gender split is roughly even for fans of both teams. The audience sits on twin sets of low bleachers, one for each team’s supporters, located along one side of the court. Save for one set of parents and an adolescent, there are no families or members of the public on hand. “I don’t think I saw a single parent,” exclaims Yasmine, a Canadian-born basketballer, about her first year on campus. “The boy’s championship game, no parents. Even the high schools, I saw few parents. A lot of their parents don’t live here. Or they are Qataris and they don’t play.” The student spectators cluster in small groups, waiting for the game to start. Young adults, they simultaneously chat with one another and text. The males wear jeans, T-shirts, and tennis shoes. The females are slightly more dressed up, but not by much. On the Eagles side, the fans are draped in orange, the team color. A few fans wear official Eagles T-shirts, and an older man wears an Eagles hat and T-shirt combo. A non-Qatari woman wears an orange head scarf. She is one of nine covered women in the stands. Six of the covered women are Qatari, distinguished by their abayas and shaylas. There are no Qatari males in attendance. In a spot on the second row, off to the right, sit Hassan, the Bangladeshi soccer and cricket player, and a couple of his teammates. Hassan moved to Doha four years ago to attend Texas A&M. He is also a devout Muslim, which Hassan claims does not hinder his ability to play sports. The biggest challenge to being an Islamic athlete, he says, is keeping active during Ramadan, when able-bodied Muslims are expected to fast from sunup to sundown.63 “I adjust my workout schedule,” Hassan explains. “I don’t really work out [during the day] on Ramadan. If I do play, I play at the night. After everyone has finished breaking their fast at

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night, everyone is free. So we gather, and we play sports. If you’re fasting, it’s not an excuse to not get exercise.” Doha is fairly muted during Ramadan’s daytime hours but returns to life around sunset as Muslims and non-Muslims take part in iftar, community feasts that sometimes last hours.64 After dinner, many people go to one of Doha’s numerous shopping malls, which stay open until one or two o’clock in the morning during Ramadan. Many malls feature special live music and dance performances. Some people skip the mall and instead don athletic gear and take to Doha’s soccer pitches, cricket fields, and basketball courts. While sports teams generally avoid scheduling official matches during Islamic holidays, a variety of small-scale tournaments take place during Ramadan. Imran, a Jordanian who was raised in New Zealand, insists that Ramadan bouts are “not friendly games” but highly competitive. “I work out in Ramadan. I never stop,” he says. “The schedule turns from being afternoon to night. We play football at midnight even. All the fields are filled; all of them are booked. All the schools, all the indoor fields, all the outdoor fields, they’re all booked at night in Ramadan.” Imran, who plays on a men’s soccer team at Education City, tries to attend as many campus games as possible. Hassan rarely misses the men’s teams compete but looks slightly aghast at tonight’s basketball proceedings. “I haven’t attended a lot of female sports, so I can’t comment much,” he says, surveying the scene. “Since I’m a Muslim, I believe that the audience and the sport should be segregated. Females should [sit] in one stand, and the males should be in another stand.” Hassan’s teammate Ramaz disagrees. The branch campuses at Education City are expected to deliver a Westernized curriculum and campus culture. Sports and sports-related policies are part of that mandate. “Audience-wise, I don’t think there should be gender segregation, because you’re just coming to watch a game,” he says. Ramaz, who plays for the men’s volleyball, soccer, and cricket teams for three different branch campuses, adds, “The universities over here, they are essentially campuses of the universities back in the States. So they actually follow their rules—the academic rules, and the sports rules, and the student-affairs rules—of their main campuses. Gender segregation would be against those rules.”

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From across the court, a Comet named Rosa scans the crowd for familiar faces. Rosa arrived from Belize in the fall and is still surprised by the small turnouts at sports events. “In Belize, if you have a soccer match, half of the school will go and support the team. Whereas here, people are like, ‘It will be boring. Let’s not go.’ And if you actually go, maybe five people are watching.” Rosa’s teammate Sofia, an eighteen-year-old from Italy, says that game-day turnouts vary at Education City. “We played against the Qatari national team and had a huge turnout. There were at least a hundred students. They were cheering like crazy, very supportive. Last week we played, and maybe three people showed up. It depends on the game and who you’re playing.” In addition to organized sports, Education City features two workout centers, one gym for men and women, and another for women only. “That would never happen in America,” says Nancy, a Virginia-based army brat who is spending a semester in Doha as part of an exchange program with her home campus. Nancy grew up in Michigan, where she ran crosscountry and played soccer, basketball, and hockey. Still a fitness buff, Nancy tried Education City’s women’s gym but left after discovering that the free weights only went up to ten kilos and it lacked basic equipment such as pull-up bars. Now, she uses the unrestricted gym, where she fares somewhat better. “There are a couple other women that use it too, people going with their husbands and stuff. I go on the treadmill, and I’m the only one running. Everyone’s walking on the treadmill. So I stand out.” Nancy arrived at Education City in the fall hoping to play soccer, but there were no active female teams on campus. One morning, while preparing for a design class, she was approached by a friendly woman in a head scarf. “It was my first week of school, and I went to the computer lab to print something. And this girl comes up and says, ‘You look athletic. Are you playing a sport?’ ” It was Tara, who enthusiastically relayed the details of her sports start-up. Nancy demurred. She hadn’t shot a basketball since sixth-grade gym class. Tara shook her head. It did not matter. “I can’t play basketball,” Nancy confides, “but from talking to Tara, it was like, ‘If you can run, you’re fine.’ The girls on our team, no one played in high school. There weren’t high-school sports. Everyone is just learning.”65

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Bend It like Doha Tara managed to secure enough players to enroll her burgeoning team in Education City’s basketball league, but the challenges were far from over. Reflecting Education City’s Western-campus philosophy, sporting events there are open to male and female spectators. Two of Tara’s new recruits were Qatari and refused to participate if there were male audience members or referees. “I completely cover myself [in everyday life], and I don’t think it’s appropriate to wear an abaya while playing basketball,” one player explained. “If we are having friendly tournaments with girl spectators, then it’s completely fine. But if it’s open to EC and male spectators are there, then I don’t feel personally comfortable because of the clothing and also because, even if I have my hijab on, my family, they do not see this as appropriate or respectful.” In Qatar, families are often the source of these types of restrictions. Petrofamilies have become increasingly common among Qatari households, but social life in Qatar still revolves around the extended family, which has ties to the Gulf ’s patrilineal tribal history.66 In a nation where names indicate social status and tribal and familial lines are sometimes intertwined, “family” is a flexible support network that can refer to one’s immediate family, extended family, and/or tribal unit.67 Qatari families are collectivist, and the honor of the entire family is dependent on the individuals’ ability to comply with prescribed cultural norms. A person’s reputation impacts the status of his or her family.68 If an individual violates cultural norms, the entire family can be jeopardized, damaging everything from societal standing to financial security. Misconduct by females is treated more seriously than misbehavior by males—a wayward daughter is said to be more harmful to a family than an errant son is.69 Maryam, a Qatari woman, explains, “All Qataris have that concept that what you do every day reflects not only you but reflects your family. If you do well in school, that’s not only achievement for you; that’s achievement for the entire family. There is that close tie between personal accomplishments and family accomplishments. And it applies vice versa. If you do something, it’ll affect the parents negatively. Everyone feels that obligation, that responsibility to have that connection with other families. This is Qatari society. There are certain groups, but even those groups are big. They all know each other.”

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Janna, a citizen, adds, “Qatar is a very small country, and the population is so small. Everyone knows everyone, and the families are so close. If you do one thing wrong, everyone is gonna know.” Qataris like Janna describe Doha as a “fishbowl,” a small, tightly knit community where gossip is rampant and females are monitored, scrutinized, judged, and admonished. Protecting one’s public reputation is paramount. Muna, a student at the sex-segregated Qatar University, says that reputation is a primary source of status for Qatari women like her. “Reputation, I can’t even tell you—it’s like the basis of woman’s existence in this society. If you don’t have the right reputation, you might as well die. That’s how everyone thinks here. And that is why a lot of females are not allowed to go to a mixed university. Because wow, what would that say about your reputation? They’re not allowed to go out at night, because what would that say about your reputation? They’re not allowed to go to [sports] competitions. What would that say in your reputation? They’re not allowed to play sports. What would that say to reputation? You’re not allowed to cut your hair short. What would that say your reputation? They’re not allowed to wear makeup when they go out. What would it do to your reputation? Reputation is women’s existence here.” The scrutiny applies to female nonnationals as well, whose appearance and behavior are also monitored. Reem, who moved to Doha from Lebanon when she was ten, was continually warned that her reputation could get her family in trouble. “My dad always told me, ‘Most of my friends are Qataris. My business is in Qatar. I live in Qatar. So I have enough trust in you not to do anything stupid that would damage my reputation or my business or anything else.’ Everything here goes by reputation and how people perceive you.” Reputation matters everywhere, of course, but for Reem and other noncitizens of Qatar, the consequences are thought to be wide ranging. “It could damage from the smallest thing in your life to your own business, your whole family,” Reem avows. “You can get kicked out of the country and deported because of your reputation. It could get to extremes.” Due to concerns about reputation, families that oppose athletics for female members serve as a primary impediment to participation.70 In Qatari schools, physical education for boys and girls is compulsory from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Some women recall parents or other rela-

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tives who exempted them from gym classes or forbid them from joining intramural teams. These recollections affirm a study of state-run Qatari primary schools, in which families commonly opposed physical education classes for girls. This exacerbated the girls’ “low levels of interest and reluctance to participate in physical education lessons,” particularly following puberty.71 Haifa, who grew up in Doha, recalls, “In school, it would be easier for a girl to get out of PE than a guy. None of my friends really wanted to play sports.” At the onset of girls’ puberty, familial concerns about daughters’ reputations sometimes intensify, ramping up restrictions related to sports. There is a belief that when men witness a female engaging in physical activity, they interpret her movements as sexual and are unable to control their desire.72 This taps into larger fears about women’s safety and sexuality. “It’s not very encouraged for girls to play here in Qatar,” says a Qatari man named Nasser. “A conservative man sees a girl running, he might not get the best idea of her. The families, they do not support their female members to participate in sports.” Some families discourage certain sports, particularly those that require tight clothing (swimming, ballet) or whose movements are deemed inappropriate (yoga, gymnastics).73 “It’s considered improper,” a Qatari man named Ahmed explains. “They’d be considered promiscuous or something like that.” Zaina grew up playing basketball in Syria, where she struggled with a father who disapproved. “My dad until today still feels that it’s taking up my time and that I should decrease the amount of time for basketball so I can have more family time.” In high school, Zaina was recruited to play for one of the national teams. Her father was displeased. “That didn’t go well because we had to practice every single day. When he would come home, I wouldn’t be there. He didn’t like that.” Those who have parental consent sometimes encounter pressures from the larger community. A Qatari woman named Omera recounts a high-school yearbook photo of the girls’ soccer team that caused a stir because some of the Qatari players were wearing shorts. “Other schools started being like, ‘Oh my God, look at these Qatari girls running around in shorts.’ Have you seen Bend It like Beckham? Do you know how the mother reacts when she finds out her daughter is playing football? That’s exactly the kind of situation that goes on here. Bend it like Doha.”

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In Qatar, familial and community-derived prohibitions are reinforced by government bodies such as the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, as well as through the schools themselves. Qatari educational policies require fewer physical-education classes for schoolgirls, who are sometimes steered to “feminine education” courses that teach cooking and sewing.74 A World Health Organization study determined that just 10.2 percent of teenage girls in Qatar are physically active for at least sixty minutes on five or more days per week, rates about half that of males.75 Collectively and over time, these interactions between people and institutions shape and affirm cultural barriers to female sports participation. By the time women enter college, these constraints are firmly in place. Rhoda, an Emirati who moved to Qatar at age five, had a promising tennis career that she eventually gave up due to lack of family approval. “They weren’t supportive at all. It’s just really not part of the Arab culture to have a girl playing sports. It was really a foreign thing for them, so they weren’t supportive.”76 Maryam, a Qatari who played tennis, soccer, basketball, and badminton in her youth, stopped playing sports at the end of high school. She believes that familial concern over reputation explains the lack of female sports participation, especially among Qataris. “That’s a really important part of what Qatari society is about,” she tells me. “It’s something that our parents have drilled in our heads. My grandmother says, ‘A tiny crack in a vase, you will never be able to fix it again.’ There’s a ton of these Arabic metaphors for how to uphold your reputation: ‘Once you crumple a piece of paper, it will never be uncrumpled.’ That’s the concept the older generation still has regarding female participation in sports.” It is not just parents and grandparents who are protective. Husbands pressure wives to behave more “properly,” and an engagement often heralds a decline or elimination of female sports activities. If there are children, women are held responsible for their care or the oversight of their care. Rhoda, an Emirati, explains, “These women, they have their husband at home, and they have kids that they have to look after. And I don’t think their husbands will be pleased to know that their wife is out playing basketball with a bunch of friends.” Nuptials involve a new set of family members, some of whom are unhappy about the prospect of

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female athleticism. Juggling multiple responsibilities leaves little time for physical activity; women prioritize family commitments over athletic interests.77 Some women push back against family restrictions. For example, Safa’s mother supports her desire to play sports, but her father is less enthusiastic. Because there were male onlookers, he forbade her to play wearing shorts. She wore them anyway. “He got used to it,” she says. Others do not view parental restrictions as intrusive, framing family interference as a demonstration of commitment and care. “My mom, she’s very strict,” Zaina says. “ ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that.’ But I like the boundaries. I stick to them. That’s the way I live, and I like the way I hold myself up, reputation-wise. She doesn’t want to hinder my reputation, and that’s something I care about as well.”

Closed Practices, Open Games The Comets huddle courtside, discussing strategy and psyching each other up, while the Eagles stand in a circle, holding hands. They begin yelling and whooping, the ten players hopping up and down. Over on the bleachers, a handful of fans respond in kind, cheering, pounding out rhythms on toy drums, and blowing into plastic trumpets. Everyone else in the audience continues to chat and text, barely noticing that Najla and Tara are facing each other at center court, awaiting the tip-off. Both teams are led by a coach and an assistant coach, American female faculty and staff from the branch campuses. They make lastminute changes to the starting lineup and hand paperwork to a trio of scorekeepers, sitting at a folding table located between the two teams’ benches. A male security guard in a black uniform stands off to one side of the court, watching with arms folded. On the court, two Filipino male referees oversee the proceedings. The Eagles take first possession, with Najla tipping the ball to Haifa, who snatches it and races down the floorboards, trailed by nine players. She cuts across the lane and goes for an easy layup that clangs off the rim. Maria snags the rebound and passes to Tara, as the Comets charge back in the other direction. Tara shoots and misses. It goes on like this for a while, with energy levels higher than the number of points. At the close of the first quarter, the score is 4–2 Eagles.

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Following NCAA guidelines, the game is divided into four tenminute quarters. In the second quarter, Tara takes control. She steals the ball and makes a fast break down the court, flanked closely by two Eagles, one of whom falls to the ground as the trio careens toward the basket. Tara shoots and misses, but a foul is called. She high-fives Zaina on her way to the free-throw line. Throughout the fall semester, Tara and the Comets held twice-weekly practices that were closed to the public. This arrangement appeased the concerns of conservative players and enabled everyone to relax their public clothing practices. Instead of covering up, the Comets wore shorts and T-shirts and did not conceal their hair.78 The team’s practice-only setup caught the attention of Fatima, a fine arts major and devout Muslim. Fatima grew up in Morocco, where she and her two younger brothers took part in soccer, basketball, volleyball, tennis, and swimming. “Ever since I could walk, my parents would send us to summer activities, clubs and stuff,” she recalls. “And throughout the academic year, our school had PE classes. I joined the basketball team in high school but only for a brief time. I didn’t play in any matches, only for practices.” This stipulation was nonnegotiable. Fatima would not play basketball if any men were in the gym, including referees or coaches. Fatima attributed this stance to her Islamic faith, recounting how, during adolescence, her changing levels of religiosity altered her clothing practices. “Where I come from in Morocco, we also have this notion where girls are not really encouraged to play in a mixed environment. When I was a kid, I used to play in front of people; it was fine. But as I grew older, I started becoming more conscious about it. With Islam, we aren’t really allowed to exhibit any sort of heavy load motion in front of guys, for the sake of propriety. I am not comfortable playing basketball in front of guys. So for me, it preserves a lot of respect when I do it in a nonmixed environment.”79 Fatima practiced with Tara’s team, but the issue came to a head at the onset of basketball season. The Comets were scheduled to compete in seven games. Fatima refused to play, frustrating all involved, particularly Tara. “We were training the entire year, and then comes the season of basketball, and we didn’t have a team,” she says. “We had a good team, and they were good players. We just couldn’t play in games.”

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The team’s coach, Jessie, an American who works in administration at an Education City university, was sympathetic but unauthorized to act. Practices could be closed, but games had to be open to the public. “I pretty much open practices to anybody who wants to come,” she explains. “There aren’t necessarily a lot of opportunities for female students to work out or have organized athletic type of events. I completely respect and understand their preference for closed games and try to provide opportunities for them to play. But the team is a representation of the university. It’s not a good representation of [the home campus] if we have closed games.” Fatima disagrees, retorting, “They’re in a Muslim country. It’s expected to have separate gyms and matches.” The lack of participation from nationals creates a difficult situation for coaches, who are under pressure from the Qatar Foundation to recruit Qatari players. Jane, an American college professor who coaches one of the women’s teams, explains, “Last year, we had three Qatari girls on the team. One of them stopped coming to practices because she decided it wasn’t appropriate to play in the games. I had two other students, and both typically wore abayas to school and covered their hair. One said that she could only play in closed games, and the other said she could only play in certain games, depending on how big the audience was going to be. So we have some challenges; we have some issues.” Eventually, the Comets yielded to Education City’s open-gender policy and agreed to play in unrestricted settings. When the Comets took to the court for its first game, however, it did so with just five players. An hour before tip-off, Fatima quit the team.

Covered on the Court By the third quarter, the Eagles have pulled ahead to a 22–14 lead. Najla, captain of the Eagles and its most seasoned player, is having her best game of the season. Near the end of the third quarter, she steals the ball from a Comets player and races down court, where she draws a foul. She misses both free throws but gets her own rebound, puts it back up, and sinks it. The Eagles fans go wild, hollering and waving orange Day-Glo foam eagle “claws,” worn over the hands like gloves. Moments later, Haifa lobs the ball to Safa, who takes the shot but misses. As the ball ricochets off the rim,

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Najla, in a single sweeping motion, snags the rebound, twists midair, and puts up a hook shot that lands. The fans go crazy. Najla, nineteen, moved to Doha when she was eleven years old. Raised in a Christian household, she has never covered. During the game, Najla wears the standard Eagles uniform: long baggy shorts, a sleeveless jersey, and tennis shoes. She adds a pair of white wristbands to the ensemble but otherwise does nothing to alter the attire. “I am not a Muslim, so I can wear shorts if I want to,” she explains. “I don’t have to cover my hair, but it’s still important to be respectful towards the culture around you. I wear shorts, but they are at least knee length.” Najla is the exception on the Eagles. Most of the players transfer their day-to-day sartorial practices to the basketball court, concealing arms, legs, and/or hair as they do in some other settings. For example, two Eagles wear athletic pants in lieu of shorts. All but two wear orangeand-white sleeveless jerseys over short-sleeved T-shirts that conceal their shoulders and upper arms.80 “There is no certain part of the Quran that says women have to wear abaya and shayla or women have to wear the hijab,” Deema explains. “It just says women have to be modest and cover up body parts.” From the sideline, Nancy passes the ball in to Tara, who dribbles it to midcourt, strongly defended by Safa. Tara fakes left only to run into Najla, who is heading directly for her. Tara zigzags past Najla and takes it strong to the hoop for two points. The fans cheer, while the frustrated Eagles coach calls a time-out. Of the nine Comets, Tara and four other players remain covered on the court. The athletes’ head wear varies. Some have converted everyday scarves into sportswear. The scarves are black and fringed, wrapped tightly around the head and extending to the lower back. Tara and others wear white head scarves made specifically for athletics. Constructed from lightweight fabric, the head wear is smaller and shorter, extending only about six inches past the neckline in the back. Tara, who began covering at age thirteen, explains, “There are certain sports scarves that keep falling, so you have to keep fixing it. The sports one you just put it on, and it sticks there. It’s not difficult to play with it because I am used to it. In basketball especially, it’s not a barrier at all.”81 Despite the best efforts of Tara and her teammates, they never recover. The Eagles catch fire in the fourth quarter, with several mem-

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bers delivering big plays, including Haifa, who sinks back-to-back free throws off a scoring foul. As the final buzzer sounds, the Eagles fans stand and applaud. The players high-five and jump up and down with excitement. Safa squeezes one of her teammates from behind in a bear hug. The scoreboard reads 32–21, Eagles. The fans stream from the stands onto the court, where they congratulate the team, hug, and cheer. “I come to the basketball games, and I just see just how passionate everyone is about it and how supportive they are,” says Reem, a sometime Eagles player. “They are always there with the claws and the wigs and everything; they’re always cheering, and they’re so into it. So it definitely brings the students together.” From the other end of the court, a basketball strikes the polished wooden floor. Tara stands alone at the free-throw line, taking one shot after the next.

Doing Modern Traditionalism Sports shape, reflect, reinforce, and challenge the cultures in which they exist. Young Muslims interested in playing sports in Qatar formulate strategies that engender athletic participation in ways that accord with their interpretation of Islam: fasting during Ramadan, praying between practices, or choosing sports that do not require inappropriate movements. For female Muslim athletes, reputation, gender segregation, and attire can be significant points of negotiation. Each player strategically selects an individualized sports strategy that meets his or her religious beliefs and social requirements, including familial decrees and community expectations. In doing so, the athletes enact, and at times modify, the narrative of modern traditionalism. They merge sports with other institutions in ways that reorder potentially problematic activities as mundane and secular practices as religious. As one Muslim sportswoman puts it, “There are ways to work around the rules and still follow the rules.” Here, the use of modern traditionalism is not merely rhetorical. The sportswomen enact and perform modern traditionalism in their sports-related practices. In doing so, they re-create a modern practice as traditional. This “doing” of modern traditionalism enables Muslims to take part in sports yet retain their Islamic identities, show deference to

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family members, and uphold their commitment to the community. In that sense, Qatar’s Muslim athletes sustain the government’s narrative of modern traditionalism and utilize it to justify their involvement in sports. In their prominent use of religion, however, they challenge the government’s global, secular vision. In contrast to the Qatari leadership, Tara and her peers prominently display their Muslim identities through clothing and sports-related practices. When addressing internal audiences, the Qatari government occasionally aligns sports and Islam. For example, the QWSC produces a magazine titled Women & Sport. The February 2010 issue contains an interview with Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, then secretary general of the Qatar Olympic Committee, who opines that Qatar’s selection as host for the 2011 Asian Games was “due to Allah blessings and the support of the country leaders.”82 For the most part, however, Qatar’s nation branding deemphasizes religion, preferring generically palatable concepts such as cultural heritage and tradition. Qatar’s sportswomen defy this convention and deliberately foreground Islam in their athletic practices, even to external audiences. Until recently, International Basketball Federation (FIBA) rules prohibited players from wearing any type of head cover or hat. At the 2014 Asian Games in South Korea, event organizers demanded that the Qatari players remove their head scarves. The team refused. It forfeited a game against Mongolia and pulled out of the event shortly after, leaving the country to a flurry of international headlines. Two years later, FIBA revised its regulations to allow head scarves.83 The Qatari sportswomen who walked out of the Asian Games in full Muslim head wear proclaimed their commitment to Islam to a global audience. In doing so, Qatar’s sportswomen challenged the government’s narrative of modern traditionalism and reshaped it in ways they deemed important. In that regard, it is the athletes, rather than the government, who are driving the development of sports culture in Qatar. These influencers are rarely Qataris, whose participation in sports remains low, especially among females. If the strategic blending of Islam and sports is used so successfully by Muslims in Doha, why do so few Qatari women choose to remain on the sidelines? Some observers believe it is because few Qatari women are willing to be seen in public without their abaya and shayla, even if those garments are replaced with

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functionally similar athletic wear. For Qatari women, clothing serves as a visible signifier of nationality, connoting high status. Removing this attire, however briefly, means lowering one’s elite standing and joining the expatriate rank and file. Jumana is a Qatari woman who grew up playing sports but stopped when she began covering. For Jumana, the hijab is not an obstacle to overcome but the crux of the matter itself. Were Jumana to join the Eagles or Comets, she would stand out as the only Qatari, the only player who wears an abaya. She explains, “A lot of the people here are not Qatari, and I don’t feel like I can participate in student activities, because I’m going to be the only girl in an abaya and everyone is going to look at me like this privileged girl that was born with a golden spoon in her mouth, and she drives a Bentley, and her dad is blah, blah, blah, and her mom does this for a living. Everyone looks at you differently.” Jumana’s comment may demonstrate a limit point of modern traditionalism, but it also underscores the significance that clothing plays in the national identities of Qataris. In chapter 4, I explore sartorial matters in greater detail.

4

The National Uniform Strategic Uses of Clothing

The Villaggio Mall, located on the west end of Doha, is a 120,000square-meter behemoth that is said to be Qatar’s largest shopping venue. Forty-two thousand customers supposedly pass through the Villaggio each day, patronizing 220 Western chains like the Gap, H&M, the Body Shop, and Hallmark.1 One large wing of the mall is dedicated to upscale retailers such as Louis Vuitton and Prada. There are also stores that specialize in local and regional clothing, with some outlets selling high-end abayas and shaylas. Large, indoor shopping malls like the Villaggio are on the decline in the United States. Thousands have closed, and many more are in the death throes.2 In Doha, malls remain an integral facet of day-to-day life; new malls are regularly under development, each one competing to bring in signature retailers and restaurant chains. The mega mall is a Gulf stereotype, symbolizing an allegedly materialistic culture driven by hyperconsumerism. Overlooked in this typecasting is the importance of large indoor, air-conditioned spaces in desert climates.3 Because of Qatar’s extreme heat, its malls serve as gathering places, where community members amass to stretch their legs, eat, shop, seek entertainment, and be seen. Because of Qatar’s gendered social restrictions, malls (including their parking lots) are among the few public settings where unmarried and unrelated males and females can interact, however discreetly. The Villaggio is designed to resemble an eighteenth-century Italian village. Customers buy tickets to ride Venetian-style gondolas that float through a series of winding indoor canals. The mall’s ceiling, several stories high, is painted to resemble a blue sky, dotted with puffy white clouds. Small birds soar overhead, chirping and adding to the out-of-doors aura. The Villaggio also features Gondolania Entertainment City, an enormous indoor theme park replete with roller coasters, bumper cars, a 124

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Ferris wheel, arcade games, a bowling alley, a movie theater, and other kid-friendly attractions. An Olympic-sized ice-skating rink annexes Gondolania, surrounded by a sprawling food court. Here there is typical American mall fare like Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, and KFC, as well as fast casual chains such as the Macaroni Grill, TGI Fridays, and Applebee’s. Restaurants with table service feature “outdoor” seating in front, where patrons eat and watch the ice-skaters. Even in the middle of the week at midday, the Villaggio is abuzz with activity. Qatari men, bedecked in their starched white thobes and ghutrah head wraps, walk together, sometimes holding hands as they slowly saunter the mall’s yawning corridors. Other males gather in groups of five or ten at the coffee shops and restaurant “patios,” sipping tea and chatting softly. The women stroll the mall separately in packs of three to six, sometimes trailed by nannies, maids, and drivers. The staff juggle brand-name shopping bags and struggle to contain small groups of children. Most of the Qatari women wear abayas and shaylas. Somewhat-conservative Qatari women wear niqabs, black veils that cover the entire head except for the eyes. The most conservative women sport boshiyas, black veils that cover the entire head, including the eyes. The burqa, often confused with these other forms of apparel, is an all-in-one outer garment that combines an abaya with some form of niqab or boshiya.

The Qatari Uniform Clothing is an essential component of social identity. People project who they think they are (or aspire to be) through the strategic use of apparel. In a classic 1904 essay, the sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel wrote that what individuals choose to wear “intensifies or enlarges the impression of the personality by operating as a sort of radiation emanating from it. . . . Adornment is also an object of considerable value, it is a synthesis of the individual’s having and being.”4 In a nation with a small ruling elite, clothing is a key marker of social status. White thobes and black abayas are the most visible signifiers of citizenship in Qatar. Minute regional variations in male robes and head wear enable Qatari men to display their nationality via their thobe, ghoutra, and agal. These articles of clothing and how they are

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Lacking the ghoutra and agal and wearing clothing in a somewhat casual manner, these men are instantly recognizable as non-Qataris. (Photo by Alexander R. Wilcox Cheek)

worn are synonymous with male Qatari citizens.5 Akeelah, a Qatari woman, describes these small-scale sartorial distinctions as akin to the various Arabic dialects found throughout the Gulf—they require insider knowledge. “People from the outside, if someone comes from the States, they’re going to be like, ‘UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, they’re all the same.’ But once you’re actually from here, you can see we’re really different. For example, the accents—we all speak Arabic, but there are some words that are really different. Sometimes the way we dress is different. You see that with a lot of men. Their thobe is different, and each one [has] little details. And that’s how you know where that guy’s from.” Although many Muslim females in Doha wear head scarves and cloaks, the black abaya and shayla are strongly associated with Qataris. “It defines that she’s Qatari,” says a citizen named Shannon. “It defines the girl. Like, ‘This girl is Qatari because she’s wearing an abaya.’ And you know that she’s not Qatari if she’s not wearing it. So it symbolizes that I’m Qatari.” Qatar’s nation-branding relies heavily on images of traditionally attired petrofamilies, who embody and display the narrative of modern

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traditionalism in their clothing. In Doha, “billboards, advertisements and commercials feature traditionally dressed but in every other aspect modern Qatari couples,” often accompanied by two children. The advertisements portray Qataris as “high-end consumers, investors or spectators at exclusive sport events. A conscious effort is also made in these images to present women on equal footing with their husbands,” aligning traditional clothing with female empowerment.6 Noor Al-Qasimi, who conducted research on clothing in Qatar and the UAE, writes that the abaya and thobe are an “institutionalized form of national dress that is socio-legally implemented by the state.”7 The Qatari leadership has taken steps to institute the garb for certain populations, including some primary-school children. “You have to wear it as part of your uniform,” says Farida, a Qatari who attended a gendersegregated public school in Doha. “We’d wear skirts and blouses with abayas and shaylas. And then we’d take it off in school.” According to a Qatari man named Salim, requiring that schoolchildren wear traditional attire is part of a government effort to safeguard indigenous culture. “They are aware that our culture is changing very quickly,” he says. “They are doing this to protect our culture and traditions. There are many practices from the government that show that we still care. We have, for example, the thobe as a uniform in the school. For Qatari and non-Qatari, when you go to any independent [public] school, the uniform is the thobe. They could just wear T-shirts, but they want us to continue wearing our traditional thobe, as a professional thing, not only during [the Muslim holiday] Eid.” Many Qataris link national attire to authenticity, community, and cultural heritage. Tabina, a Qatari woman, explains, “It’s part of my culture, part of my heritage, part of my identity. As a Qatari, your abaya is definitely part of that.” Uniforms help foster a sense of solidarity for groups, and affirming a national identity is crucial in a state where noncitizens outnumber citizens by nearly nine to one. Qataris tend to strongly associate traditional clothing with nation, and most wear the attire in public, collectively creating a visible signifier of citizenship. “When I see other girls wearing an abaya, I feel I have a connection to them,” says a Qatari woman named Mai. Some Qataris describe the national attire as an actual uniform, symbolic attire that comes with prescribed behavioral and ideological ob-

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ligations. A Qatari woman named Shannon believes that Qatari attire guides citizen conduct in ways that benefit the collective. “Wearing certain uniforms is a way to impose on you a certain image and certain expectation. That happens in the military and the way they have to dress. Abaya and hijab is kind of like a uniform. When you’re wearing abaya, you’re representing us, you’re representing Qatari people.” Farid always leaves home sporting a pristinely pressed thobe and ghoutra. The twenty-four-year-old Qatari says the apparel expresses national pride, which he believes explains its popularity among male citizens. “If you go to many Gulf countries, they wouldn’t be that strict on wearing the thobe and the traditional clothes. You would see them with the shorts, the cotton pants, the casual look. But here in Qatar, 80 percent of the population sticks to the traditional clothing. This shows how Qataris love our own culture, by wearing our traditional clothes.” There are other reasons for wearing traditional clothes as well: Islamic faith, strongly held beliefs about gender, an expression of solidarity, and a rejection of the West.8 Some women wear the hijab for personal or economic gain or to circumvent public harassment.9 Female Muslims who cover in settings where covering is normative are said to enjoy greater autonomy, are better able to cross gender boundaries, and have more freedom in public.10 In Qatar, where citizens stand atop the social hierarchy, national uniforms are emblems of prestige that entitle wearers to preferential treatment throughout the land. Clothing that connotes status, such as a police uniform, has been found to impact the wearer’s authority and influence over others; traditionally attired Qataris enjoy power and privilege over all non-Qataris.11 “If you’re wearing an abaya, it’s like, ‘Oh, they are Qatari,’ and every single person [knows] what Qatari is,” a nonnational explains. “Qataris have higher status, they’re treated better, they’re usually a class above everyone. And for them, it’s like, ‘I’m proud I am Qatari. I am wearing this abaya.’ It’s a passport, kind of.” Mai, a Qatari, wears her abaya and shayla everywhere in public, signaling her nationality to all. “When you’re wearing the abaya in Doha, you get a little more respect,” she says. “People are more likely to work with you and interact with you. When you’re wearing the abaya, they take you more seriously.”

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Mai and some other Qatari women describe having gone out in public in Doha and not covering. Without the abaya and shayla, few recognized them as Qatari citizens. “I don’t really look Qatari without my shayla on,” Letta explains. “With my hair, I’m really white, and when I speak English, the accent is not very strong.” This gave Letta and others an opportunity to see how the other half lives. They did not enjoy it. By forgoing the national uniform, the elite Qataris suddenly found themselves lumped in with professional-class expatriates. Some were mistaken for Arabs from nearby locations such as Egypt or Palestine. Others were taken for Europeans or Americans. “When you’re not wearing the abaya, they see you as more of a Western person, so you’re not subjected to the same rules of respect,” Mai says. “They might treat you as a foreigner, and they might not see you as a higher [status] person or as important of a person.” Pressure to wear the national attire comes from friends, family, and larger community, but signaling citizenship via clothing also entices because it provides immediate tangible benefits. Being singled out for one’s identity in public can present challenges, too. These include being judged according to stereotypes that Qataris are gluttonous, lazy, and nouveau riche. A Qatari named Jumana says, “There are tons of people that don’t wear abaya and shayla, and they’re still privileged, and no one looks at them the way that they look at Qatari girls that wear abaya and shayla. When you wear abaya, everyone that’s not Qatari will immediately think of you as privileged, someone who’s not smart, someone who just gets everything they want because they’re privileged and they’re rich.” As Qataris like Jumana explain it, to be a Qatari in contemporary Doha is to be a stranger in one’s own land. Qataris appreciate their government-provided amenities, but some describe feeling singled out and alienated for their status as citizens. “We always feel like outsiders,” says Nahir, a Qatari woman. “For me, being Qatari, I’ve never actually fit in. I am proud to be Qatari, but there’s a lot of negatives. I feel judged all the time. I have to be the best at everything I do, because if I don’t, then this person is going to think it’s because I’m rich or I have money or whatever. So it’s hard to be a Qatari here. And I know that’s stupid because there are people that are suffering and they have a lot more things to deal with in life.”

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The national uniform as an indicator of citizenship intersects with gender in ways that are complicated. In part, this is reflective of Qatari women’s position in the social and legal hierarchy. The hijab serves as a platform on which issues of nationality and gender are negotiated. “It’s not just a piece of clothing,” a Qatari named Muna says. “It’s a lot of the things that come with it.” Wearing national attire and assuming the role of a Qatari woman provides certain benefits and freedoms but also comes with a set of expectations and responsibilities that can constrain behavior. From this perspective, the hijab serves as a mechanism for self-directed social control. “The abaya makes me feel like I am responsible,” Janna says. “I can’t do things that a Qatari person should not do. I can’t walk into a bar with the abaya on. I have to be more poised. You have to be more graceful because you’ve got an abaya on. Without my abaya? You should see me in London—I go crazy.”

Clothing and Controversy The Qataris are not the only group in Doha whose sartorial habits are scrutinized. Qataris monitor and assess the adornment practices of professional-class expatriates as an indicator of respect and adherence to Qatar’s cultural norms. “When people from the West come to Qatar, we expect them to wear conservative clothing,” a Qatari woman named Ghalia explains. While there are no universal standards, there are general guidelines that professional-class Westerners are directed to understand and obey. An employee guide for a Western institution at Education City offers the following recommendations: “Expatriates are free to wear what they consider appropriate within the society and its customs. They are expected to remain sensitive to the Islamic culture and not dress in a revealing or provocative manner. Men generally wear long pants and a shirt in public. While sleeveless vests and shirts are generally considered offensive, men may wear shorts in certain situations. Women’s attire should cover shoulders and knees—shorts, short skirts, tight jeans, and sundresses are considered inappropriate, although casual dress is becoming increasingly flexible. . . . Discretion is nevertheless always recommended.”12 Najla, a Kuwaiti national who moved to Doha as a tween, asserts that the sartorial norms for expatriates have become more relaxed. “When I

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was thirteen, if I walked around the malls with shorts or even showing any part of my leg, despite being a non-Muslim, I’d get the dirtiest stares from women and also men. Now more things are becoming acceptable within a certain limit. The dress codes in the malls have changed, but still you can’t go in a spaghetti strap or shorts.” Despite any changes, there remain differing protocols vis-à-vis clothing for expatriate women in public and private settings. While the specifics can be fuzzy, these sartorial expectations are grounded in gendered ideals about female modesty. “You should not wear really short shorts and tank tops in malls,” a Qatari named Janna explains. “At parties and private places, you can wear whatever you want. When you go outside, you have to wear decent clothes. It’s all right if you want to wear skirts— make sure it’s not too short, not show too much skin. They don’t have to conform to our religion and our culture.” A common complaint about expatriate women is that they flout local sartorial norms in public settings such as malls. Technically, it is a crime to wear “indecent” attire, but Qataris assert that enforcement is lax. Doha has a government entity, Al-Adheed, that is tasked with monitoring public spaces for clothing infractions, but it is thought to be laissez-faire. Qatari responses to expatriate transgressions vary. Some rely on symbolic gestures and expressions of disapproval. “If someone wears very inappropriate clothes, they will get stared by other people,” a Qatari named Eva avows. “They will feel uncomfortable.” Others are more direct. On a Qatar Living forum post, a female expatriate claimed that she was physically harassed at the Villaggio Mall, even though she believed that her clothing followed Qatari customs. Posting under the name Qwertyness, she wrote, “After nearly four years in Qatar, it finally happened: I was stopped in Villaggio by a veiled woman and told off for being ‘inappropriately dressed.’ . . . I was wearing a sundress that covered my knees, with a sweater covering my shoulders. It was not tight, or low cut, or anything like that. . . . Knees covered, shoulders covered, all the bases are covered, right? I try to be culturally sensitive. . . . She grabbed my arm and aggressively told me that my skirt was ‘not allowed.’ ”13 Although Doha’s state-owned English newspapers are uniformly banal, Qatar’s Arabic papers feature more community-level news and

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opinion pieces about local issues. The supposedly offensive behavior of expatriates is a topic that generates some coverage. For example, in the Arabic paper Al Raya, an op-ed writer asserted that malls have become problematic due to the provocative outfits worn by expatriate women. The author described how some Qatari shoppers have taken it upon themselves to “directly criticize the women who don’t respect the customs and traditions of the conservative Gulf society. And sometimes, the discussion turns into a heated dialogue, that ends up with the Qatari woman insisting that the ‘naked’ foreign woman leave the shopping mall for violating the instructions that call for modest dressing. This forces the mall security to take the indecent foreigner outside the shopping mall.”14 A Qatari named Tabina has little sympathy for expatriates who find themselves being castigated by nationals for violating norms related to clothing. “I’ve heard them say it to foreigners, Westerners, ‘You’re in Qatar, blah blah blah.’ I don’t see what’s bad about it. Qataris respect rules, rules that have been founded upon principles that have substantive reason why it’s there. Understand why.” Mai repeats a popular Qatari sentiment: “If you go to a country, you should listen to their rules.” Determined to correct the expatriates’ wayward behavior, in 2012, a group of Qatari women launched a grassroots Twitter campaign, “No Nudity.” There was immediate pushback over the operation’s tone, so the organizers revamped it with softer, more inclusive language under the moniker “One of Us.” “We notice a lot of shorts, spaghetti straps, transparent and very tight clothing being worn freely in public places,” group organizer Najla Al Mahmoud told a local press agency. “We only want modest clothing. It’s a matter of etiquette and class. We want to be able to go to public places without a lot of flesh around us.”15 Al Mahmoud and her partners created a series of electronic and printed fliers, with cartoon women wearing inappropriate clothing such as skirts cut above the knee, shorts, and leggings. “If you are in Qatar, you are one of us,” the fliers proclaimed. “Help us preserve Qatar’s culture and values, please dress modestly in public places by covering from shoulders to knees.” The fliers also included two addendums: “Leggings are not pants,” and “these principles are the text within the global tourism ethics law.” The campaign garnered widespread support from Qa-

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taris and was eventually backed and given additional funding by the Qatar Tourism Authority.16 One potential solution for expatriate women seeking to obey Doha’s clothing dictates is to wear an abaya and shayla, but this rarely occurs. Perhaps due to the clothing’s utility as a mark of citizenship, expatriates typically avoid the garb. This is true for males as well—non-Qatari men almost never wear the Qatari national uniform. “Although no formal regulation prevents foreigners from wearing Qatari attire, foreign workers generally retain their national dress.”17 The wearing of traditional Qatari clothing serves as a symbolic boundary that demarcates citizens from noncitizens. Many Muslim women from other countries wear some form of cloak and head scarf. While they are encouraged to continue these practices in Doha, non-Qataris are discouraged from donning national apparel. Zaina, a Syrian expatriate who moved to Doha two years ago, says that she would happily wear an abaya but demurs. “Sometimes I’m very tempted to wear it,” she admits. “It’s normal here, and it’s part of my culture too. But Qatari women think if those who are not Qatari try to wear it, they’re trying to be like them. That restrains those who are not from Qatar.” Some nationals have no problem with noncitizen Arabs wearing the Qatari uniform, but many are ambivalent or opposed. Nisha says that Arabs from other countries who put on Qatari garments may be mistaken for citizens, which could lead to erroneous negative perceptions and damaged reputations. “You see some foreigners, Arabs, wearing abayas and shaylas, which is weird. It’s offending. That [signifies] them as Qataris, and they’re smoking shisha. People will think they’re Qatari girls. Most people who smoke in public are not Qataris.” When Westerners wear the hijab, it can come across as overly eager or inauthentic, leading to awkward encounters and interactions. “A lot of foreigners, as in Westerners, wear the hijab,” a Qatari woman says. “I automatically stare at a Westerner wearing the hijab.” Shannon agrees that the behavior is out of the ordinary but views it as nonthreatening. “There are American girls, they wear abaya sometimes. People stare at them, but I find it cute that they follow the rules of the country and try to be one of us.” The differing opinions about the hijab and its strength as a symbolic object illustrate the clothing’s centrality to contemporary Qatari culture.

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The Hijab in the Gulf For Muslim women who cover, the hijab is located at the nexus of various personal and social identification points, including gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and social class.18 The word hijab means “to cover” in Arabic, and although the apparel is synonymous with Muslims, its origins predate Islam.19 As early forms of modernization took root during the nineteenth century, the Arabian Gulf remained relatively isolated from other parts of the world. This was particularly true for females, who had few interactions with (mostly male) travelers. Thus, clothing for women in this part of the world remained largely unchanged. Over time, this conventional form of attire became linked to Muslims. The hijab’s association with Islam stems partly from a single verse of the Quran, Sura 24:31, which beseeches Muslim women to “guard their private parts and not expose their adornment” to anyone other than their husbands and immediate family members.20 Some Muslims interpret this as a dictate for women to cover; others debate the meaning of the word adornment, asserting that it refers to jewelry, hair, and/or ornamental attire. Regardless, the subjectivity of the Quran passage leaves the hijab open to multiple interpretations.21 Hijab practices differ between and across nations, cultures, tribes, religious sects, families, generational cohorts, and other groups.22 There is also variation by age, marital status, location, and religiosity.23 Females in the most conservative Muslim countries are required to cover in public, while relatively liberal states take a somewhat laissez-faire approach.24 Yet even in highly restrictive nations, disparities exist. For example, in Saudi Arabia, covering is not universally practiced but diverges by geographic region and degree of local enforcement.25 In Doha, Muslim women are pressured to practice hijab, especially Qataris, but there is no legal requirement to do so.26 Traditional Islamic clothing was ubiquitous in Qatar and many parts of the Gulf until the mid-twentieth century. In its early inception, the hijab in Qatar consisted of a large square piece of all-concealing cloth that was wrapped around the hair. It was then draped over the shoulders and extended to just above the ground. Beginning in the early twentieth century, the commodification of petroleum in the Gulf wrought an influx of Western popular culture, spread

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via newspapers, magazines, radio, and movies. In the mid-twentieth century, a desire to modernize and Westernize swept the MENA, resulting in all-encompassing or partial bans of veils, head scarves, and/or abayas by several nations, including Egypt, Algeria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the nascent Saudi Arabia.27 During this era of Arab secularism, women and men in several of these countries were legally required to wear Western attire; many did so eagerly in order to display their burgeoning prosperity and increased social standing.28 Although this anti-hijab movement took place outside the Gulf, its impact reverberated. Writing about the region circa 1965, the poet and scholar Mohja Kahf depicts a slow “loosening [of] veiling customs. . . . To varying degrees in the Gulf states, with Kuwait on the quicker-to-unveil side of the spectrum, hijab customs [began] to overlap with options of partial unveiling as new generations [arose].”29 In the Gulf, during the 1960s and 1970s, “traditional dress became almost taboo because it emphasized connection to the past and thus impeded modernization.”30 Describing the UAE in the 1960s, the Bahraini scholar Hasan Madan remembers how, inspired by Hollywood movies and hippie culture, “Gulf people started to liberate themselves from their inherited traditional clothes. . . . At that time [Western fashion] presented youth as modern, open minded and educated. Those who remained dressed in the traditional mode were viewed as representatives of the past that was destined to decline. People thought that a day would come when nobody would wear the traditional garb, and that we would all be wearing Western clothes.”31 Tales of then-twenty-something Qatari grandmothers sporting bikinis on Doha beaches remain part of local lore. “People used to wear hijab in order to match up with what it said in the Quran and how women should dress,” Maryam tells me. “And it went on tangents, like people covering their face. And then all of the sudden people took off their abaya when they felt they weren’t that religious. My grandma was one of the first women in Qatar to take off her abaya. She was so proud. She used to go out in miniskirts. She was like, ‘It was cool.’ ” In the 1970s, a resurgence of fundamentalist Islam swept the MENA, taking root most visibly in the Gulf states and neighbors such as Iran and Egypt. Concerned about growing secularism and Westernization, conservatives demanded that governments and citizens recommit to the

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Quran and sharia law. This included a revival of traditional attire, particularly for women, who were impelled to adopt older clothing practices once again.32 Some scholars believe that anxieties about cultural preservation during this time were a response to the growing disproportion between the number of citizens relative to expatriates.33 By the 1980s, the majority of Muslim women throughout the Gulf had reverted to wearing some form of hijab.34 In Qatar, contemporary forms of the abaya, shayla, and variants such as the niqab once again became de rigueur. Women were not necessarily happy about having to start covering, but there was heavy social pressure to declare one’s commitment to Islam and country.35 The influx of petrodollars and Western culture also spurred changes to clothing styles and sartorial practices.36 Qatari women could increasingly afford luxury purchases. Travel to Europe and the United States and increased access to global media at home exposed Qataris to designer fashion and status-enhancing brands. Whereas abayas and shaylas were once made from inexpensive fabrics, some were now constructed from lavish textiles and produced by world-renowned designers.37 In the late 1990s, as Qatari wealth skyrocketed due to its soaring natural-gas production, women began to enhance unadorned, black abayas with inconspicuous black-on-black patterns and decorations. This soon gave way to colorful jewels, beads, rhinestones, crystals, sequins, silk, and lace, embroidered into increasingly attention-grabbing designs. Accentuated cuffs, collars, and buttons further drew the eye.38 These stylistic alterations resulted in new temporal and social norms that sometimes resembled those of fashion culture in the West, including a desire to keep up with the latest global trends, altering clothing by season, and pressure to discard out-of-date styles. Some contemporary abayas are produced by well-known designers such as Christian Dior and can cost tens of thousands of dollars. New styles are modeled seasonally on runways at fashion shows and trade fairs throughout the Gulf, appearing afterward at high-end retailers such as Harrods and Saks Fifth Avenue. In 2016, the Italian company Dolce & Gabbana launched a line of abayas and shaylas aimed at wealthy Gulf Muslims. The attire was “trimmed in black lace and accessorized with oversized sunglasses, cocktail rings, stilettos, and statement bags.

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The traditional abaya has crossed over to the world of contemporary fashion. (Photo by Geoff Harkness)

Printed daisies, lemons, and roses tie the pieces to beach pajamas and ’50s-housewife dresses.”39 Per custom, counterfeit “knockoff ” versions were soon available. Doha’s shopping malls and retail districts are brimming with Indianand Nepalese-run tailors that cater to affluent women seeking custommade abayas and matching shaylas. More recently, upscale retailers such as My Fair Lady, Zumorrod, and Dary sell exclusive off-rack hijabs to ultrarich female clientele in Qatar. Beginning in 1982 with a small outlet in Souq Waqif, Almotahajiba (which translates as “the veiled woman”) now boasts thirty-six stores throughout the MENA region, including half a dozen in Doha. Almotahajiba’s brand is so sought after that the company features its own cadre of in-house designers. Its Facebook page explains, “Devoted to dressing the modern day Arab woman without them having to compromise their identity, Almotahajiba promises stylish, classy, and beautiful conservative fashions.”40 Those who want to skip the mall can shop on websites such as Modanisa, which receives more than six million visitors every month.

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Based out of Turkey and shipping to seventy-five countries, Modanisa features more than three hundred brands and thirty thousand items, including “modest fashion” dresses, shawls, scarves, sportswear, and accessories. While shoppers are online, they can also follow the tweets and Instagram posts of Hijabtrendz, HauteHijab, HijabChic, and thousands more.

Trajectories to Covering Some Qatari girls begin wearing the hijab as part of a school uniform. Many primary and secondary educational facilities in Doha incorporate hijab practice into the daily student routines. This serves as a training ground for girls, who will presumably go on to wear the hijab in their everyday lives. Ghalia explains, “In Arabic schools, a lot of girls will start wearing the shayla at a really young age. Schools have more of an impact on whether you want to wear the shayla or not than your family. Because that’s where you see your generation and where they’re headed to. You’ll follow them, rather than following your family.” Other females begin covering at the onset of puberty, but some do not start until high school or even college. For adolescent girls, donning the hijab symbolizes their first steps to adulthood. The transition to wearing the hijab is sometimes thought of as occurring overnight, but trajectories to covering are often nonlinear, take place at variable tempos, and are contextually dependent.41 Some women are eager to emulate admired female relatives and quickly move to daily covering in public. Others, however, describe interactive processes that resemble drawn-out negotiations.42 Fits and starts are commonplace. Many recall donning the hijab occasionally or in certain settings before adopting it “full-time.” “My mom opened up the discussion when I was twelve,” says a Qatari named Dana. “I’m like, ‘No, give me one more year.’ The next year, I started wearing it when I went out in public and to school. But there were a few people that I didn’t cover up from until later on, family members. So at first it was a bit, you know, just putting it on, until I actually got used to it, and then I fully committed whenever I felt ready.” Like many females in Doha, Dana insists she was not coerced to cover. Aware of Western stereotypes about Muslim women being forced

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to wear the hijab, many females frame their adornment practices in terms that emphasize freedom, autonomy, and independence. For example, Ghalia recalls, “My family didn’t pressure me into wearing the abaya or shayla, but from my surroundings, I knew I had to wear one. I had a cousin who’s older than me, and I looked up to her, and she wore a shayla around that time too. So it wasn’t really pressure. It was my decision. I didn’t need anyone to tell me to do it. I knew that was the right thing to do, so I did it.” Even women who were required to cover emphasize their personal agency in the process. For example, Letta and her four sisters were instructed to begin covering after high school. “They don’t believe hijab is a choice,” she says of her parents. “They believe it’s mandatory. But we decide when we want to do it.” In families in which nearly all women cover, going against the grain is difficult. “My sisters, my cousins, everyone, all females in my family wear the hijab,” Farida says. “I wanted to wear it because it was the way to make them happy. I wanted them to be proud, then I need to wear it.” By the time a Qatari female reaches age eighteen, even if her relatives take no position on the issue, there is a strong societal expectation that she cover in public. “In Qatar, it’s not acceptable for a girl to be in her late teens and not to wear abaya and shayla,” Muna explains. Janna adds, “If you’re in Qatar, if you’re a Qatari, you have to wear it, or people are gonna eat you alive.” Those who refuse to cover are subject to negative attention from other Qataris. “It’s the thing that defines you as a Qatari, wearing abaya and shayla,” Nisha says. “It’s so weird when you see a Qatari girl not wearing abaya and shayla. You start to suspect if she’s a real Qatari or not. People actually talk about that: ‘She can’t be a Qatari. She just has the name and the passport.’ They say that! This is how far it goes.” Hannah is a Qatari citizen who spent most of her childhood living outside the MENA. Her family returned to Doha when she was in high school. During her senior year, as she prepared to graduate and transition to Georgetown University in Qatar, Hannah was pressured by a classmate to start wearing an abaya. “She was like, ‘Yeah, next year, university, we’re all going to be wearing our abayas. If you don’t wear an abaya, they’re going to think you’re a whore.’ ”

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Not wanting to rock the boat, Hannah wore an abaya—but not a shayla—to an orientation event at Georgetown. A group of Qatari girls who did not recognize Hannah began talking about her in Arabic. Hannah is fluent. “The Qatari girls, they don’t know I speak Arabic. I can hear them talking about me: ‘Who is this girl? Why is she not covering her hair? Who does she think she is? What’s her name? What’s her family name? Is she Qatari?’ I’m like, great.” In the end, Hannah assented to wearing an abaya on campus. On the car ride to and from campus each day, she also wears a shayla, removing it as soon as she steps inside Georgetown’s doors. “I’m anti-abaya,” she tells me. “I think it’s constraining. I’m wearing it until it changes.” Hannah says she would prefer not to have to wear it. When I ask her why she wears it, she replies, “Because it’s culturally unacceptable.” I point out that not wearing the shayla is also culturally unacceptable but she does not wear it. Hannah responds, “Yeah, but I only don’t wear it here, at school.” A few months later, pressured by her Qatari peers at Georgetown, Hannah began wearing a shayla on campus too. Hannah’s trajectory to covering—initial resistance followed by halting assent—is not unique. Looking to avoid reputational damage, most Qatari women eventually acquiesce. The hijab’s interpretive subjectivity, however, leads to considerable variation in how covered women actually accomplish the task of covering. The nascent changes spawned by the designer abaya trend a generation ago have blossomed into a wholesale transformation in hijab practices. In contemporary Doha, many young Qataris sport abayas that are fashionable, formfitting, and worn in a manner that shows off some of the outfit underneath. “The shayla is also worn sophisticatedly high and exposes some of the hair. The traditional garment is increasingly assuming a modern fashionable appearance accessorized with jewelry, designer handbags and high heel shoes, huge and catchy sunglasses. The look is complemented with flawless make up, nails and strenuous perfumes.”43 Hybridity prevails. Muhajababes is the word that the journalist Allegra Stratton uses to describe the modern young women she chronicles while traveling through the MENA. Muhajabah is an Arabic expression for a woman who covers. Stratton’s muhajababes “combined the mod-

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esty of a hijab with some slightly less modest piece of clothing, . . . makeup, stilettos, tight and low-slung hipsters, even plunging necklines.”44

The Abaya Police Changes to the hijab generate complaints that Qataris are covering improperly or for illegitimate reasons. There is disagreement about when and where women are expected to cover.45 There is debate over which styles of abaya are suitable and how much hair is acceptable to display under a shayla.46 “You can go overboard,” Jana insists. “There’s limits to everything. You can’t just walk around and do whatever you want. You have to have respect for people around you and for yourself.” Every facet of the hijab produces some degree of frustration. Toocolorful sleeves upset Eva. Shayla violations are Zoe’s pet peeve. Overly tight waists ruffle Dareen’s feathers. “Some of the girls in abayas are about to explode with how tight they are,” she says. “In my head, I’m like, ‘Okay, that’s definitely not what the abaya is about.’ But they would rather wear it and look like that than take it off because taking it off is a’aib [shameful]. Girls are trying to make it as fashionable as possible.” Other detractors oppose hijab modifications for religious reasons. “It’s not culture; it’s Islam,” Farida insists. “You have to wear it properly.” The hijab is sometimes described as an instrument of male subjugation or as an emblem of generational differences, but there are many young, educated Qatari females with conservative views about the garb. These women practice hijab austerely and adhere to the attire’s supposed principles with precision. For example, Mai wears her shayla so that none of her hair is revealed. “I’m strict,” she says. “The whole point of the shayla is to cover your hair. If I show a little of my hair, I feel like I’m defying myself.” Merely donning an abaya and shayla provides insufficient cover from scrutiny. How a woman wears the hijab may be as important as whether she chooses to do so. According to a Qatari woman named Thana, “They say that the abaya is part of the culture. But the new generation and the way they wear the abaya is actually a bad representation of Islam. It doesn’t represent the culture. They wear the abaya because it’s a’aib, not because it’s haram [sinful]. What are people going to say about us, not what is God going to say about us.”47 Similarly, how a covered woman

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conducts herself in public is monitored. In Doha, it is socially unacceptable for a Qatari to wear the hijab perfectly yet fail to maintain a sense of public decorum. “It’s not just wearing the abaya. It’s also behaving appropriately,” Eva explains. Qataris who practice hijab in a manner that is perceived as unsuitable risk being talked about by others. “We look at them differently. We gossip. We do,” Nisha admits. A Qatari named Muna adds, “To wear this, it’s the norm—if you break it, then something is wrong with you. The girls that don’t wear their shayla but still wear the abaya, they’re looked at as not very good people or people acting outside of the norm. Typical Qatari people, who are constricted by the culture, they’ll look at them like they’re doing something wrong or something taboo.” Violations of female sartorial norms result in a constellation of negative sanctions, corrective efforts intended to rectify the transgression. Family, friends, and colleagues apply overt and subtle measures of social control. “My cousins, they pressure me,” Ghalia says. “Sometimes, if I have my abaya half open, they tell me, ‘You should close it all the way.’ ” As with expatriates, several women describe being stopped by strangers in public and reprimanded for their clothing. “There is a very loud minority, the crazy women you encounter in the malls,” Tabina says. “These women go up to you and say, ‘Hey, your hair, your abaya. Honor your heritage. Put it on properly.’ The abaya police. Most of them are Qatari.” Letta was walking in a mall one afternoon when a man shouted at her to cover her face. “He was so mean to me. It wasn’t direct. It was like as he was walking, he was throwing the words. I didn’t respond. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but it kind of scared me.” Disregarding such feedback is inadvisable; the hijab affects a woman’s public and private identities, how strangers treat her, and her position within her community. At worst, it can damage her family’s economic and social standing. Thus, it is not just women who are impacted by the hijab. Men’s status is also at stake. The community judges an uncle whose niece does not cover. He is talked about and may lose status. Fathers, husbands, and brothers are similarly affected, adding to the strain felt by all. Finally, a woman’s reputation is partly dependent on how others perceive her adornment practices. “Reputation is important to both men and women but specifically women,” Deema says. “Here, we have ar-

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ranged marriages. If they ask about a woman, and they say that she doesn’t wear her hijab [properly], the odds are she’s not gonna get married.” Adds Ghalia, “In our Qatari culture, it is very important to wear an abaya because it says a lot about you and how you want to represent yourself to society. People will look down on you if you don’t wear an abaya. They’ll think you’re not a respectable girl, and it kind of ruins your reputation. If you want to get married, then a lot of men will want conservative girls who wear their abaya.”

Every Qatari Girl’s Secret Many Qatari women have a love-hate relationship with the hijab that influences their sartorial beliefs, values, and practices. “There are things I love about abaya, things I love about not wearing abaya,” a Qatari woman named Jumana explains. “When I take off my abaya, it feels good to not have that weight on me. But then when I’m not wearing my abaya, I feel like, ‘Oh, I wish I could have just thrown it on.’ ” Pro-hijab Qatari women claim to enjoy wearing the attire and insist they cover out of personal choice. They describe advantages such as never having to pick out something to wear, not having to spend time doing their hair, and getting to covertly walk around in comfortable clothing all day. “If you need to go to the grocery store, you can just put it on top of your pajamas and go,” Dana explains. “No one will notice.” Adds Tabina, “A lot of times I wear pj’s to school. Every Qatari girl’s secret.” “Relaxed,” Deema says when asked how she feels wearing her hijab. “I feel safe. I feel like not every detail of my body is showing. Wearing the abaya and the shayla makes me feel comfortable.” Some Qataris claim that the hijab enhances their attractiveness, pointing out, for example, shaylas wrapped to accentuate and draw the gaze toward facial features, highlighting the wearer’s beauty.48 Many swear that abayas render them taller and conceal bodily imperfections. “It makes me look thinner because it’s black,” Janna says. “It’s big, so no one can actually see my size.” Western stereotypes conceptualize the hijab as all-concealing garments that strip women of agency. Some Qatari women express concerns along these lines, but many emphasize the attire’s capacity to

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liberate and reveal. Such responses align the hijab with female attractiveness and personal freedom, concepts that are diametrically opposed to hijab typecasting. Other Qatari women comply with national sartorial norms because they feel like they have no choice. For example, teachers forced one Qatari to wear a head scarf all through middle school, despite her protests. Twenty-year-old Muna wears an abaya at the urging of her parents, against her wishes. When asked how she feels when she puts it on, Muna says, “Not happy, forced to do something.” When asked how she feels when she does not wear it, she replies, “Freedom. Obviously, I feel good.” When asked what role the abaya plays in her life, she says, “Nothing, a prison. I feel like it’s a reminder of what society expects me to do. I’m a female, and I have reputation. There’s a lot of other social prisons that I’m in, and this abaya is only a reminder of it.” Muna says she will continue to cover. “I’ve been wearing it for the past nine years. Because of the social pressure, I can’t really take it off. I’ve been protecting my reputation, the valuable thing girls have here. If I don’t wear it, I’m destroying my reputation, destroying what I’ve been protecting the past nine years. So I want to take it off, but I won’t take it off.” Though the number is relatively small, there are Qatari women who refuse to cover. Nahla explains, “My parents want me to, but I don’t want to personally. I’m not very religious; I know other people would judge me for that, and I don’t say it to many people, but I’m not a big believer in hijab.”49 The hijab is often viewed through a lens of constraint, but it is more flexible than many critics assume. The clothing’s fluidity is illustrated by its myriad variants as a material object, “from the way the garments are tied, pinned, wrapped or draped to their color arrangements, patterns and sizes. The specific nature of the dress involved can vary considerably among different schools of legal interpretation, sects, and cultural backgrounds.”50 A fallacy of hijab scholarship is to dichotomize the experience: women either cover or they do not.51 In practice, considerable activity takes place between these poles. For example, there are temporal adjustments. Women who do not practice hijab might suddenly begin to cover. Those who wear simple, black abayas might start to sport cloaks that feature elaborate patterns. Others abandon the clothing, only to

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start wearing it again at a later time. Tabina altered the way she wore her head covering and then changed it again. “I used to wear the shayla more strictly, but that was just a phase.” A raft of studies chronicle individual-level variation in hijab practices: a woman removes her niqab to deter overzealous security at a London airport; in the UAE, young women who typically wear head scarves put on niqabs in busy public areas; a woman who does not usually wear a shayla covers her head at the mall because she is “out in a very public space”; her friend wears Western clothes during workouts but covers up with an abaya on the way to the gym and back; in Egypt, women remove their head coverings during arguments with men to “dramatize a point”; the runway models at a Doha fashion show continuously “veiled and deveiled themselves on stage to entertain the audience.”52 The fluidity of the hijab also extends to its ideology, the belief systems that surround it. For example, many Muslim women cover for religious reasons, but even devout Muslims sometimes profess that the hijab has nothing to do with Islam. “There is no part in the Quran that says every woman should wear a hijab,” a non-Qatari woman opines. “It says every woman should be modest and not wear revealing clothes. I can wear the hijab and the abaya and go to the mosque and pray five times a day, but I can be a prostitute at the same time. So being clean and [pure] in your heart is more important than how you dress.” The hijab’s ubiquity and flexibility increase its effectiveness as a site of resistance, conformity, and negotiation, including responses to modernity and Westernization. To assuage concerns about cultural erosion, covered women seek ways to display their collective national identity, while retaining a sense of individual style. They do so through hijab micropractices.

Hijab Micropractices In Qatar, women consciously modify, adjust, reimagine, and remove their hijabs to suit changing circumstances. These hijab micropractices— women’s strategic and situational use of traditional Muslim clothing—are at times so infinitesimal that they are easy to overlook. They are multifarious and range on a continuum that engenders considerable mutability. They reveal that so-called covered women spend a good portion of their

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day-to-day lives uncovered, sometimes in public or semipublic settings. Hijab micropractices are widespread—virtually all covered women rely on them to some degree. Hijab micropractices are significant because they enable women to reconcile the conflicting burdens of tradition and modernity. Examining these processes more closely reveals how Qataris integrate modern traditionalism into material objects and cultural practices.

The Situational Use of the Hijab Covered Qatari women wear the hijab situationally. They don and remove abayas and shaylas in public, semipublic, and private settings to suit changing circumstances. In private locations, such as the home, females generally do not cover. This includes being uncovered around close male relatives, such as fathers and brothers. “When you’re out in public and there’s a lot of people, I try to not talk as loud or laugh as loud,” says a Qatari named Dana. “If you’re home, you have more privacy, so obviously you act differently. You have more freedom; you’re with yourself or friends and family.” Yet even within the seclusion of their own living quarters, not all women are free to remove their hijabs unconditionally. For example, some females cover if unrelated men or certain male relatives, such as cousins, come to their houses. This may be because these men are potential marital suitors, and it is unacceptable for women to be uncovered under such conditions (see chapter 5). “Some people don’t wear shayla around their cousins, which is haram,” Nisha says. “I’m very strict. I stick with the rules. With my uncles, it’s fine.” As Nisha illustrates, in Qatar, women partly regulate their clothing on the basis of the presence or absence of certain males. Tara, the Tunisian basketball player, tells me how her team determines what to wear on the basis of whether male referees or fans will be able to see them play. “Since we are all veiled, if there are no males, we just wear regular shorts and jerseys, and we wouldn’t wear our scarves. But if there are males, we have to cover up altogether: long sleeves, pants, and a scarf that’s appropriate for sports.” Qatar’s culture of sex segregation means that women have regular opportunities to interact in settings where no males are present:

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female-only parties, homes, “ladies clubs,” or private dining rooms in restaurants.53 “There’s an underdeveloped public culture,” says a Sri Lankan expatriate who has lived in Doha for a decade. “There’s no theater, no music, no film. But in terms of women’s communities, you could spend your entire week going to weddings, going to parties, dinners.” Women also gather at majlis, semipublic reception rooms where several generations of females gather to discuss social and political issues.54 Women intentionally build sex-specific visits into their everyday routines: “It is a common practice for Qatari women to invite each other to meals and to gather daily in each other’s homes to communicate, celebrate, and share ideas.”55 In such settings, some women remove their hijabs to reveal Western designer wear in bold colors, tight jeans, miniskirts, and low-cut blouses.56 “In the West, they think we have no sense of fashion, but we wear clothes better than they do,” says Janna, a Qatari. “Because we wear abayas, we take time to think about what we wear. My friends’ gatherings, we like to dress up, so I wear clothes like I’m going to a party in New York. We play music and video games, and we wear those outfits that we would never wear anywhere else, big jackets and glittery stuff.” The alteration in clothing is sometimes accompanied by psychological and behavioral shifts as well. Females describe these settings as liberating, relaxing, freer, and more comfortable. As a result, women take up more physical and symbolic space. They laugh, dance, and tell jokes. “When you wear hijab in a public place, especially if it’s a [gender] mixed place, you have to be careful not to laugh loudly or laugh in a certain way,” says a Qatari woman named Deema. “You have to have certain manners. You have to be this poised woman who does everything in a grand way. If I’m sitting with my family, with my friends, and there are no guys, I can laugh at the top of my lungs. I can have as much fun as I want. I can get up and start dancing.” Research on the hijab tends to dichotomize the public and private spheres, but there are a number of public or semipublic settings where covered women remove their abayas and shaylas. For example, some female athletes who practice hijab in their day-to-day lives remove it while playing sports, even in unrestricted settings. Most of the athletes substitute their everyday hijab attire with functionally similar sports-

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wear, but some set aside their usual practices and don Western-style shorts and T-shirts. Some female students at Education City leave the house covered but then remove the abaya and/or shayla once they arrive on campus. Upon leaving, they put the covering back on. Those students do not conceive of the campus as public space, the locations where women are most heavily scrutinized for their appearance. Nor do they treat Education City as if it is a private home where anything goes. Rather, they describe Education City as a liminal space, not completely private but not public either. Weddings are semipublic events where covered women remove their hijabs. They do so because Qatari weddings are typically sex segregated. Other than a brief, late-evening appearance by the groom and male members of the wedding party, weddings are separate affairs for women and men. These tend to be lavish, expensive events held in the ballrooms of luxury hotels and similar semipublic venues. To ensure that no men witness the women without their hijabs, male staff members are barred from areas of the hotel where the female portion of the weddings take place.57 Weddings generate a good deal of excitement, with months of planning and preparation. In a small community where everyone seemingly knows each other, it is common to have one thousand guests on hand. At public events that will be spent mostly without the abaya and shayla to demarcate them as citizens, Qatari women spend top dollar to stand out. During the annual wedding season, wealthy Qatari women purchase a new dress for each of these semipublic events.58 “You can’t not wear a dress,” a Qatari woman explains. “If you wear pants, oh God. They talk about you if you wear anything; it’s Doha. I would be like, ‘Oh Lord, who the fuck comes in wearing pants?’ Like, seriously? When you go to a wedding, it’s not like going to a normal wedding. It’s like going to a fashion show.” No detail is left to chance, including the abayas and shaylas women wear briefly that evening as they stroll from vehicle to venue. “My mom says, ‘You’re going to look extra beautiful. It’s better if you cover up,’ ” Letta explains. So that wedding abayas do not wrinkle or compromise the dress underneath, they are generally larger and looser than dailywear abayas. Women sometimes match the abaya to their evening gown.

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“It has to be a really nice abaya, a formal one kind of, for the wedding,” a Qatari female explains. “It’s better than what you usually wear. Usually I have a little bit of design. But if it’s for a wedding, it has more designs. It looks more grand.” Another describes a wedding abaya as “much more sparkly and bedazzled, but it’s tasteful and a limited amount of stuff. And it’s way looser.” Shaylas, too, are worn loosely, so as not to compromise the extravagant, costly hairdos underneath. Travel outside Qatar provides an extended opportunity for covered women to remove their hijabs in public. Being Qatari is not a status that is recognized or respected much beyond the borders of Qatar. The nation’s historically uneasy relationship with its Gulf neighbors creates problems within the region, and presenting oneself as a Muslim Arab in traditional attire outside the MENA spawns a separate set of issues. Because of this, travel produces a subset of hijab micropractices that differ from those that women apply at home. When voyaging to other Gulf nations, most women who cover remain covered. Some adopt more restrictive clothing policies upon entering countries such as Saudi Arabia that they perceive as more conservative. These same women remove their abaya and/or shayla when traveling to territories in the MENA region that they consider to be more liberal. This sartorial code switching is a familiar sight to those who regularly fly between Middle Eastern countries—females donning or removing head wear, abayas, and burqas in congruence with local customs. Most Qatari women remove their hijabs completely when traveling to North America, Europe, or Australia. They describe the West as more liberal but also a place where it is unusual to wear the hijab. They are reluctant to stand out by doing so. Beyond Qatar’s borders, the hijab does not signify elite national status but an oft-marginalized religion. Several Qataris recall being treated negatively for wearing abayas and/or shaylas in major cities in Europe and the United States. “I’ve been called a pig,” Nisha recalls. “I was in Germany, and I was just about to get in a taxi, and a guy was like, ‘Move out, pigs!’ Because I’m Muslim. It’s a stereotype: Muslims are terrorists after 9/11.” More common are strange looks and microexpressions that convey fear and distrust. “Wearing abaya in the United States is a little unheard of,” Jumana says. “People give you dirty looks.”

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Retaining Islamic practices, even upon removing the hijab completely, is important to many Qatari women. When traveling to the West, they substitute their hijab with attire that is functionally similar. They replace cloaks with loose clothing that covers their arms and legs and hides their figures. They cover their hair, exchanging the shayla for a hat or some other form of head covering. Such actions enable women to remain true to their religious and/or cultural beliefs, while adjusting to the sartorial norms of the new setting. These practices are sometimes influenced by family members who pressure women to dress conservatively when traveling to the West. A small number of Qataris continue to cover no matter where they travel. There are also certain locations in the West where women continue to cover, largely due to the changing demographics of those destinations. For example, several participants point to London as a city where the Arab population has grown so large that wearing an abaya or shayla is no longer unusual. “I’ve worn the abaya in London,” Mai explains. “I didn’t get any stares, just because London is so filled with Arabs. I can’t go to any street without bumping into someone I know or my mom knows. London is now part of my home, something that has part of our culture in it. We go there every year, so it’s something we’re comfortable with. We’ve already pushed our culture in, and it’s just normal now.” Others intentionally avoid London precisely because there are so many Arabs, including Qataris. For these women, London has become too much like Doha, with its expectations to cover and pervasive scrutiny. When traveling abroad, some Qatari women relish the chance to discard their hijabs and wear attire they view as stylish and modern. They link these behaviors to freedom and individual expression. Some enjoy being noticed, showing off their clothes and wearing them in a way that reveals their bodies. “Honestly, I really like it,” Farida says of traveling to Europe. “I go, ‘Ooh yea, I’m going to wear this, I’m going to wear that, and everyone’s going to see what I’m wearing this time.’ And people get really surprised when I don’t wear my abaya—they’re like, ‘Ooh, you’re so skinny.’ ” Others revel in the chance to take part in activities that they can’t do when they’re covered. “Running, riding a bicycle—that’s why I love traveling,” Nisha says. “I can bungee jump; I can do everything I want. I wouldn’t run here in Qatar, because if I even take off my shayla, it’s weird.”

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Adjustments and Modifications to the Hijab In addition to the situational use of hijab, there are also a multiplicity of large and small adjustments women make to the articles of clothing themselves. Perhaps the most apparent is wearing different styles of abayas to suit different occasions. More often than not, the attire is decorated in some manner, enabling women to adhere to the traditional tenets of Islam and the societal expectation that they cover, while still appearing fashionable, modern, and distinctive. “You can get really creative with your abaya,” Janna says. “I can express myself in a nice way. I add color—dark colors are more classy.” A Qatari woman named Shannon customizes her abaya to match various locations and events. “I have different abayas for university, different for visiting, different for weddings. Each place has a different design. For university, I only like strict, black designs, but for a wedding, more colors, more sequins. For Eid, I choose a design for the abaya that matches my dress.” Virtually all female Qataris own at least one unadorned, black, “casual” abaya, which is considered conservative and understated. Most young women do not wear these garments frequently, but certain occasions call for them. There are traditionalists who only wear unembellished abayas, but it is described as rare for a Qatari woman to wear abayas that do not feature some sort of design. Females from petrofamilies describe casual abayas as unfashionable and reject them in favor of more expressive attire. Designer abayas are the quintessence of modern traditionalism, a material embodiment of conventional and contemporary melded. As the Arab cultures scholar Christina Lindholm writes, “The fashion abaya and shayla now bridge the gap between traditional ethnic garb and modern international fashionable dress, regaining religious and cultural expression, while also expressing fashionability, individuality, and wealth.”59 Designer abayas are functional because they enable Qatari women to maintain traditional standards while simultaneously enjoying the benefits of modernity. “Modesty is displaced, whereas the symbolism of the veil—the visual signifier of modesty—continues to be upheld,” opines the hijab scholar Noor Al-Qasimi.60 Or, as Mohja Kahf phrases it, designer abayas enable young professional women to “have the cake of modernity and eat the prestige of tradition too.”61

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In addition to wearing an assortment of abayas to suit different occasions, women also vary how they wear abayas. For example, some sport them partially or fully unzipped and open, similar to a black trench coat, displaying the designer outfits underneath. Some contemporary abayas are sheer from just below the knees to the ground, enabling wearers to show off more of their clothes, shoes, and legs. Trends such as wearing leggings under abayas come and go. Women also use accessories to individualize their outfits. Handbags, shoes, jewelry, makeup, perfume, shoes, sunglasses, purses, henna, and even cell phones are status markers that enable women to distinguish themselves from others. Accessories allow even the most conservative Qatari female to enjoy some flexibility, agency, and individuality. Adjustments can be made in real time, based on setting. “In the mall, I’m strict,” Tabina says. “I wear it properly. My abaya wouldn’t be fully open. But at university, it’s open. At weddings, it’s usually take the abaya straight off and show your gown. At parties, people wear short dresses, so you put it on until you’re in the house and then take it off.” Some women use belts to fasten an abaya tightly around the waist, accentuating rather than concealing the figure.62 Also adjusted are sleeves, which can be decorated with various materials and manipulated to be “full, tight from elbow to wrist, flowing or flaring at the wrists.”63 Many Qatari women are circumspect about abayas that they describe as too tight, ornate, revealing, or extreme. But the symbolic boundary between acceptable and unacceptable is drawn individually. Influenced by their families and their own sartorial practices and experiences, the women create rules tailored to their personal beliefs and behaviors. These standards fluctuate even for individuals, who modify their clothing in real time to fit changing contexts. Nisha wears her abaya unzipped at Education City but adjusts if men are on hand. “I wear my abaya loose because it’s a different environment here,” she says. “I don’t mind walking with my abaya open. If there’s a man around, I try my best to be strict. As long as it’s covering the haram [body] parts, it’s fine. There are certain rules for certain places.” Tabina alters her abaya depending on the level of religiosity of those with whom she interacts. When she is around people whom she perceives to be highly religious, she zips up. “I cover it properly and act properly in front of them out of respect,” she explains “When you

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wear the abaya and shayla, even if you’re not [strict about it] in your heart, you have to show some respect.” Tabina distinguishes between her relatively lax personal sartorial codes and the stricter norms of those whom she considers to be more religious, and adjusts her abaya accordingly. Jumana regulates based on the setting and the people in it. “It just depends on the place,” she says. “Go to a mall, there’s more people harassing you for the way you dress. If you’re going to a place where there’s much more older people, they’re more conservative. Out of respect, you have to be more covered up. But if you’re going to a place where it’s more open-minded, there are more younger people of different nationalities, I’m much more lenient in the way I dress.” Like abayas, there is also variation in how Qatari women wear shaylas. Conservative women wrap their shaylas tightly around their heads, pulled close to the eye line, ensuring that no hair or jewelry is visible. Relatively liberal women wear their shaylas loosely, covering some of the hair but not the remainder of the facial area. Jewelry may be visible. The scarves have a tendency to creep toward the back of the head, so women adjust them dozens of times per day to keep them in place. “If you see me in the beginning of the day, you’d see me repeatedly fixing it,” Tabina says. “Then I just get tired of every two seconds fixing it. If some Qatari guy walked in right now, I’d probably fix it. If it’s a foreign guy, it depends. I really don’t care.” How far back on the hairline a woman wears her shayla communicates her level of conservatism and/or religiosity. The more visible the hair, the less conservative and/or religious the woman. “As soon as you see a girl wearing a shayla with the front of her hair showing, you know she’s not that strict,” Maryam explains. “As soon as her shayla falls off or something, she’ll be completely fine with it. But then there are some girls who wear their shayla like this [puts hand across eyebrow line]. And then you can tell she’s covered for religious reasons.” It is all part of the changing times, says Deema. “There were rules when I was younger, but now everyone wears it in their own way. Before it was like, ‘She’s a bad woman because she shows her hair.’ Now it’s just normal.” As with the abaya, there are women who are opposed to revealing any part of their hair, often for religious reasons. Deema explains matter-of-factly, “In religion, you don’t show your hair, so I don’t show

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my hair. The whole purpose of it is not to let it show. I don’t feel comfortable when it shows—I have to cover it up.” Qatari women sometimes utilize hijab micropractices in strategic ways to signify their status as citizens. For example, in contrast to heavily embellished abayas, Qatari females almost universally wear black shaylas. “It’s very rare to see a Qatari person with a colored scarf,” Muna explains. “Usually foreigners wear colored scarves. So if you are a Qatari and you’re a wearing colored scarf, it’s not the norm.” Standards for how and when to wear a shayla are not collectively agreed upon. Some women find it necessary to wear a shayla but not an abaya. Others believe the opposite: that abayas are compulsory but shaylas are not. These practices are situational and adjusted based on context.

Embodying Modern Traditionalism Hijab micropractices are symbolic forms of communication that assume multifarious meanings in a range of settings. They serve several interactive and expressive functions. Micropractices are a tool for flirtation, a way to discourage unwanted male advances, an instrument of resistance, and a platform on which any number of political or social views can be expressed. Similar to gang members, who use clothing to selectively display and conceal alliances and ideologies, Muslim women employ hijab micropractices to convey or conceal their nationality, level of religiosity, political ideology, devotion to family, agency, and sexuality.64 The fashionable abaya offers a potent visual illustration of modern traditionalism as it intersects with national identity. In the same manner that the government fuses conventional and contemporary into Doha’s public art and architecture, Qatari women use hijab micropractices to integrate and express modern traditionalism in their adornment practices. This results in a socially acceptable national identity that maximizes personal and professional autonomy. Qatari women’s use of modern traditionalism in sartorial practices is not passive. It is active embodiment that goes beyond putting on clothes and going about one’s day. The dynamic expression of modern traditionalism enables women not merely to echo and reinforce the narrative but also to challenge and alter it. Women do so by modifying their abayas in ways that align traditional clothing with contemporary global fashion—

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and contemporary global ideals. Through micropractices, a uniform is transformed into attire that emphasizes individuality. It is misguided, however, to presume that Qatari women freely choose from an unlimited array of options. The narrative of modern traditionalism promotes agency and personal choice, yet the choices available to Qatari women, like women elsewhere, are constrained by a socioeconomic structure built on institutions such as patriarchy, religion, family, the system of education, and the government. Furthermore, while these articles of clothing are designed and worn in ways that render them contemporary, they are simultaneously conventional.65 Qatari females from petrofamilies are heavy consumers of Western popular culture and are wholly aware of Western stereotypes about covered Muslim females from the Gulf.66 In rejecting such assessments, women emphasize modern traditionalism’s theme of female empowerment. For example, Mai says, “I hate the misconceptions: some girls are forced to wear the abaya and shayla; we’re being oppressed; we’re being held down. It’s just not the case. A lot of girls want to do it just for themselves and for their own religion’s sake. I hate that people from the West assume that Arab women are oppressed and they don’t know what’s happening and they’re dumb and they just go with whatever the men want—which is so not true! It happens, but that’s not the true Arab woman. The Arab women in my life are nothing like that. My mom is a force to reckon with—she’ll do what she wants, when she wants. She doesn’t care if she gets any judgment; she doesn’t care about any other opinion. If she wants it, she gets it.” Many young Qatari women point to Sheikha Moza as emblematic of the modern-yet-traditional woman, an empowered female who effortlessly balances contemporary and conventional in her sartorial choices. Some of the most popular hijab micropractices in Qatar are practiced by Moza in a visible, public manner. Moza is known for wearing abayas and shaylas in Doha but donning contemporary designer wear when traveling abroad. Her ensembles are usually complemented by a matching scarf, pushed far back on her head to expose her hairline. Pundits such as @SheikhaMozahFashion provide photos and commentary for every outfit she wears, and Moza has spent so much time on Vanity Fair’s International Best-Dressed List that she is a member of its fashion hall of fame.

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In the press, Moza’s signature style is nearly always linked to achievement and female empowerment. For example, in a 2018 New York Times profile, Declan Walsh writes that Moza is “one of the most famous people in the Arab world, known for her glittering gowns, ageless looks and advocacy of education and social issues.”67 Qatari women make virtually identical remarks, merging Moza’s fashion sense with her professional achievements. Qataris frame this rhetoric using elements of modern traditionalism that include education, freedom, family, cultural heritage, and female empowerment. Moza, who earned an undergraduate degree in sociology from Qatar University, is praised for her humanitarian efforts at home and abroad, commitment to education, tireless work ethic, and ability to “do it all” and still raise a family. Drawing on Sheikha Moza’s example, many of the covered Qatari women employ micropractices that align their sartorial choices to desirable elements of modern traditionalism. Moza’s high-profile hijab micropractices legitimize the micropractices of her devotees. Some Doha-based women view Sheikha Moza as a change agent visà-vis the hijab. Hannah, who dislikes wearing an abaya and shayla in her day-to-day life, says that Moza is the one person who can eliminate Qatar’s social dictate that female citizens cover. “We’re ready for it, but society is not ready for it,” she tells me. “Someone has to do it first. They need to see it happen from a figure they all trust, from a figure they believe. Sheikha Moza could do it. The next day, believe me, it would be over. When the change happens, I’ll be the first one to take it off.” The embeddedness of modern traditionalism in hijab micropractices underscores how governments and other agents attribute meaning to material objects, including clothing, to further their political and economic agendas. The Qatari leadership’s advocacy for modern traditionalism generally and the hijab specifically encourages women to embrace and display national identity via bodily adornment. The widespread use of hijab micropractices in Doha illustrates the degree to which the Qatari government’s narrative is internalized by its female citizens, who then externalize it in their sartorial discourse and practices.68 Hijab micropractices are mechanisms by which modern traditionalism and national identity are integrated into Qatar’s sartorial codes. Like the white thobe for men, the abaya and shayla affirm national identity and support the government’s economic agenda. Significantly,

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the national attire is primarily worn in Qatar, the only place in the world it carries such importance. Even the emir usually removes his thobe when he leaves the country. At home, collective sartorial displays of Qatari national identity are continuously integrated into every sector of society. As the significance of nationality grows, the power and influence of Qatar’s long-standing tribes are reduced. Through this process, the supremacy of Al Thani is affirmed. Ultimately, the widespread wearing of the national uniform in Qatar further serves the interests of the Al Thani dynasty.

5

Venus and Mahrs Dating, Sex, and Marriage

My wife and I walk along the shoreline one afternoon, near the Katara Cultural Village, careful to maintain a “respectable” distance from each other. We stop at the entrance of Katara Beach, one of the few public beaches in Doha.1 Public does not always mean free—or public for that matter. Some beaches charge admission fees that effectively bar lowwage migrant workers. Located on either side of the entrance is a pair of tall signs that contain lists of rules for using the beach, twenty-five or thirty of them altogether. Most are standard policies: no glass bottles, no horseplay in the water. A few are culturally specific: no photography, women are required to wear long T-shirts and shorts over their bathing suits, which cannot be bikinis. Then there is a decree that “Unruly Behavior Will Not Be Tolerated.” Next to those words are male and female stick figures, holding hands. A red “no” slash runs diagonally across the middle. Holding hands is against the rules in Doha, but dating is illegal. According to the government’s national development strategy, “Marriage is the foundation leading to the formation of Qatari families. In Qatari society premarital relationships are prohibited.”2 This does not mean there is no dating among single adults in Doha. For professional-class non-Muslim expatriates, there is an active singles scene with ample opportunity to form short- and long-term relationships. If the parties involved do not make a spectacle of themselves in public, their pairing is unlikely to provoke much attention. An online Q&A with an American schoolteacher provides a snapshot of the “dating market” in Doha: There are a lot more expat males employed here than females. The difference in males/females in terms of numbers gives some advantage to a woman who is looking to be in the dating market. I find the opportunities 158

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are better for me than back home in the Midwest. . . . If I wanted to find something long-term, I could find someone who is successful, if that was my goal, but it isn’t. I have only dated one guy, but it would easy to date others—even much younger than me! Even 22-year-olds are interested in me, and I’m in my 30s. It’s easy to be involved with someone who has short-term intentions. . . . When you go out as a single woman, it’s hard to not be approached by a man.3

For single Muslims, however, interaction between unmarried males and females is believed to lead to fitna, an Arabic term denoting social disorder. The Quran contains strong prohibitions against fitna, describing it as worse than death.4 This influences courtship-related attitudes and practices in Qatar. “Here we don’t have this notion of dating,” says Fatima, a Muslim woman who moved to Doha from Morocco at age fifteen. “If a guy and a girl impress each other, then they get to know each other more, but in a controlled environment. We don’t have this notion of the guy taking out the girl on a date or sitting alone at a place with her.” The social and economic transformations that have occurred in Qatar over the past several decades have impacted virtually every aspect of life, including patterns related to dating, sexuality, and marriage. In the West, dating enjoys widespread cultural acceptance and is often viewed as occurring for its own sake, a path to self-actualization rather than a route to marriage.5 In particular, eighteen- to twenty-five-year-old “emerging adults” date and “hook up” well before entertaining thoughts of wedlock.6 This has led to (and is reflective of) a number of socioeconomic and cultural trends in the West, including delaying the age at which males and females first marry. For example, in contrast to previous generations, fewer than 25 percent of Americans now marry for the first time before the age of twenty-five.7 At the same time, dating allows young people to assess potential suitors for more committed relationships—some variant of courtship precedes virtually all marriages in the West.8 Emerging adults in Qatar are not immune from these shifting relational patterns, which diffuse to Doha via popular culture, social media, and interaction with Westerners at home and abroad. Dating is desirable for some, but Muslims in Qatar encounter legal, social, and cultural

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restrictions. These are buoyed by urban myths about authoritarian state control of would-be paramours. For example, a twenty-something woman insists, “If you’re on the streets and you look suspicious or anything, the police have the right to stop you. And they’ll interrogate you and take you to the police station until the girl’s parents come and take her. If a nonQatari girl’s found in a car with a Qatari guy, she can be deported.” Such fears lead to familial interference, particularly for young women, whose interactions with males are controlled. According to a Qatari named Nasser, restrictions can include limits on all communal engagement. “Here in conservative environment, in Qatar, women are kind of suppressed with the families,” he says. “They tend to stay at home more, not participate or be in public where everyone can see them.” Some scholars assert that Doha’s rapid growth and development has made Qataris feel less secure and more insular. Increased social and spatial distance between Qataris and expatriates created by modernization reduces opportunities for young people to make the acquaintance of potential spouses outside their own families.9 A Qatari woman named Wadha explains, “In our society, girls are more exposed to boys that are their relatives than to strangers, and this leads them to develop feelings for each other and eventually decide to get married.” Some females are pressured to marry and have children at an early age. From 2010 to 2017, 4 percent of all unions in Qatar were classified as “child marriages,” referring to women who were married or in a union before their eighteenth birthday.10 For nuptials among Qataris in 2018, nearly 13 percent involved females under twenty years of age, compared to about 9 percent for all other nationalities in the country.11 For women who want to avoid marrying in their teens, college offers a viable alternative, one that tends to be met with familial and community assent. Furthermore, university degrees carry prestige and make women more appealing on the marriage market. “At the age of eighteen or nineteen, women start to think they’re gonna get married soon,” a Qatari man named Hamad says. “They focus more on their studies. The better grades they get, the more reputation they have. Because when you get married in our culture, you’ll be looked at in terms of your education and how good of a person you are.” Some Qatari females use college as a way to get out of the house.12 Rather than staying home, being scrutinized by family members and

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pressured to marry, young women can spend their emerging adulthoods at university campuses earning degrees, socializing with friends, and enhancing their marital prospects. Government data show that this group is increasingly unlikely to work after graduation. From 2008 to 2015, the workforce participation rate for college-educated Qatari women dropped more than 37 percent.13 For new Qatari marriages recorded in 2018, more than 60 percent of the females reported no occupation.14 A key draw for Education City is its supposedly Westernized atmosphere, which offers young people unparalleled opportunities to interact with members of the opposite sex, away from vigilant family members and other authority figures. No areas of the campus are sex segregated other than the bathrooms, prayer rooms, and dormitories. “Education City has some rules and laws which are very different from the Qatar laws,” an Indian student named Ramaz says, adding, “You can sit down with girls, you can converse with them, you can hang out with them, you can chill out with them.” This took some getting used to for Sayed, who grew up attending boys-only schools in Sri Lanka. “All my life, up to grade eleven, I had been in segregated schooling systems,” he recalls. “I was still not fully comfortable being with female students, so it was different.” At Education City, undergraduates occasionally meet up privately in the campus’s nooks and crannies. Faculty and administration tend to look the other way; students claim they have to avoid meddlesome security guards who patrol at all hours. The Western branch institutions are hesitant to formulate official policies on these matters but generally include admonitions to obey local laws and customs. Student housing policy at Education City’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University forbids what it calls “unbecoming conduct”: “Interactions in public view with the opposite gender which may be deemed culturally inappropriate are prohibited (examples include, but are not limited to, public displays of affection, holding hands, and kissing).”15 Education City is Plato’s Retreat compared to Qatar University, the conservative state institution on the other side of town. Established in 1973, QU, as it is called, features a completely sex-segregated campus, including separate libraries. Sixty-five percent of its fourteen thousand students are Qatari.16 In Doha, QU is known for its restrictive dress code, whose clothing prohibitions are precisely detailed. “Fad hair

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styles, [which include] unnatural coloring of hair, dreadlocks, or unconventional cuts, are not permitted. Visible tattoos must be completely covered.”17 Some families send their children to QU to keep them from interacting with members of the opposite sex. This includes limited contact with faculty and staff. In a list of suggested “do’s and don’ts,” a QU handbook for new employees warns, “Don’t shake hands with the nationals [of the] opposite sex. It is generally viewed unfavorable whether in a business or a social context, unless he/she extends hands first.”18

Dating in Doha Young adults from time immemorial have invented ways to skirt sexual impediments, and it is no different in Doha, where plenty of surreptitious hookups take place under the radar. Security inside the shopping malls is tight, but their colossal parking lots provide ample concrete for cruising. As elsewhere, young people use technology to connect online and meet up in person. Letta, a Qatari, describes how she and her best friend adjust their clothing to suit such activities. “If me and her are going cruising in the car, we don’t wear our shaylas, we don’t wear our abayas. But if we’re going into a mall, we wear it.” In a memoir of adolescent life in Qatar, The Girl Who Fell to Earth, Sophia Al-Maria describes an illicit—and largely innocent—relationship with a teenage Qatari schoolmate. Their trysts involve a succession of elaborate ruses, clandestine love letters, and meet-up tactics designed to outwit teachers and family members. “The Gulf is an inhospitable place for young lovers,” Al-Maria writes. “The subterfuge involved gave even the most chaste relationship a contraband quality.” These tactics are necessary because the punishment for being caught is severe. “One dropped note in a hallway could lead directly to our expulsion, public humiliation, and the wrath of his parents, my family, and both our tribes.”19 The teenage maneuverings that Al-Maria recounts have not changed much over the years, but the technology is better today. A citizen named Maryam tells me, “I see Qatari girls who aren’t allowed to do so many things. They have to wear the abaya and shayla; they aren’t allowed to go on school trips. Then I’ll be on Facebook, and I’ll see that they just went

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to the 1:00 a.m. [movie] at City Center [mall] with a bunch of guys— because their parents don’t know that’s what they’re doing.” Due to parental apprehensions at home and a larger culture of sex segregation, it is common for Doha singles to have a relationship that takes place entirely via social media or text.20 Some texters meet up in a room rented under the male’s name at a luxury hotel or see each other in person when they travel outside the country. “When it gets to dating, they date regardless,” says Anahita, an Iraqi who was born and raised in Doha. “Qatari girls do the same thing the girls in the West do, but their reputation and self image makes a difference. So in front of their parents, they’ll cover up and they’ll act all good, but behind their parents’ back, they’ll act like a Western girl. Sometimes worse. Some of those girls who cover up the most fool around with guys the most. They go to Sea Line [beach], they go camping. They party and go out with guys. There are [lesbians]. There are straight girls who go meet guys. In Islam, you’re not allowed to have alcohol. And guys drink alcohol but then go pray five times a day. There’s this self-contradicting kind of thing going on here. It’s very complicated.” The bars that serve alcohol at Doha’s five-star hotels are prohibited from allowing Muslims to enter, but enforcement is said to be lax. According to one expatriate, “Attend any nightclub in Qatar, and you’ll find the place filled with local guys popping bottles at private tables and inviting women to join them. Technically, they’re not supposed to be there (because sex and alcohol, etc.), but as long as they don’t wear a thobe everyone turns a blind eye.”21 Such behaviors are riskier for women, whose reputations are ever on the line. A damaged reputation can impact a woman’s ability to secure a marriage partner, have children, or work.22 An Arab expatriate compared life in her home country to her experiences in Doha. “Back home, girls don’t have to wear the traditional clothing. They can wear whatever they want; they can go out with friends. Here, if you’re seen sitting with a guy, it can hurt your image.” Maryam explains that it is essential for Qatari women to maintain a good reputation if they hope to marry. “At the end of the day, girls here want to get married. They really do. In such a small society, there’s an imbalance between the number of girls and the number of boys. So they

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always say, ‘If you get a bad reputation, you won’t get married.’ That’s all they talk about. It was drilled into my head.”23 Due to these pressures, women are careful to protect themselves from negative impressions and gossip by adhering to a set of unwritten rules that include sex segregation, limiting encounters and eye contact with men, deferring to males (especially family members), confining themselves to the home, and engaging in a range of desexualization practices. These practices include speaking modestly, wearing a head covering and clothing that conceals the figure, and restricting physical activities that accentuate the body. These practices sometimes extend to social media. To avoid scrutiny, many women in Doha refuse to post status updates or photos of their faces online, a phenomenon that Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar dubs “faceless Facebook.”24 Some females devise creative workarounds. For example, one woman writes “red lipstick” as a status update, communicating to friends that she is going to a party. Others fantasize about boyfriends via elaborate—but fabricated—online profiles. Still others join Arab dating sites in order to flirt and chat with males in cyberspace.25 Some conservatives are critical of these and other modern courtship practices, claiming that they represent unwelcome forms of Westernization. There are concerns that changes in attitudes and behaviors related to dating will negatively impact society. For example, Fatima tells me, “A friend of mine said that when she was here in 2009, she hardly saw a girl and a guy together, but now everywhere she goes, she sees pairs of people. I think we were very influenced by the West when we were doing these things. There are many things in the West that are compatible with our culture, but we choose to take things that are not appropriate. We are seeing a lot of openness to the West, to different things in the world outside our own boundaries. This is a change, but I am not sure if it’s for the best. For us, when a guy and a girl start liking each other and when they think it’s serious, then the parents should immediately know, even if there is no engagement. But sometimes the girl or the guy chooses to omit this information from their family. That leads to lot of complications in the society, and people start talking about the girl, and her reputation goes really bad, when really there was no need for all this if you just followed the social norms that we have.”

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Boys and Boyahs In Doha there is an aversion to homosexuality, which is both illegal and socially taboo; no openly gay culture exists. Members of the LGBTQ community have no protections under the law. HIV-infected patients face discrimination, including deportation for foreigners and quarantines for citizens. Qatar’s criminal code specifically outlaws sodomy between men, as well as “immoral” sexual acts. Those who are found guilty of such offenses are automatically sentenced to a minimum of one to three years in prison. Section 285 of the criminal code states that a male convicted of having sex with a male under the age of sixteen is subject to life in prison. If the male is older than sixteen, the penalty is seven years. Gay marriages, civil unions, and domestic partnerships are crimes and unrecognized by the state. Gays, lesbians, and same-sex couples are legally prohibited from adopting children. Under sharia law, sex outside marriage can result in a death sentence for Muslims.26 Qatar not only criminalizes such behaviors but pathologizes them too. In 2006, the Al Alween Social Rehabilitation Center was established. In addition to treating a standard assortment of psychological conditions, Alween labeled homosexuality a behavioral disorder that warranted treatment. According to a story published in the Cornell Daily Sun, the center’s website described a scenario in which “a woman seeking advice on her relationship with another woman was told to stop her ‘unhealthy sexual behaviour’ and end communication with her partner.”27 Sheikha Moza, who was credited with founding the clinic, was “cited as being confident that homosexuality could be combated as a disease.”28 Despite these legal and social restrictions, members of the LGBTQ community are thought to exist in Qatar in approximately the same numbers as anywhere else. Homosexual acts are common among youth, partly due to Qatar’s culture of sex segregation. A teenager who wants to explore his or her sexuality will have an easier time doing so with a member of the same sex. Male-female interaction is restricted in Doha, but same-sex opportunities are abundant. It is normative for male and female friends to walk side by side in public, holding hands or linking arms, behaviors that are discouraged even between married couples.29 Women are obliged to cover up and behave modestly around men, but they can let their hair down in the presence of women. A young het-

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erosexual couple driving alone may attract unwanted attention, but few question two men or two women spending unchaperoned time together. Because of this, unmarried heterosexual couples sometimes do more sneaking around than gay couples.30 A nineteen-year-old lesbian explains, “The society is so suppressed, so we might as well get the love and attention from a girl. We can’t get it from a guy. You’ll be more highly sanctioned if it was a guy then if it was a girl. Because if it’s a girl, you can get away with it—‘I’m going to my best friend’s house.’ Whereas if it was a guy, then reputation comes into this and the image of the family and everything else.” Education City, with its sympathetic Western-trained faculty and atmosphere of tolerance, has a small number of LGBTQ students. Students can be “out” to some degree in a setting that is a step removed from the watchful eyes of the community. QU’s gender-segregated campus is rumored to be rife with gay and lesbian activity, although much of the behavior is said to be covert. Women make up approximately 70 percent of the student body, and legends circulate about security guards struggling to keep certain groups or couples apart.31 “It’s a different world,” a QU student says. “What you see in the movies, it’s far worse than that. All the girls wear the abaya and hijab but then come to school and have relationships with other girls. When they’re in an all-girl setting, it’s okay to be with a girl in a relationship with her. When it comes to parties where girls are all together, everything that you learn about religion is just thrown right out the window.” QU and Education City are also home to boyahs, a sort of Gulf variation of a butch lesbian.32 Boyahs wear no makeup and don simple, black abayas and barely-there shaylas in public. Beneath the head scarves are short, almost military-grade haircuts. Privately, boyahs wear baggy jeans and brightly colored Oxfords. A signature of many boyahs is oversized loafers or tennis shoes, which can be seen if they are wearing an abaya or not. The boyah identity is flexible in Qatar. Some boyahs identify as lesbians, but others say that, because they do not engage in sexual behavior with women, the lesbian label is not applicable.33 The term boyah is stigmatizing, and many Qataris regard boyahs as deviant. Studies in other Gulf countries report that boyahs are considered aberrant, sometimes even linked with Satanism. “Calls for healing and treatment abound.”34

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Boyahs are common in Qatar, but because most boyahs wear abayas and shaylas in public, they are mostly left alone. In all-female settings, the coverings are removed, and some boyahs become more aggressive. “I’ve seen so many boyahs hitting on me,” a woman claims. “It’s very common here. It’s a very normal thing to say, ‘Oh, I was at this party, and this boyah was hitting on me, and she liked me, and she asked me out.’ ” Everyone knows boyahs exist, but so long as they remain invisible, they are tolerated. “It’s acceptable, but it’s not something that people talk about,” a Jordanian woman says. A woman can have a long-term female partner with whom she is sexually active. She might even continue the relationship after marrying a man.35 But she will never label herself a lesbian, nor will anyone in her extended family. Ignoring a family member’s deviant behavior saves face and maintains the status quo. Keeping up appearances, however, can be costly. “You see a lot of confused people, a lot of people living double lives in front of their family,” says Maryam, a Qatari. “There’s a whole gay and lesbian community that’s coming, things they learned from the Western media.” Adam, a twenty-two-year-old gay Muslim from an Arab nation, is engaged to his second cousin, a woman he barely knows and does not want to marry. “I am so nervous. There is so much within me that wishes that I could just be myself without facing the consequences. My family is very religious and has a very high standing in society. Being gay is not an option.” When Adam arrived in Doha to pursue a degree in medicine, he had just ended a relationship with a woman he dated for several years back home. Adam used his newfound freedoms to explore his sexuality. “Everything changed at college,” he says. “I met a lot of other Arabs from different countries, and they all seemed to empathize with what I always used to call ‘a condition.’ I have so many gay friends here, and it’s nice to know you are not alone. But we also know that we are stuck together in this thing that we can never get out of. It’s not like America. It’s not enough that we have to ‘get out of the closet’ or whatever.” When Adam’s parents told him they had arranged for him to marry a cousin, he was not surprised. Both sets of parents had been hinting at it since Adam was a boy. “There is almost nothing about this that isn’t arranged,” he explains. “Our parents decided that we were a good pair. I am glad they considered our similarities and differences. But I am sad

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that we have to do what our family thinks is right because we love them. I don’t want to make them unhappy or bring shame to their name, but how can I live with someone I am not even attracted to?” Adam insists that marrying a cousin does not bother him—it is common in his family and in the Gulf. As a gay man, however, he is not enticed by his second cousin and has no desire to marry her. “It bothers me that I can’t tell my father that I am attracted to men. If [I were engaged to] one of my male cousins, I wouldn’t hesitate. A lot of them are gay. It hurts me that we have to be like this for the rest of our lives and raise children with women that we feel no desire towards. We have to lie to them about what we want.” Adam says the marriage will take place without question. He is forbidden from marrying outside the family, let alone marrying a man. Defying his family’s mandate would mean sacrificing his entire future. “We want to keep the wealth within the family,” he explains. “If we marry outside of it, the family wealth no longer belongs to us. All of the money and the future of the family businesses rests with us. We lose all of that when we marry someone outside of the family. So we don’t question it. There is so much to lose.”

Making Arrangements Adam’s parents’ involvement in his marriage is commonplace among Qatari families. Arranged marriages, in which family members determine a spouse, have long been the norm in the Gulf. Across cultures and in most historical epochs, there are accounts of arranged or partly arranged matrimony.36 In arranged marriages, the assumption is that love and affection occur after the wedding; therefore, “the focus is on the economic and social benefits that the extended family will gain through the marriage.”37 In a so-called love marriage, spouses choose each other on the basis of personal criteria such as compatibility, intimacy, and mutual affection.38 From a historical perspective, love marriages are a relatively recent phenomenon, first occurring in the eighteenth century as the notion of romantic love flourished throughout the United States and Europe.39 In a love marriage, the focus is on how the couple benefits from the union.

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The boundary between arranged and love marriages is porous; features typically associated with one type sometimes appear in the other.40 For example, in countries such as the United States, where arranged marriage is uncommon, family members still heavily influence relationship decisions.41 The West’s veneration of love marriage—including related phenomena such as romantic love, dating, premarital sex, and unmarried cohabitation—has influenced the coupling behavior of young Qataris. The Qatari leadership promotes the family as a fundamental social institution, a purveyor of Islam and morality, but also an engine of population growth.42 “The family is the basis of the society,” reads Qatar’s permanent constitution.43 To encourage the formation of Qatari families, the government established a national marriage fund that provides money to newly wedded citizens, with further subsidies if the couple has children.44 Qatari law states that males can legally wed at age eighteen and females at age sixteen.45 Most Qataris wait, however, marrying for the first time at about the age of twenty-five, a number that has not changed much in the past decade.46 During this same period, however, Qatari marriage rates declined sharply, dropping by nearly 28 percent for females and more than 20 percent for males.47 A government report attributes the plunge to an increase in women earning college degrees and entering the workforce and to the prohibitively high cost of wedding ceremonies.48 Qatar’s 2018 development plan describes its citizens’ changing marital practices as a threat to family cohesion, pointing to the supposedly “high social, psychological, health and economic costs due to late marriage and non-marriage of young people in light of the demographic changes in Qatar.”49 Striking a similar tone, a Qatari named Mustafa links the declining interest in marriage among young adults to larger issues of Westernization, particularly the influx of technology. “Before they used to be in the majlis; now they’re playing PlayStation. So when you think about it, they’re not like before; they’re not grown [mentally]. They don’t understand older people like they used to do. They’re married with technology, not with the idea of marriage and kids.” Legally, Qataris of any age must have their father’s permission to marry.50 Informally, mothers are heavily involved. Qatar’s 2011 development plan makes clear the connections between families and Islam

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in this process: “Most marriages are arranged by parents according to Islamic Sharia, culture and traditions.”51 When the government issued its second development plan in 2018, all references to arranged marriage had been scrubbed. Such unions may not fit with the government’s narrative of modern traditionalism, but they continue to be status quo. As elsewhere, there is no universal trajectory to marriage for Qataris but rather numerous pathways that may or may not lead to matrimony. At times, one or two parents head up the charge, but the endeavor is often a group effort, undertaken by the extended families of both parties. “It’s usually the older family members,” explains Layla, a twentyyear-old married Qatari, “the parents, a grandma, the occasional aunt or uncle.” The involvement of these relatives underscores a vital function of arranged marriages: to forge a strategic alliance between two families.52 Under such an arrangement, group interests supersede the desires of the couple getting married, as family members weigh and consider an array of possible outcomes. Because of this, marriage proposals in Qatar sometimes resemble business negotiations more than they do cinematic, bent-knee affairs. Layla recalls, “My husband’s mother called my father first and talked to him, to see if he was going to agree or not—because they’re related. He gave her the green light. In a traditional manner, she called my mother and told her, ‘We want to come over to your house and ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.’ And so they came over, her and her sisters, and they asked my mother her opinion: ‘We want your daughter for our son’ and whatnot. So they went home. And then two weeks later, my mom called her and told her yes, after of course she consulted me and the whole family.”

Blood Ties and Tribes Deliberations among families are complicated by the persistence of consanguineous marriage, or matrimony between biological relatives.53 Reflecting Qataris’ heterogeneity and varied experiences, there is disagreement about the prevalence of inner-family marriage among nationals. “Maybe only 20 percent or 30 percent of the people I know are married to their cousins,” Wadha says, but Jassim claims, “My sister just married my cousin last month. My mom is married to her cousin.

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I have four uncles who are married to their cousins. It’s very normal; it happens in every family.” The majority of Qataris do not marry a blood relative. In 2018, 58 percent of Qatari marriages took place among unrelated couples.54 Research and government statistics suggest a modest decline in consanguineous matrimony among Qataris in the past fifteen years, but at 42 percent, inner-family marriage continues to represent nearly half of contemporary nuptials. Modernization theorists sometimes predict that inner-family marriage decreases as nations develop, but others believe that consanguinity persists as a response to modernization. “In a quickly developing nation like Qatar, [this] could create social stability, which in a period of turmoil and change could have tremendous benefits.”55 Qataris who marry a relative prefer first cousins, which accounted for 57 percent of Qatari inner-family unions in 2018.56 First-cousin marriages are preferred because they are thought to be the closest possible unions, endowed with enhanced security and trust.57 The distinctions between relatives and nonrelatives and first and second cousins are important enough to be included in the Qatari government’s official classifications of marriage. Qualitative data collected in and around the MENA provide a range of explanations for consanguinity’s endurance: tradition; culture; status; and preservation of family honor, name, and wealth.58 Attitudinal data reveal a widespread belief that a family’s bloodline is debilitated by exogamous matrimony. Consanguineous marriages are thought to be more compassionate and less fraught with family-related clashes. “The best thing is that you know where he comes from, who his family is,” says Tahira, a Qatari who is engaged to marry a first cousin. “Because he’s a family member, you know what his values are—same values, same religion, same everything.” Furthermore, women who marry within the family, and their offspring, receive a number of social, cultural, and legal benefits that incentivize the practice. The persistence of consanguinity in Qatar is also explained by the historical connections between families and tribes in the Gulf.59 During the preoil era, tribal alliances ratified via matrimony were essential for economic survival because they helped tribes grow in size and stature.60 Today, tribes persist, and their presence is linked to consanguinity. As one comparative study concluded, “The Qatari population has more

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Bedouin tribes with strong traditions, and most marriages in tribal life are between close relatives to guarantee the continuity of the economic unity of the family.”61 In Qatar, as in most of the Gulf, there continues to be overlap between families and tribes. “Extended families are organized into clans, and groups of those clans are organized into tribes. Endogamous marriage practices are often defined along the boundaries of tribal affiliation and tribal belonging.”62 Marrying within the family typically ensures marriage within the tribe. Marrying outside the tribe is socially restricted.63 Inner-tribe matrimony confers the advantages of a consanguineous marriage plus the added perks of tribal membership. Importantly, the bride and groom retain their family name and tribal lineage, which can be passed on to offspring. This type of marriage is enticing because it enables individuals to amass and retain power. “It’s about the wealth; they want the wealth to stay within the family,” says Mohammed, a Qatari who is currently being pressured to marry a cousin and member of the same Bedouin tribe. “Tribes don’t want to share wealth and the name of their families with any other tribe. The family name really makes a difference. It’s not just a man marrying a woman; it’s like the family marries another family.” Consanguineous marriage exists to “preserve the lineage and for other reasons relating to social position and the status of the tribe, whose members seek to keep it limited to individuals from within the tribe.”64 The intersectionality among Qatar’s ethnic enclaves, long-standing tribes, and families makes for an opaque social structure that can be difficult to navigate. “Qataris are segmented into Bedu, Arab, Hula and Ajam,” explains Muneera, a Qatari whose parents are first cousins.65 “Arabs are against Hula and Ajam because they say they come from Iran, but that’s not always the fact. Arabs tend to stick to their own groups. For example, families like Al Mannai and Al Thani, they’re all Arabs. So they want to marry from within each other. And if they marry from Ajam or Hula, it’s very exceptional. They want to keep the family name, but it also has to do with discrimination.”

The Marriage Contract In Qatar, a wedding engagement has legal and social significance that it does not carry in the West. Engagements are typically certified with a

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milca, a written agreement between families that spells out specific marriage terms. These include whether the couple will live alone or with a set of parents, the number of children they intend to have, whether the bride can attend school or work, and the number of wives a husband can have.66 Some milcas also state whether a woman is expected to cover and, if so, when, where, and with what type of head wear. Milcas are not legally required, but more than 75 percent of Qatari males and almost 85 percent of Qatari females sign one before getting married.67 A milca is an extended family endeavor, often endorsed during or just before a public ceremony, similar to an engagement party in the United States. These events take place several months to a year before a wedding, although families that do not support drawn-out engagements may validate a milca just prior to the nuptials. Layla, a Qatari who is married to a second cousin, signed her milca at a ceremony held four months before her wedding. “The terms of the contract, which is what my parents put forth, was that I be able to continue my education,” she recalls. A Qatari woman named Roya had a milca with stipulations related to work and education. “Most of the girls that I know, most of my friends, they do have terms on their contracts, things like housing, education,” she says. Also negotiated as part of the milca are monetary transfers from the groom’s family to the bride’s family. Although not legally mandated, such payments are customary in Qatari marriages. The mahr refers to a series of gifts of varying amounts paid by the groom to the bride and different members of her family. These payments take place at prearranged times before and after the nuptials. Although transactional in nature, each of these payments carries symbolic significance.68 In part, a mahr serves as a form of insurance for brides: “A portion of what is given goes directly to the woman or is held in trust for her should she be widowed or divorced and thus need the resources to support herself and her children.”69 Article 38 of Qatar’s Law of the Family states, “Dowry belongs to the wife; she may dispose thereof as she wishes.”70 In practice, however, the bride’s father usually determines how the mahr is to be allocated. In the preoil Gulf, the mahr was a gesture of good intent on the part of the groom. It was generally small and consisted of a combination of material items to be used for the wedding, such as cash, jew-

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elry, dressmaking fabric, and food. Wealthy grooms occasionally added household goods, palm trees, and camels.71 In contemporary Qatar, mahrs have become increasingly expensive. A Qatari named Adel paid a mahr of 300,000 riyals (about $82,000) to marry his first cousin. “She had some conditions, too,” he recalls. “She had to graduate before we had any children, and that was it from her side.” Anood’s family negotiated a mahr as part of her marriage contract. “The terms were very simple and laid out in the sense that there would be mutual respect between both ends—you know, all the things that we agreed upon. There was a dowry involved, 130,000 riyals [about $35,000].” Adding to the cost is the shabka, jewelry that the groom gives to the bride during the milca festivities. “When you sign the paper, after that there’s a little ceremony,” Layla explains. “The guy comes in, and he buys for her a diamond set, a necklace and earrings and everything. That’s also worth a fortune, a very high price. Don’t even get me started on my wedding dress. It cost a fortune, and I only wore it once.” These prewedding expenditures are significant for most of the twentysomething Qatari males who accrue them. There is an economic incentive for marrying a family member. Because divorce rates are thought to be lower for inner-family marriages, pre- and postmarital cash exchanges are smaller. “One of the reasons you marry within the family is because the dowry is cheaper and you have to pay less,” a Qatari named Mohammed says, “usually a minimum of eighty thousand riyals [about $22,000] for dowry, only if it’s between the family. If it’s not within the family, then it’s a minimum of a hundred thousand [about $27,000].” Among certain groups, mahrs are status symbols. A prized female—a member of an elite tribe or from a family with a prominent name— can command a high mahr. As with the conspicuous consumption of expensive houses, cars, and watches, Qatari men display their status and wealth on the marriage market by spending top dollar for coveted possessions. “The dowry is something kind of archaic, as if you’re buying someone,” says Layla, who had reservations about accepting a mahr when she got engaged to a cousin at age nineteen. “This girl has a certain price, and if you can afford it, you can afford her. And nowadays, people show off: ‘Oh, my dowry was so-and-so’—how much you’re worth. If he’s welloff, he’ll pay an insane amount of money, just to show he has money.”

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Due to these concerns, rather than signing a milca right away, Layla stalled and spent six months secretly getting to know her fiancé. “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake,” she says. “Because once you sign the contract, you’re basically married. It was on the phone mostly. My father did not know that I was talking to him—it was just my mom. He would’ve killed me. He’s more traditional. He would think that my fiancé would have taken a bad image of me and would have thought that I had a bad reputation if I started to talk to him before we were officially contract married.”

Courting and Sex Couples who sign a milca are considered lawfully wed, although they are not supposed to cohabitate until a wedding ceremony takes place, often months later. Their change in status, however, provides the pair with newfound legal rights and social freedoms they did not previously enjoy. This post-milca period is a liminal stage when a couple is legally wed yet not socially permitted to behave as if they were married. Prior to engagement, candidates for arranged marriages get to know each other by talking on the phone and having occasional chaperoned meetings. “We weren’t supposed to be left alone, not until the actual signing of the contract,” recalls Adel, who is engaged to a cousin. “I didn’t really know her that much before we got engaged. I knew her more when we were kids maybe. But as we grew up, girls and boys don’t really interact together as they would when they were younger. I got to know her after we talked on the phone and met with the family members.” Tahira, who is engaged to her cousin, got to know her betrothed prior to engagement by chatting on the phone and sitting with him and his family at home. Having signed a milca, they are legally married but have not had a wedding ceremony. Tahira and her husband do not go out as a couple in public, but they are permitted to spend unchaperoned time together. “He comes to my house every weekend. We sit alone. We’re officially married, but we’re not living together. We share things, and we know a lot about each other. So it’s different; it’s more intimate.” Not all Qatari newlyweds are allowed to spend time alone prior to a wedding ceremony, but those who have permission sometimes find

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themselves on new physical terrain with their spouse. Women may remove their hijab in front of their husband for the first time without a family member in the room. Legally recognized as married by the state, engaged couples have the right to enjoy “freedom of sexual union.”72 This does not mean that all Qatari couples consummate marriage after signing the milca and before the wedding ceremony, but many do. A woman who has signed a marriage contract can refuse to have sex with her husband if his dowry is not paid in full. If the wife consents to have sex with a husband with an outstanding mahr balance, he becomes legally responsible for paying the entire debt.73 Prior to consummating the marriage, either party can file for divorce. More than two-thirds of Qatari divorces take place within a five-year window, without the marriage having been consummated.74 The length of time between the marriage contract and the wedding ceremony can be a source of sexual frustration for some young couples. Adel explains his unfulfilled bedroom-related yearnings in a series of careful euphemisms: “We really haven’t moved into a marital zone, since she hasn’t really graduated. We haven’t taken a full swing at the experience of marriage. The marriage has actually happened; I mean, it’s now four months after the milca. But yeah, technically we’re not . . . because she’s still . . . we haven’t . . . As I’ve said, we haven’t really had the full marital experience. We haven’t had kids yet; she hasn’t graduated yet. So until these conditions have been satisfied, we’re still, as you say maybe in the Western societies, just a couple, not wife and groom.” Adel’s hesitation to discuss his sex life as a married man is part of the problem, according to a Qatari named Mohammed. “Men and women don’t talk about what happens in bed because it’s shameful in this culture,” he says. “Even the married couple can’t talk about it. It’s like it’s disgusting and something that should be unspoken of. Guys learn from movies, and girls hear things like ‘sex is bad and disgusting.’ The bride and groom don’t know how to treat each other when it becomes reality.”

Ceremony In the Gulf ’s Bedouin era, wedding ceremonies reflected the region’s poverty. A marriage required cooperation from extended family members who gathered what meager resources they could. “The celebration for a

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wedding took months of planning, hoarding and saving.”75 Contemporary Qatari weddings remain extended family efforts that take months and even years of preparation, but much else has changed. Today, family members no long scrimp to amass enough cloth to sew a simple wedding frock. Now the most coveted wedding dresses are handmade and fitted personally by celebrity designers. “A lot of people have couture dresses by the designer you see in magazines,” Tabina, who is Qatari, explains. “Marchesa or Elie Saab flies to Qatar and does your dress. If you’re the bride, your dress cannot be off the rack. Why would you want an offthe-rack gown when you can have somebody come and fit it for you multiple times and make sure of every little thing? And it’s intricate, and it’s yours, and it has everything you want, how you see it. Some people have multiple dresses. In my mom’s day, brides would come out wearing a multicolored dress, and then they would sit for a couple of minutes and go back and change. Now, a lot of people do it out of heritage. You see two or three weddings per year like that. And there’s a hundred weddings.” Despite whatever gains Qatari women have made in recent years, a wedding remains socially significant. A Qatari woman’s wedding day “will be the biggest and most public day of her life.” Among Qatar’s wealthy elite, there is social pressure to throw the “wedding of the year.”76 Anood recalls, “Every bride is nervous on her wedding day, but I was very excited and happy at the same time. It was my big day. I was going to be the princess of the whole event.” A contemporary Qatari wedding is marked by a series of gatherings, held prior to and after the wedding ceremony. Some of these events are contemporary, while others are said to be traditional. For example, a henna party is a small get-together, held in a private home a day or two before the wedding. Henna is plant dye used to create intricate temporary patterns on the hands and feet. The practice has been popular for centuries throughout the Gulf, as well as in North Africa, India, and other parts of South Asia. Henna parties in Doha are all-female affairs featuring the bride (dressed in green) and her mother, aunts, sisters, cousins, in-laws, and close friends. In preparation for the wedding, the women sit for elaborate henna treatments, which last for several days before wearing off on their own. Henna parties are similar to bridal showers in the West, where intimate groups of females gather before a wedding. In contemporary

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Qatar, however, separate bridal showers and even bachelorette parties have become common among Qatari women. “After the henna, I had a bachelorette party, just for me and my girlfriends,” Layla says. “It’s not a traditional party. It’s something I adopted from the West.” Qatari weddings are known for opulence beyond description, fairy tales from Disney movies, with families vying to outdo and outspend one another.77 Qatari wedding ceremonies are almost entirely sexsegregated events held in separate venues: a large tent for males and the ballroom of one of Doha’s grand hotels for females. Both ceremonies feature music, dancing, and food. Massive buffets blend supposedly authentic Gulf cuisine, such as camel meat and rice, with Western fare like Coca-Cola and Belgian chocolates.78 On the male side, there are traditional sword dances, with hundreds or thousands of whited-thobed men twirling and jabbing with their blades in unison. The festivities are broadcast on giant video screens that are set up at the women’s site. The groom’s ceremony is often open to the public; some are attended by thousands of guests, all of whom are accommodated and fed. “It was a typical Qatari wedding, where all the relatives and friends come over to congratulate me and my father,” recalls Abdullah, who wore a black thobe at his wedding, the most formal Qatari menswear. The bridal ceremony is held in a large ballroom or hall, whose columns and corners are draped in ribbons, colorful silk streamers, and flowers, all intended to resemble an enormous Bedouin tent. A platform stage is positioned in the center room, with low-angle ramps leading up to it. At the stage’s center is a golden throne, decorated with flowers and other accoutrements.79 The invitation-only, sex-segregated setting means that women arrive in their most resplendent ball gowns, with hair, makeup, shoes, and accessories on full display. They cluster to pose for pictures taken by a female photographer, but there are no selfies—phones are held at the entry to avoid snapshots leaking on social media. Groups of mothers and aunts sit eight to ten at round tables, chatting and snacking while unmarried daughters slowly walk the ramps, swaying mildly to music provided by a female DJ. The mothers assess each daughter’s prospects and debate the merits of potential suitors,

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arranging future marriages. “In weddings, women sit down around the table in their really fancy dresses,” Ghalia says. “The younger girls, they dance on the stage. Sometimes someone will see you at a wedding, and they’ll ask for you to marry their son or something.” About halfway through the evening, the bride makes her formal arrival. “The lights are dimmed with the spotlight focused on the bride. The boisterous music shifts to something more lilting and romantic to suit her dramatic entry. Brides here wear elaborate white gowns with or without a bridal veil. The bride makes her extremely slow walk up to the bridal seat at the end of the ramp, walks all the way back to the end of the ramp, smiles at everyone and then walks back to her seat where she is aided in sitting down like a princess by her mother and sisters. This entire procedure takes about 20 minutes.”80 “I was so nervous,” Layla recalls, “when they opened the door, and you’re gonna walk down the aisle. I wanted to pick up my dress and run back upstairs. I couldn’t move, so my mom came next to me, and she’s like, ‘Okay, you can go now.’ The music started, and then you’re walking—with three people constantly picking up my dress because I couldn’t pick it up myself. It’s so awkward walking so slow for twenty whole minutes. Do you know how long that is, twenty minutes? Just walking and everyone is staring. It’s like headlights on you; it’s so nerve-wracking.” The bride sits on her golden throne, being viewed as she is greeted by family and friends. Near the end of the evening, the groom makes an entry at the female ceremony, often escorted by the father and brothers of the bride. More photos are taken, and the newlyweds eventually depart together for the bridal suite, with a honeymoon to follow. “It was a traditional wedding,” recalls Sultan of his ceremony. “For the guys, traditional dances in the tent. By the end of the night, the men, they lead the groom to the ladies’ wedding, where he would actually see his wife and take her away. I was pretty nervous that night. I’m starting a new life now, big responsibilities. It was a bit scary but exciting.” Most of the women guests don their abayas for this ritual, but the bride and her sisters remain uncovered, signifying the groom’s new status as a family member. These traditional elements are combined with Western ceremonial practices, including the white wedding dress and

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a grand wedding cake. Cotemporary Qatari weddings often feature a Western-style cake-cutting ceremony, with the bride and groom sometimes using a large sword for the occasion. “Our wedding took place in the Sheraton [hotel],” recalls Anood. “Family members and friends were there, and it was basically a typical khaleeji wedding, as the ones that happen in the Gulf region. We have separate weddings. The females have their own lavish weddings with all the music, all the dresses, all the makeup, and their hairdos. And then the guys also have a separate wedding, where they have sword dances.” The costs related to weddings are exorbitant, and hosting sexsegregated events doubles the price of many goods and services. Add it all up, and a wedding can easily exceed $300,000.81 And that does not include an extravagant honeymoon for the extended family. It is insinuated that men who refuse to spend the money on an all-out extravaganza are too poor to afford one. In Doha, these expenditures generally fall on the groom and his family. “Before it was easy,” says Mustafa. “Now we have to reserve for hotel, and you have to prepare more of the luxurious look of the marriage. Many girls care about what [others] will say and how it will look.” Mohammed agrees, adding that postwedding expenses can be even higher than outlays made prior. “As a man, you’re just expected to give more,” he says. “There is the gift after marriage, which includes a honeymoon, a car, a house, and so on.” Qatari law mandates that males pay all of their wives’ living expenses, including the legal requirement that he provide her with a home, permanent financial support, and “food, clothing, accommodation, medication and all that is necessary for human living according to custom.”82 Even among well-to-do Qatari males, this leads to accusations that women are only interested in wealthy, high-status husbands. “Girls these days are stereotyping guys according to their pockets, not their personalities,” Jassim says. “A girl should marry a guy who is within her financial level or higher. If a guy is at a lower financial rate than her, and she asks for a lot, it results to a lot of fights and problems.” The steep cost of weddings adds to a mounting problem in Doha: debt. Three-quarters of all Qatari families owe money to creditors, with most burdened by large loans exceeding 250,000 riyals ($68,662).83 A 2018 government report noted, “Despite the State’s support to the family

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through the creation of job opportunities, housing, social security, pensions and social insurance, Qatari families are heavily indebted owing to an excessive consumerism culture and poor financial management, which is a threat to the stability and cohesion of Qatari families.”84 It is common for Qataris to take out bank loans to cover the costs related to getting married. “Your wedding is the most special of times, one that you will both cherish forever,” coos the website of Doha Bank, which offers sixty-month marriage loans exclusively to Qataris, who do not require a guarantor to qualify. “A Marriage Loan from Doha Bank could get you off to the best of starts in your new life together. With an attractive interest rate, no arrangement fee, . . . and a grace period of two months, it’s a sensible way to make it an event to remember.”85

Modern Traditionalism and Matrimony The marital practices of Qataris may be changing, yet many traditional elements remain intact. Today’s Qatari weddings blend customary rituals such as milcas, henna socials, and sword dances with contemporary elements such as bachelorette parties, white wedding dresses, and extravagant wedding cakes. The meaning and interpretation of these cultural practices is shaped by shifting notions of marriage in the twenty-first century. Qataris are sensitive to stereotypes of arranged and endogamous marriages, which are part of long-standing Western pop-culture tropes about inbreeding. “One stereotype is that people only marry within the family because they are kind of stuck in a tribal world,” says a Qatari named Ahmed. “It comes back to this Orientalist idea, where the East is kind of tribal and the West is more developed. So basically, we are stuck in the past, and we should move on and become smarter—because being smarter is to marry someone outside the culture. Many people assume that.” Roya, a Qatari engaged to marry a cousin, insists that the labels come from the West. “Western people have a lot of stereotypes about marrying family members and arranged marriage or forced type of marriage, which is not true,” she says. If these attitudes were brought to Doha from the West, they are no longer exclusive to Westerners. Inner-family marriages are increasingly viewed askance by certain Qataris and Arabs. “It

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comes from people from the Middle East,” Tahira says. “Especially now, no one wants to marry a family member.” Layla believes that the stereotypes originate in the West but diffuse to Qatar, where they take on new life. “There are stereotypes but not from us,” she says. “It’s more of a Western ideal. Americans come from abroad, and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, you’re married to your cousin! Is that even legal?’ There’s a stigma nowadays because, as we’re embracing Western culture, [Qataris] who pride themselves to be Westernized or modern or educated tend to look down upon these kinds of marriages.” Many Qataris recall hearing cruel comments or questions about children born with deformities. Article 18 of Qatar’s Law of the Family mandates that couples intending to wed provide medical certification of screening for a variety of inheritable genetic disorders. Such maladies are common to inner-family unions and are widespread in Qatar, although public discussion of them is discouraged.86 By law, undesirable test results are not grounds for denying a marriage license, and the government has taken steps to raise screening awareness, including educational campaigns and free counseling.87 Still, only about half of married Qataris report getting tested.88 “I have heard about it, but I have not done it,” says Wadha. Jassim, who says he got the medical screening, knows of two cousins whose test results were fine but whose children were born with maladies. “It’s all up to God,” he shrugs. Muneera knows firsthand the horror of such disorders. She is one of six children born to parents who are first cousins. “My mom delivered six kids, but we’re only three now. If you marry your cousin, there are risks where disease might occur. The first two, they died when they were a few days old. And the third, she was mentally and physically paralyzed. And that’s because the genes were very similar with my mom and dad. That caused a problem in the child. She died at the age of four. If a person is forced to marry a cousin, it’s important to go through a test first, because that’s one way to save the kids. It’s kind of horrific to have a child, and you’re giving them a disease by going through a cousin marriage.” In response to stereotypes and stories like these, Qataris who are married to a cousin employ a variety of behavioral and rhetorical strategies that distance themselves from that status or reduce its stigma. For ex-

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ample, some frame consanguinity as a common feature of Arab culture, one that is difficult for outsiders to comprehend. “It doesn’t only happen in the Gulf; it happens all around the Arab world,” Jassim says. “In the Arab world, people have so many cousins, which is why it’s normal. But when it comes to foreigners, they barely have any cousins.” Here, Jassim discursively contrasts “normal” Arabs with non-Arab “foreigners.” Striking a tone that approximates the government’s narrative of modern traditionalism, many Qataris describe consanguineous marriages as part of the nation’s cultural heritage. “It’s a mixture of the culture and tradition,” says Layla, a Qatari married to her second cousin. “Fifty, sixty years ago, all you would see is cousins marrying cousins.” Employing language that would not sound out of place in an advertisement produced by the National Tourism Council, Anood explains that marrying cousins is “something that has been carried on for many years; it’s a tradition, a culture sort of thing. It comes from the country itself, from the way people used to live, the idea of a household that carries the whole family in it, in which kids grow up and end up getting married to each other. So with the years, it just carried on the same way. Now you pretty much see it in every family.” Another generalizing strategy involves defining consanguineous marriage as identical to other forms of matrimony. This dilutes potential stigma by aligning inner-family marriage with non-familial forms of union. For example, Abdullah, a Qatari married to his cousin, says, “The challenges are the same of any marriage, whether it’s getting married to a family member or not.” Others describe the milca and mahr not in contractual terms but as universal and analogous to phenomena found elsewhere, such as prenuptial agreements. “I don’t think it’s only in this society,” Anood says of marriage contracts. “There are, in a sense, agreements between both ends in any marriage. These are necessary because you want to lay out your agreements prior to getting married. You want to understand what the other end wants and what you want and how they both fit in together. So laying out agreements is very common and very normal.” Describing marriage contracts and dowries as widespread discursively situates them within a range of normative cultural practices. In doing so, Anood emphasizes their importance in achieving marital ideals such as understanding and addressing each other’s needs.

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Some Qataris who are married to a cousin explain how their union lacks a key benchmark that renders it unfitting of the inner-family marriage label. “We weren’t really that close growing up,” Layla says. “He’s a family member, but he is not a close family member,” Roya explains. These practices are not merely discursive but sometimes involve altering established behavioral patterns. For example, Tahira’s family matched her with a cousin, but she pursued the relationship in a manner that followed Western courtship sequences. She concedes that her marriage was arranged but adds, “In my case, it’s different because I got to know him for a long time, months.” A common rhetorical technique is to emphasize personal agency in a process in which the couple is often perceived to have little control. Qataris whose families arranged for them to marry a cousin stress their autonomy and power to make decisions within these parameters. “We are not forced to marry a family member. In most of the cases, girls prefer to marry one of her family members. So it is a preference. Is it through the family? Yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s arranged.” Here, Roya frames her consanguineous marriage using love marriage’s defining characteristic: personal choice. Consanguineous marriages are not immune from broader cultural transformations in the meaning of matrimony. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century in the United States, there was a shift from institutional marriages (business arrangements between families) to companionate marriages that emphasize fulfilling traditional gender roles within the structure of a nuclear family. In companionate unions, the couple are partners, friends, and lovers. Romantic love serves as a foundation for a matrimony grounded in sexual fulfillment, intimacy, safety, and emotional connection.89 Reflecting the global diffusion of companionate marriage, Qataris downplay kinship status and emphasize subjective criteria that are harder to assess, including partnership, emotional connection, and intimacy. Adel explains, “It’s not whether you’re family members or not. It’s just how good the combination of wife and groom is, whether they want to stay together, or whether their goals and objectives contradict or overlap.” For Anood, such connections are the key to a strong relationship: “Get to know the person, whether he’s your cousin or not. Make sure he’s the person that you think is perfect for you. Talk to him, you

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know, be open with that guy, and let him also be open with his feelings, with what he thinks regarding marriage.” Drawing on pop-culture ideals about romantic love, many Qataris stress the importance of finding the perfect husband or wife. This trope postulates that each person must seek a unique soul mate, an individual with whom he or she is almost divinely paired. “You’re choosing the person who you want to spend the rest of your life with,” Abdullah says. “It can’t just be anyone—it has to be the right person.” Jassim, a Qatari who wants to marry his cousin, describes her as ideal in every way: “When it comes to the cousin I want to marry, she will be a very good housewife. She’s the ‘it girl.’ She’s good-looking, and I know her on a personal level. She’s nice, loving, and caring, and she puts other people before herself.” Contemporary Qatari marriages encapsulate much of the companionate model, with its focus on traditional gender roles and romantic love. But societal expectations about marriage have expanded as well. People now demand more from their marriages than they did in even the recent past. This has spawned what scholars label the “individualized” marriage, in which the emphasis is on personal rewards, autonomy, and self-actualization.90 In the individualized model, husbands and wives gain satisfaction from achieving self-determined goals, enjoying new experiences, and undergoing personal transformation. “You’re not a girl anymore,” Layla says, reflecting on how marriage has changed her. “You get to be a married woman. As a married woman, you have much more freedom to travel, to go out, do anything you want. Before it was, ‘Oh, no, you’re a little girl. You can’t do this. You can’t do that.’ So you can see freedom, and it’s exciting. It’s a new chapter in your life.” These practices are not merely discursive; they sometimes lead to transformative action. For example, Wadha’s marriage to a cousin resembles a Western love marriage in many ways, including living with her husband in a separate house and delaying pregnancy in order to finish her education. “I love the fact that I did not have to live with my husband’s family and got to have my own house from the beginning. If a girl lives with her in-laws, problems would be unavoidable. So me not living with them played a huge part in the amazing relationship that I have with them right now. We love each other, and I really feel that they

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are my family, not my in-laws. Waiting for a year before getting pregnant was another positive. This has allowed me to finish my studies conveniently as well as travel and have fun with my husband. And finishing college before getting pregnant was amazing because I got to enjoy my whole pregnancy and focus on it and the life my husband and I are going to have with the baby.” Those who wish to emulate Wadha’s approach would do well to follow her advice: “Get to know the man before you get married, and try to enjoy it every step of the way and go into the experience with an open mind.” These practices illustrate how some Qataris select from cultural repertoires related to both traditional arranged marriages and contemporary love marriages as the guiding principles for their own unions. These techniques sometimes overlap, and multiple tactics can be employed simultaneously. For example, Anood says, “Marriage is understanding and knowing what the other person wants and whether that fits to what you want or not. That can happen whether you’re a family member or not. It’s that click that happens between two people that determines whether a marriage is going to be successful or not.” Here, Anood downplays binary family-member status in favor of subjective criteria that are difficult to assess. She also reframes inner-family marriage as similar to romantic love in that it is based on a mutual “click.” Finally, she insists that a good marriage is one that includes the deep emotional connections expected of contemporary individualized marriages. In 2004, the Doha Declaration of the Family decreed that the institution of the family is “challenged” by globalization. In affirming Qatar’s commitment to the family, the language of the declaration is steeped in a rhetoric of modern traditionalism. The document frames marriage and parenting as matters of personal freedom, individual choice, morality, human rights, protection, and cultural preservation. “We commit ourselves to recognizing and strengthening the family’s supporting, educating and nurturing roles, with full respect for the world’s diverse cultural, religious, ethical and social values.”91 In keeping with the leadership’s political agenda, tribes are not mentioned anywhere in the document. For external audiences, this rhetoric is calculated to align Qatar with the global superpowers to which it aspires and to advance its economic agenda. Internally, the rhetoric appeases conservatives by promising to

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preserve the sanctity of marriage (legally defined as occurring between men and women) and children. Modern traditionalism is inherent to cultural and discursive practices related to marriage in Qatar, yet many people employ its elements in ways that differ from the government’s. The government has an economic agenda; people want to remove stereotypes that their marriages are “backward” and experience the self-actualization promised by the individualized marriage. Thus, people emphasize hallmarks of modern love marriage: personal choice, freedom, autonomy, and connection. Discourse is always situated within a broader social and cultural context. Language shapes our reality and enables us to interact with others. For Qataris, the modern traditional marriage serves as a mechanism for preserving cultural heritage while simultaneously enabling the partners to achieve self-actualization. This strategic use of culture demonstrates how the diffusion of the modern traditionalism narrative is not simply top-down.

Courting Citizens The rapid changes that have swept through Doha in the past thirty years have impacted marital attitudes and practices, reshaping the traditional extended-family household into a petrofamily model. Increasingly, these households are headed by couples from different countries. Globalization and international workforce flows have increased the number of cross-national marriages worldwide.92 In Qatar, the proportion of marriages involving a Qatari national and a non-Qatari steadily rose from 1985 to 2013.93 Some Qataris believe that marrying foreigners is a way to avoid paying for an excessive mahr and expensive wedding. Governments in the Gulf, however, view such unions as a social threat. The increase in national-foreign marriages is often cited as the prime cause for the soaring divorce rate in the region.94 Qatar’s 2018 national development strategy calls for the development of “a strong, cohesive, and empowered Qatari family.” The nation’s leadership asserts that families are essential to staving off the threat of modernization. The report claims, “Social protection and family cohesion are therefore an essential component of an integrated and sound

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social development approach aimed at achieving the well-being of Qatar and its citizens, and building a society that is safe, secure, and resilient against all social challenges and threats.”95 Qatar also views the family as essential to its economic goals. “Family is the institution in which young people are reared and future generations are raised to lay the foundations that will enable Qatar to catch up with the developed countries.”96 The government’s call for strong Qatari families is echoed in the growing sense of nationalism among young Qataris. In 2013, nearly one in four Qatari unions were cross-national.97 By 2018, that number had plummeted more than 43 percent. In present-day Qatar, just 13 percent of Qatari marriages are cross-national, while 87 percent take place between two citizens. When Qatari men marry across national boundaries, more than half of the time it is to another Gulf Arab, with marriages to citizens of other Arab countries accounting for another third. Less than 2 percent of Qatari men marry someone who is not from the Gulf or another Arab nation.98 Cross-national marriages do not necessarily indicate cosmopolitanism. In Qatar, such unions are often strategic mergings based on tribal and/or familial interests. “The preference of marrying a spouse from the other GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries is an indication of maintaining the tribal organization across borders where tribal lineages are a strong determinant of social status and identity, especially in the GCC Area.”99 Despite the broad-minded appearance of cross-national marriages in Qatar, they tend to support existing social and political boundaries. When Qataris discuss their consanguineous marriages, some contrast members of their inner circle to “nonlocal friends,” “strangers,” “Westerners,” and “foreigners.” There is a widespread conviction that marrying another Qatari is ideal. From there, concentric circles containing the Gulf and Arab nations rank as the most desirable source of marriage partners, with caveats. A Qatari named Mustafa explains, “I sometimes give jokes to my mother saying that I’ll marry someone who is nonQatari or something, like a joke. It pisses her off, and it will piss me off to see my kids marrying someone from America or Western who is not Muslim. I’ll be pissed, you know? I’ll accept if they will marry someone from Qatar or from the Gulf. Not Kuwaiti! [laughs] To be same in culture, same in religion.”

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The increase in marriage rates among nationals, combined with a modest decrease in consanguineous marriage, points to the growing significance of national identity over other social markers. In Doha’s wealthy, cosmopolitan atmosphere, the importance of tribal membership has diminished, but the salience of citizenship has never been more important.

6

Expats and Workers Foreign Labor under Sponsorship

The invitation arrives via email. Sheikh Khalid and Sheikha Amna Al-Thani cordially invite you and your family to attend CMU Day at their family farm ‘Al-Sulaimi.’ There will be a guided safari, traditional games, swimming, live music, horse riding, great food, and many other exciting activities for all age groups. This is an opportunity you won’t want to miss!

Al-Sulaimi, known as the “Sulaimi Oasis,” is the weekend getaway of Sheikh Khalid Al Thani, first cousin of the emir. The sheikh’s daughter is a student at Carnegie Mellon University Qatar (CMUQ), and once a year he invites CMUQ’s faculty, staff, administration, and four hundred students to the Oasis for a day of festivities. The students mostly stay away—no self-respecting college student wants to attend a party thrown by someone’s parents. For CMUQ’s mostly Western expatriate workforce, however, getting to see how a member of Qatar’s royal family lives is tantalizing. The Oasis is located far outside Doha, in the middle of Qatar’s vast scrub-brush desert. Rather than making guests drive themselves and hunt for it, Sheikh Khalid has hired a fleet of luxury air-conditioned buses to depart the Education City campus once per hour. The Oasis is a sprawling compound of half a dozen two-story structures situated atop a blanket of perfectly manicured green grass, swaying palm trees, marble fountains, regulation-grade tennis courts, and an elaborate swimming pool that looks like it was annexed from a theme park. The Oasis parking lot accommodates more than three hundred vehicles. Uniformed staff greet every guest, directing them to a veranda 190

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in front of one the central buildings and telling everyone to make themselves at home. Inside the compound’s main building is a sitting room the size of a basketball court. Its ceiling is constructed from carved wood and ceramic tile with ornate flowers hand painted on each. Four massive, starshaped crystal chandeliers hang in each corner. Sunlight streams in from mahogany shutters overlooking an elaborate handcrafted wooden sofa that runs along all sides of the interior. Octagon-shaped coffee tables are placed throughout, capped by tall vases stuffed with fresh flower arrangements. Lamps, paintings, candles, and pricey pottery are positioned about. On a set of tables off to the side are tray upon tray of dates, nuts, cookies, and pastries; carafes of hot tea; and an array of freshsqueezed juices. The expatriates stand agape at a towering tablet hung on the white brick wall. It is about twenty feet high and ten feet across, constructed from black granite with intricate gold and white squiggles painted on top. A uniformed Oasis staff member intones that the piece is a panel from the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure at the center of Islam’s holiest mosque in Mecca. In Islam, the Kaaba is literally considered the house of God. The building next door features an equestrian theme, its walls composed of gilded brick, flanked by a massive, gold-framed painting of Sheikh Khalid standing next to a big, brown horse. The floor consists of twelve-by-twelve-foot cream-colored marble tiles topped by baroque handwoven rugs. A set of brown velvet couches, love seats, easy chairs, and ottomans form a half moon around an elaborately carved coffee table that is a jumble of wood, glass, and what appear to be deer antlers. A lamp composed of similar materials points down from the ceiling. As in the sitting room, there are multiple trays piled high with food and drink. A steady stream of guests arrive from the chartered buses. Families with children splash in the pool, which is built to resemble a curved lagoon, complete with sandbars, wooden footbridges, boulders, and palm trees that appear to be growing directly out of the water. Twenty-fivefoot geysers shoot up from the pool’s floor, creating a fountain-like effect. Adjacent to the pool is a playground filled with swing sets, slides, and monkey bars.

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Oasis staff members zip around the grounds on golf carts, and guests are invited to tour the entire property via horse-drawn carriage. Sheikh Khalid has even installed a full-service Starbucks for the day, replete with smiling, green-smocked baristas. Everything on the Starbucks menu is free, so the CMUQ employees and their families snack on sandwiches, cookies, and iced coffee as they lounge on the shaded veranda. At 2:00 p.m., the Oasis staff directs everyone to a dining hall, where a formal lunch for 150 is served at a single L-shaped table that spans the room. As the guests are seated, dozens of servers hover around, ladling lamb, chicken, beef, seafood, meat pies, rice, couscous, pasta, vegetables, hummus, olives, prunes, and breads onto the diners’ oval platters. For dessert, there is tea and a pop-up Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop. After lunch, Sheikh Khalid leads the entire party on a tour of the Sulaimi Oasis Zoo. The sheikh is an energetic fifty-something, dressed in a traditional white thobe and ghutra. He is outgoing and informative, gesturing as he explains minute details about the animals. The sheikh’s zoo fills hundreds of acres and houses gazelle, oryx, antelope, peacocks, ostrich, and camels. There is also a set of stables the size of a football field, filled with immaculately groomed Arabian horses and fluffy-maned ponies. Next to this is a working farm, including cows for milk, chickens and ostrich for eggs, turkeys and lamb for meat, and fields abundant with fruits and vegetables. A dozen South Asian laborers are on hand, men dressed in dirt-caked jeans and light-blue work shirts, stained dark with sweat. The sheikh tells the workers to distribute large cardboard boxes emblazoned with the Oasis logo to the expatriates. The boxes overflow with potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, radishes, onions, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, strawberries, and dates. The farm also includes a working hatchery, which houses huge incubators for all variety of eggs. The sheikh hands out cantaloupe-sized ostrich eggs for everyone to take home. The sun is setting as Sheikh Khalid leads the partygoers to the Oasis campgrounds for dinner alfresco. Buses continue to drop off guests, whose ranks have swollen to more than three hundred. This includes a large student turnout.

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Oasis staff direct everyone to two king-sized tents, one for men, the other for women. There, teams of valets stand before long silver racks filled with clothing. When a guest enters the male tent, the valets measure him for a white thobe, which is covered by a brown and gold bisht, a floor-length wool overcoat that men wear for weddings and other special occasions. The valets then wrap a long black-and-white scarf around the male guest’s head, tying it elaborately to itself, similar to a turban. In the next tent, the female guests select from a series of brightly hued, flowing dresses with ornate multicolored patterns sewn into them. Women slip the long, loose dresses over whatever they already have on. Everyone is encouraged to take the clothes home with them at the end of the night. The attendees are directed to a number of low outdoor couches, arranged in small clusters to encourage conversation. They sit before an arena-ready concert stage, complete with professional-grade scaffolding and lights, the kind used for large outdoor music festivals. A hip-hop DJ blasts electronic dance versions of traditional Arabic songs that many of the students seem to know. A massive bonfire crackles and spits inside a brick barbecue pit. The guests are invited to fill their plates from stations that serve grilled meats, seafood, falafel, and custom-made pizzas. As everyone eats, the DJ continues to spin records, followed by a lengthy routine from an Arabic dance troupe. A team of staff members hand out Sulaimani Oasis–branded gift bags to all of the attendees. The bags are stuffed with Oasis swag: T-shirts, travel mugs, leather luggage tags, moleskin notebooks, and pens. A few lucky guests find brand-new iPads at the bottom of their bags. A group of American expatriates sit together, chatting. Linda, an assistant professor of mathematics and self-described “nomad,” moved to Doha a year ago, after multiyear teaching assignments in South Korea and Oman. “Whenever people ask me what it’s like over here, the first thing I say is it’s another world,” she tells me a couple of weeks later. “If I start to get into details about what it’s like—it’s hot or whatever—people are going to try to fit that into their existing frame of reference. If I say it’s another world, that’s my attempt to say, ‘Stop everything you expect to think about this place. This is otherworldly. Whatever you expect to be the case, it’s not that way. It’s the opposite.’ ”

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Citizen Qatar Nationality is the primary source of social position and identity in Qatar.1 The status of non-Qataris varies by nationality, occupation, social class, education, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, marital standing, geographical origin, cultural traditions, migration status, and more. In contemporary Qatar, all of these characteristics function to distinguish and stratify people, but “nationality takes priority.”2 Spatial and social divisions between Qataris and the various classes of foreigners who serve them have developed informally over many decades through a series of symbolic exchanges and interactions. With petroleum revenues on the rise, the Qatari government drafted its first nationality laws in 1961 and eventually passed legislation that defined Qataris as only those individuals residing in the country prior to 1930 and their descendants.3 Families and tribes that abandoned Qatar in the lean years of the 1930s and 1940s were deliberately cut out.4 As one of the few families that remained in Qatar during that era, the Al Thani dynasty effectively wrote itself into the nation’s foundational documents. Today, the legal distinction between Qataris and non-Qataris is reflected in symbolic culture such as discourse, material culture such as clothing, everyday practices such as norms of eye contact, and rituals such as weddings, basketball games, and stand-up comedy performances. Furthermore, formal mechanisms, including sponsorship labor, immigration laws, banking regulations, and residential segregation, intentionally differentiate and divide citizens from noncitizens.5 Combined, these boundary-making processes help generate a culture of separation between nationals and foreigners that is a defining feature of life in Qatar. CMU day at Sulaimi Oasis provides a snapshot of the relationship between Qatari nationals and noncitizens. In this setting, there are wealthy, elite Qataris and their guests—professional-class expatriates and low-wage foreign workers. Assisted by the latter, Sheikh Khalid lards the former with hospitality, food, and gifts. The sheikh’s privileged guests are wowed and awestruck every step of the way. Foreign workers in Qatar are sometimes conceptualized as a homogeneous mass of exploited, low-wage migrants from the Global South. The Sulaimi Oasis reveals stratification within Qatar’s noncitizen popu-

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lace. Ranking low on Qatar’s social hierarchy, the foreign service workers are largely there to accommodate everyone else. Their low status is indicated by material and symbolic factors that include their uniforms, deference to others, positionality in the background, and low pay. Even here, however, there is stratification. The sociologist Jean-Pascal Daloz notes that servants function as status symbols for wealthy elites but sometimes develop their own status hierarchies, based on the prestige of their masters or their particular duties.6 At Sulaimi Oasis, the farm laborers rank lower than the parking-lot attendees and carriage drivers. Servants who work indoors, cooking and serving food or cleaning, hold higher status than those who must endure the elements. The highest status are servants whose job entails managing other servants. The service workers’ professional-class counterparts enjoy higher standing and its attendant privileges, but they remain distinct from Qataris. At the Oasis dinner, the sheikh outfits his professional-class guests in what might generously be called traditional Arabic clothing. Significantly, the attire is not Qatar’s national uniform. The male clothing lacks the collar details and agal that would identify it as Qatari, and the brightly colored dresses given to the expatriate women in no way resemble the abaya and shayla worn by female citizens. If anything, the attire is explicitly non-Qatari, a visible contrast to the powerful sheikh, draped in white.7 The costumes worn by the expatriates signify their status as honored guests. Their clothing approximates or invokes Qatari culture, yet they remain distinct from citizens. The attire, in its mimicry, pays deference to the Qatari host while never threatening to subsume him.

The Lifestyle Qatar’s nationality-based division of labor produces an economic system in which educated Westerners fill most high-paid, high-status positions, while workers from South Asia and Africa occupy low-status, low-paying jobs. Development throughout the Global South has fueled a demand for skilled recruits in the technology, finance, urban planning, and education sectors.8 According to the US Department of State, there are about 8.7 million US citizens currently living abroad.9 Some are retirees, but many are educated professionals whose expertise is

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sought after around the world. There are estimated to be between 11 and 12.5 million foreign workers in the Gulf.10 Even for well-off professional-class expatriates, the move to Qatar often constitutes a significant lifestyle upgrade. Compensation packages typically include competitive salaries subject to reduced or no taxes from home countries. A triple-matched retirement program and platinumgrade health insurance are gratis. Expatriates receive annual plane tickets home for the entire family, and those with dependent children are given tuition reimbursement at their pick of Doha’s private international schools. Complimentary smart phones and service for everyone in the family are also standard. “There are people who are simply here for the money, and that’s all there is to it,” a Belgian expatriate explains. “Mercenaries. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all work for money; we’re not just working for love. That’s why people do anything in the capitalist society.” Qatar’s wealth and global ambitions appeal to upwardly mobile professionals like Matthew, a thirty-something recent PhD who worked for a European software firm before coming to Qatar. Matthew was recruited to Education City by a dean who agreed to provide funding to establish a research laboratory. “He was like, ‘What would it take?’ I said, ‘I want control over integrating the curriculum from [my field] with information systems and a seed fund to start a new research lab.’ And they basically said, ‘Sure.’ They didn’t even ask what I wanted to do with it. How many people our age have that possibility?” Professionals recruited to work in Doha often find themselves entering at a higher occupational tier than they might at home.11 Others receive rapid promotions. Entry-level computer programmers suddenly find themselves bestowed with titles such as Director of Information and Commination Technologies, while adjunct lecturers are catapulted to respected professors about campus. The financial compensation, generous professional support, and relaxed work atmosphere make employment in Qatar a dream job for many. Additionally, Western-educated elites also enjoy a first-class expatriate lifestyle: commingling with affluent, educated world denizens, trading tips about premium-class airport lounges, and debating whether to visit Sri Lanka or Senegal during the Eid holiday. Those with children appreciate raising their offspring in a global environment. When I ask a longtime expatriate what she likes about living in Qatar, she tells me she

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is not interested in money and perks but rather the advantages of raising her children in a globalized, multicultural environment: “We have the big house, we have two big cars, we have all the money to travel and the opportunities,” she says, adding that her kids “go to restaurants all the time. They’re so used to going to airports; they’re so used to traveling, and they know the whole routine. So things that normal children wouldn’t know about, our children know because we’re here. There are many pluses for them: Our children are trilingual. They have friends from all over the world. They don’t ‘get’ skin color, because everyone here is of different colors. That I really value. It’s one of the good things about Qatar.” The enviable lifestyle of Doha’s professional-class expatriates, however, causes resentment among some Qatari factions. This leads to accusations that the Qatari government shows favoritism toward Western expatriates. A blogger named Mimi posted an online tirade in which she wondered, Do I have to have blue eyes and blond hair to be paid and appreciated here? Shall I work with a European or American passport to be treated equally? Why are Europeans being paid so much more than Qataris, not to mention all the benefits of having free houses, cars, phones, insurance, plane tickets, etc.? No Qatari gets all of this when they start working, but for Anglo-Saxons it’s granted. Don’t give me that silly argument that they are being paid so much more because we brought them from their homeland and we must compensate them for this. Why don’t we compensate cheap labour then, since they slave all day for nothing?12

Such sentiments both reflect and reinforce the divisions among Qatari citizens, professional-class expatriates, and low-wage workers, all of whom are competing for social advantage and government resources.

A House Divided Homes are a primary signifier of social status, in Qatar and elsewhere. The size and splendor of one’s house has replaced occupation as a primary claim to social standing in Doha. Government subsidies that defray the cost of everything from financing a home to paying its air-conditioning bill encourage Qataris to reside in large houses that consume considerable amounts of energy.13

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In Qatar, housing is a material manifestation of the nation-based socioeconomic structure, one that illustrates and perpetuates the divide between citizens and foreigners. The symbolic boundary between Qataris and non-Qataris is institutionalized by housing-related regulations, laws, policies, and customs. Doha’s residential neighborhoods are segregated by nationality, stratification reflected and reproduced through zoning laws, neighborhood layouts, pricing, and local housing stock. In Doha, the size, location, and style of housing are shaped by differences in nationality, ethnicity, occupation, and income.14 “While Qatari nationals usually reside in luxurious villas at the north or west edges of the city, high-income expats are accommodated in comfortable apartments in gated compounds or towers, situated in central areas. Labourers and low-income groups, usually from South Asia, live in residential camps and ad hoc shanty housing compounds in the southern suburbs of the city, or in the poor old quarters of downtown Doha.”15 By law, non-Qataris are forbidden from purchasing land, other than in a handful of pricey development projects aimed at wealthy foreign investors. Zoning laws strictly limit the number and size of rental properties that can be developed within neighborhoods designated for Qatari families.16 Such policies effectively prohibit low-income migrant workers from residing in these areas. The practice of segregating Qataris and various expatriate classes by neighborhood and housing type reinforces nationalist boundaries and encourages a culture of separation.17 Some professional-class expatriates receive living accommodations as part of their compensation package, but others are paid a housing allowance on top of their salary, to be used toward leasing a property. A frequent complaint from expatriate professionals is that housing allowances fail to cover Doha’s exorbitant rents, which are described as on par with New York City and San Francisco.18 On my first visit to Doha, I toured the apartments at Bayview Towers, a forty-five-story skyscraper that was home to a five-star hotel. Professional-class expatriates occupied several floors near the top. Bayview Towers was situated in the West Bay, known as the Diplomatic Area because it is home to several foreign embassies. The Iranian, Egyptian, Somalian, and Korean embassies were just down the street from Bayview Towers. These were surrounded by an assemblage of skyscrapers and midlevel buildings, most of which were under various states of develop-

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Skyscrapers and construction in Doha. (Photo by Alexander R. Wilcox Cheek)

ment, from rising skeletal I-beam frameworks to metal and glass pillars that looked a few brushstrokes from finished. Construction equipment and cranes were perched atop numerous roofs. The ground floor of Bayview Towers featured a reception area, with a staffed front desk befitting a luxury hotel. This included a door attendant and an array of bellhops and other personnel. Behind the front desk was a full-service restaurant, which also provided room service for the residents. There was a workout room stocked with gleaming aerobic machines that looked untouched and an outdoor pool and hot tub that had to be cooled, rather than heated, to be habitable under Doha’s unrelenting sun. The model employee apartments were located on the forty-first floor. Every level of Bayview Towers housed just four units—each one took up a full quarter of the skyscraper’s horizontal footprint. All the apartments were furnished and featured three bedrooms and five bathrooms. There were two possible floor plans, but otherwise every unit was identical, with the exact same furniture, artwork, accessories, electronics, and pots and pans in each.

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The living room featured a couch, loveseat, and armchair surrounding a square coffee table and facing an entertainment center that included a medium-sized flat-screen TV, DVD player, and telephone. At the other end of the living room was a dining set with seating for eight. There were end tables, shelves, lamps, and rugs. The apartment featured floor-to-ceiling windows that curved with the skyscraper’s arc. The floors were tile throughout, which kept them cooler, although it did not seem to matter because the air-conditioning was set to the low sixties. Off the living room was a glass door that opened to a large outdoor balcony overlooking the West Bay, cranes and construction to one side and the gloriously blue waters of the Gulf to the other. The kitchen featured stainless-steel appliances and wood cabinetry. There was a combination washer/dryer unit inside one of the cabinets. The kitchen was already stocked with a complete set of dishes, silverware, glasses, cups, pots, pans, and anything else one might need. Each of the three bedrooms was large and featured a queen-sized bed, two overstuffed crimson-colored armchairs with matching ottomans, a flatscreen TV, a wooden dresser, night tables, mirrors, rugs, abstract canvas artwork, and a large sliding-door closet. Each bedroom had a separate full bathroom. Because Bayview Towers was a hotel, the employee apartments included twice-weekly maid service at no charge. Incoming employees received a welcome basket filled with snacks, soap, shampoo, and taxi passes. “The premise was no one wants to live in the desert; therefore, we need to give them these salaries and these houses as incentive,” says Wendy, a longtime expatriate. “The problem Qatar has is they get expats to move here by saying it’s just like home. You have McDonald’s and airconditioning. There’s this outer veneer of consumerism, where things are very familiar. But it’s a collective, private society. You have a tribal system, a kinship structure, which is internally focused. Unless you have access to those private spaces, you’re treated like an outsider.”

Outsiders The boundary-making processes that spatially and symbolically segregate Qataris and non-Qataris isolate these groups from each other. Today, Qataris and non-Qataris rarely commingle in public, other

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than via formalized interactions. Wendy has lived in Doha for more than a decade and says Qataris still keep their distance. “You’re treated like you’re tainted, like you’re suspicious. And I understand that. For a long time, expats have been taking the Qataris for a ride. But it’s frustrating.” Public interactions between citizens and noncitizens are often routinized exchanges that occur in explicitly economic settings, such as shopping malls and restaurants.19 “It’s certainly not as if you can interact with Qataris the way you can interact with other Westerners,” says Mark, reciting a common lament among professional-class expatriates. In semipublic settings such as universities, which ostensibly promote cross-cultural engagement, Qataris are known to self-segregate. Rosa, an exchange student from Belize, is struck by the lack of interaction between nationals and nonnationals in and out of the classrooms at Education City. She describes dining halls where there are “tables with people from all over the place, and at the front is a table of Qatari girls. They have their own little group, just Qatari girls, and they don’t interact as much with other people. It’s probably a cultural thing, or they want to mark a difference.” One faculty member refers to the standoffish Qatari women as “Team Abaya.” Qatar’s closed stratification system creates a general environment of what the anthropologist Sharon Nagy calls “segregated but comfortable co-residence.”20 Professional-class expatriates describe infrequent and polite, if cool, interactions with Qataris that occur within institutions whose responsibilities mandate such contact. “There can be some separation,” concedes Maria, an Italian expatriate. “They seem to be very reserved people; but I am friendly, and they are absolutely fine with me.” These interactions take on additional meaning when one considers the power differential between Qataris and non-Qataris. On the surface, Qatar welcomes expatriate “guests,” who are free to pursue their lives and maintain their cultural traditions as they see fit. In reality, all expatriates in Qatar live under constant threat of deportation. “It’s always in the back of your mind that as an expat, you’re a visitor,” Michael says. “You’re a guest in this country; behave accordingly. All of us expats are aware that at any given point if you say or do the wrong thing, you’re gonna be gone tomorrow, either individually or institutionally. So there’s uncertainty. Legally, we don’t have stability here.”

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Some scholars believe that the precarious residency of “stateless” individuals is intentional, a “strategic government response to avoid resolving larger dilemmas about citizenship, especially questions about the incorporation of minorities, refugees, or labor.”21 Professional-class expatriates express concern that a single complaint from a Qatari could lead to serious trouble. Under Qatar’s authoritarian government, “the penalties for violating professional or even sociocultural norms can be more severe than losing one’s job; they may include deportation, arrest, and imprisonment. Furthermore, the boundaries that delineate tolerable speech and behavior are fuzzy.”22 Complicating matters, Qatar’s laws are printed in Arabic, and there are no certified translations.23 Officials from foreign embassies are generally prevented from visiting arrested expatriates until an interrogation has occurred. Legal representation is not compulsory. Individuals are prohibited from leaving Qatar during criminal or civil matters, including collections for outstanding loans or bounced checks. In the book The Glass Palace, the Arab American businessman Nasser Beydoun documents being “held hostage” in Doha for almost two years after a business arrangement soured.24 Others are ousted from the country after altercations with Qataris. In 2013, police arrested Dorje Gurung, a Nepalese middle-school teacher, after students accused him of insulting Islam.25 According to Gurung, who taught chemistry at Qatar Academy, a group of twelve-year-old Qatari students were mockingly calling him “Jackie Chan.” The teacher asked the boys how they felt about the “Islamic terrorist” stereotypes directed toward Arabs. The students complained to school administrators, who fired Gurung. He was arrested shortly after and faced seven years in prison. Social media outcry and international press attention eventually led to Gurung’s release from jail and immediate departure from Doha.26 “We’re so afraid that whatever we do will get us kicked out of the country,” Wendy says. “There is a culture of fear. Everyone is a little bit unsure. People don’t want to lose their jobs. There is this anxiety about what we are going to do to keep our contracts. That anxiety trickles down to everyone.” Among professional-class expatriates, these fears are as wide-ranging as they are widespread. Some are concerned about abrupt leadership changes, regional military conflicts between the United States and Iran, or a worsening of the current political em-

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bargo. Qatar’s modern history is filled with coups, takeover attempts, and behind-the-scenes maneuverings. “It could change in a heartbeat,” an American expatriate named Rob says. “That’s what happens when you have the rule of man and not the rule of law.” Some professional-class expatriates at Education City are sure that conservative elements in the government are conspiring to shutter the entire affair. Urban legends circulate about impending shutdowns and bureaucratic seizures: Qatar Foundation plans to “clean house,” firing everyone and implementing an Islamic curriculum delivered entirely in Arabic. “QF could change its mind tomorrow, in which case it’s over and done with,” Desmond says. “If the emir is worried about people being pissed off that Qatar is becoming too Westernized, they’re going to start reducing their kids’ exposure to the West. It is a valid concern. It’s not going to be a public conversation. They have the domain to say, ‘We’ll pay you out for the contract. Leave the country tomorrow.’ It’s more likely than people give it credit for.” Many expatriates are convinced that a single irate exchange with a Qatari driver will lead to their peril. “It’s the guys running up behind you in their SUVs and flashing their lights at you,” Mark insists. “It’s not going to be the [government] that does it; it’s going to be some guy who I offended by not pulling over.” Lisa Clayton did not insult anyone in traffic, but her disparagement of Qataris led to her downfall. Clayton was an American art history professor who had lived in Doha for a decade. In December 2009, she penned an anonymous rant on a local expatriate forum, criticizing the conduct of Qatari teenagers on the National Day holiday. “What should be a time of celebration and pride, presented this country and Qataris in a terrible light of lawlessness, arrogance and disrespect for others, as well as property. One idiot was running around in an Osama bin Laden mask running up to expatriates in their car and trying to scare them. Ya Qatar, you really did yourself proud today.”27 Some of Clayton’s students saw her forum post and, offended, revealed her identity online. A hailstorm of criticism ensued, including the creation of an anti–Lisa Clayton page on Facebook. Under pressure, Clayton issued a public apology, pleading for relief. “My life here is over,” she wrote.28 Clayton’s contract was not renewed, and she departed Doha soon after.

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Western-educated academics, whose profession idealizes autonomy and intellectual freedom, directly conflict with Qatar’s authoritarian social and political milieu—the lack of free speech, the criminalization of critiquing government leaders, the censorship of printed and online materials, and direct and indirect surveillance. This leads to professional dissonance, which occurs when “the norms, values, and ideas embraced by a particular occupational group conflict with the norms, values, and ideas in place in the settings in which they work.”29 In Qatar, expatriates turn to five coping strategies: resistance, subversion, self-censorship, conversion, and exit. Beyond the professional dissonance, there are cultural challenges. Many Westerners confront a steep learning curve when relocating from, say, Washington, DC, Sydney, or London to a conservative Gulf society. Maria, a college sophomore, moved to Doha from Rome for a study-abroad program. When asked if not being able to date bothers her, she says, “Some aspects of it definitely bother me. I never realized the role that religion can play in a society until I came here, because of the rules and the cultural values the religion imposes. Living here, I have to live by them. It’s interesting to live under a different set of rules than Italy. It’s not as carefree.” Expatriates receive little cultural-sensitivity training during their brief formal orientations and enter the country with limited understanding of its history, laws, or social norms.30 Men are cautioned to restrict their interactions with women, particularly Qatari nationals. “It took at least a year, if not two years, before I felt comfortable out in public,” Rob says. “I wouldn’t look at people. I was worried about staring and things like that. When we were driving, I wouldn’t look inside other cars. I was very self-conscious about people staring when we’d go to the mall.” Under threat of deportation for saying or doing something wrong, even if inadvertently, a significant proportion of professional-class expatriates live in a perpetual state of low-grade anxiety. The impact on individuals varies, but the overall degree of impression management required in Qatar means that “despite the apparent tolerance and social harmony, local conventions impose considerable restrictions on the behavior of foreign workers.”31 “My first five months were pretty isolated,” remembers Ethan, an American expatriate. “I felt very uncomfortable the entire time. I felt

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ostracized from the community, alienated a bit. I had trouble figuring out where I fit in and how comfortable I could be. I always felt a bit on edge, like I was going to say something offensive or say something that would expose the fact that I was an outsider.” Language can also serve as a symbolic boundary. Ethan ran into problems at Souq Waqif about a year into his time in Doha. He and a friend were buying a used book, written in Arabic. Ethan recalls, “The Qatari shop owner came over and said, ‘You don’t belong here. You don’t speak Arabic. You don’t have any right to buy this book.’ And it cemented a lot of what I felt already, that we didn’t belong.” Some expatriates say that Doha’s population growth has generated increasingly nationalistic or ethnocentric responses from Qataris. Sayed, who moved to Doha from Sri Lanka, says, “There have been a few incidents over the past three or four months where people have come up to us and said, ‘You’re living in our country, you’re studying in our country, so you should listen to what we’re saying.’ ” Similar comments appear frequently on social media, as does the occasional anti-Semitic remark. Disgruntled over the hiring of a Jewish administrator at Education City, one Qatari student tweeted, “Why are there Zionist[s] in a host university that enrolls a Muslim-majority student body in a Muslim country?” Per custom, the higher-ups at the Qatar Foundation ignored the remark.

“Everybody’s a Driver” Exacerbating the tensions felt by professional-class expatriates are the short-term contracts that most work under. In Qatar, employee contracts typically run between one and three years. The agreements may be extended an additional term; but there are no guarantees, and many firms lack formal renewal procedures. Because all foreign laborers are legally required to work under contracts, even doctors, lawyers, and CEOs face the prospect of being sent home the minute those agreements expire. Professional-class expatriates complain that short-term contracts generate constant turnover, anxiety, and instability within organizations. “We have people who have been here sixteen years on one-year contracts,” Michael says. “It’s unbelievably flawed, in my opinion.” Wendy adds, “The employment environment of Qatar definitely serves the gov-

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ernment. At the end of the day, we’re all just drivers. We just happen to live better than other drivers. But everybody’s a driver. You’re here and you’re providing a service, and the minute your service is no longer needed, you can go.” Many professional-class expatriates compare their jobs to those of the low-wage workers who toil around them. “I am no different than one of the guys who’s climbing up on one of the buildings, building it across from my palatial flat,” Will says. “I happen to have a skill set that’s far more rare in a global economic sense. I have skills that are more scarce, so they have to pay me more. But I’m hired help like everyone else here.” Many professional-class expatriates love their Qatar salaries but loathe the country’s conservative, religious culture. To mitigate this dilemma, some create permanent getaways outside the country, maintaining homes in the United States or Europe, where they live during vacations and holidays. This enables them to earn high incomes in Doha but reduce the amount of time they spend there by 15 to 40 percent. Ethan describes being alienated in his first year in Doha, feelings that changed the longer he remained in the country. “I felt like I was there as a serviceman and that I provided a service, and that was the extent of my privilege in the country and my rights in the country. They paid me, I went there, and that was the end of it. By my second and third year, I started thinking to myself, ‘I have the right to call this place my home. I live here, I have a house here, I have rights and privileges as much as some of these other people do.’ ” Qatar’s labor system, immigration laws, and property regulations, however, discourage foreigners from settling permanently. Most professional-class workers in Doha do not plan to stay for more than a few years. As their contracts near expiration, these educated globetrotters are already packing for the next location. “If I wanted to continue teaching internationally, I could easily get a job,” one expatriate avows. “I could continue doing the expat faculty thing for the rest of my career, because US degrees are still golden in the international market.” Andrew and his wife lived in Qatar for seven years and suddenly decided to move. They initially relocated to Qatar on a whim and were departing much the same way. Andrew, a Dutch expatriate, quit his job at an Education City branch campus without having a new one in

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place. When asked where he plans to go next, he says, “The underlying factor is just a sense of adventure. It’s a big world out there. Why go home?” Thus, while the sponsorship labor system offers structural evidence that Qatar has only modest commitment to retaining professional-class workers, the workers respond in kind, feeling few obligations toward Qatar. “I was never planning on staying,” says Steve, an American expatriate who has renewed his one-year contract three times. “That’s what made it all so much easier, because however weird or however difficult this might be, I’m only here for the year. I can just leave at the end of the year.”

Alignment, Approximation, and Distancing Being Qatari is the highest social position in Doha, but it is typically an ascribed status, one that is impossible for individuals to earn or achieve. Alignment, approximation, and distancing are interactive strategies that attempt physical or symbolic affinity with Qataris, to seek whatever residual benefits such proximity has to offer. The strategies vary by nationality. For example, certain Gulf Arabs rank high on Qatar’s social hierarchy and do correspondently less status work than Western expatriates do. One set of strategies draws attention to biological, cultural, or proximal connections to Qataris. The tactics are sometimes used by Qataris themselves, whose ethnic and tribal differences can impact their perceived degree of nationality. For example, citizens who are born to a Qatari father and a non-Qatari mother, describe this status as distinct from those with two Qatari parents. Their unambiguous alignment with Qatar may ward off accusations that they are somehow less than authentic. Natalia explains, “I’m mixed. My mom’s British. I’m more Qatari because I’ve lived here my whole life. I’m more attached to the culture here, more attached to the language, to the people, to the tradition, everything. Qatar is a lot of things. For me, it’s home—even though I’m part from somewhere else.” Although Natalia describes herself as having dual origins, she claims to feel a greater affinity with Qatari culture.

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Natalia invokes her Doha childhood as evidence of her national authenticity, but even Qataris whose childhoods were spent in other countries claim to identify more strongly with Qatar. Carl has a Qatari father and a Canadian mother. The family lived in Vancouver for the first sixteen years of Carl’s life, visiting Doha sporadically. Three years ago, Carl decided to move to Doha to attend college. The experience proved transformative. “I didn’t really know much about Qatar until three years ago,” he says. “But when people ask me today, I tell them I’m Qatari. I don’t tell them I’m Canadian. Because I don’t feel Canadian; I feel Qatari.” Feeling Qatari proves more difficult for naturalized citizens, who “are not always fully accepted or acknowledged as ‘truly’ Qatari. Even after receiving Qatari citizenship, the naturalised citizen’s original nationality continues to be used as a marker of his/her identity and the individual and his/her family are likely to be referred to as not-quite Qatari.”32 The double consciousness experienced by cross-national and naturalized Qataris is felt by some nonnational groups as well. For example, there are tens of thousands of long-term residents in Qatar, some of whom have lived in Doha their entire lives. They become permanent guests, effectively immigrating to the country, but without any sense of security or the attendant benefits of citizenship.33 This group also struggles with its liminal status. Tessa, an Iranian, was born and raised in Qatar yet describes feeling like a perpetual outsider. “I feel Qatari, but I’m treated as Iranian. I have this whole loss-of-identity thing. I always feel that way. That’s part of living in Qatar. The ironic thing is that threequarters of Qataris are Iranian. But if you tell them their grandmother is Iranian, they get upset. It’s an insult for them.” Here Tessa alludes to the shared historical ties between Qatar and Iran, which are not enough to grant her social, cultural, or legal Qatari citizenship. Perhaps for this reason, some Qataris and non-Qataris strategically downplay their Persian lineage “in an attempt to maximise their access to economic and political resources.”34 I ask Tessa if she experiences this sense of double consciousness in her everyday life, of being Qatari yet not Qatari. “Most of my friends are Qatari, but at the end of the day, I’m still Iranian,” she says. “We have mutual interests, mutual understanding, and everything, but at the end of the day, they’re Qatari, I’m Iranian. They treat me differently. If we’re

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in a group of three people and two of them are Qatari, I would be the third wheel.” Expatriates from Gulf countries align themselves with Qataris by evoking the region’s shared history and culture. For example, male and female Gulf Arabs often wear the traditional clothing of their home countries. Because traditional attire is somewhat similar in the Gulf, the clothing signals cultural solidarity. Gulf Arabs use discursive practices of alignment as well. For example, when a Kuwaiti expatriate describes the nationalities found on his volleyball team, he tells me, “Palestine, Jordan, Sudanese, an Algerian, an Egyptian, an American. I’m the only GCC player on the team.” Here, the player highlights the team’s diversity but also singles out his status as a Gulf inhabitant. To express affinity with Qataris, others make connections between the Gulf countries and the larger Arab world. For example, when asked about Qatar, an Omani expatriate says, “They’re putting the word for the Arabs out there, especially GCC countries, which are nonexistent to the rest of the world. For Qatar to be known not only for entertainment but for something that is more important: education, sports, winning the World Cup bid—those are what brings out Arab pride.” Arabs from non-Gulf countries also emphasize their mutual affinity. For example, a Palestinian expatriate describes a sports venue as catering to “mostly foreigners, but you see a lot of Arabs too.” An Iraqi Arab describes her office this way: “We don’t have any foreigners; it’s mostly Arabs.” Among Qataris, there is concern over the “foreign problem” caused by the massive demographic shifts that characterize the petrol era. Here, Arabs align themselves with Qataris by implying shared ethnicity and distance themselves from non-Arab foreigners. Western expatriates internalize this hierarchy, and some repeat it as well. Non-Arab expatriates align themselves with Qataris in various ways, too. Qatar’s short-term contracts ensure high turnover across industries. Expatriates joke that anyone who has resided in Doha for three years is a long-timer. Some express a commitment to Qataris by quantifying the amount of time they have lived in Doha. When asked how the city has changed, Roger, a white, European expatriate who has lived in Doha for a decade, replies, “It changes, but we don’t notice it as an outsider would, coming once in a while.” Here, Roger distinguishes “outsiders”

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from insiders like himself, who have lived in Doha for so long that they are somewhat inured to its ever-shifting landscape. Others emphasize their commitment to the nation by describing major life events, such as getting married or having children, that took place in Qatar. For example, Julie is Ecuadorian and has lived and worked in Doha for almost twenty years. Although she is not Qatari, she portrays herself as a virtuous outsider, a foreigner who is aligned with Qataris via moral commitment. “I live here. My children were born here. I’m not from here, and I will never be a citizen of this country. And I don’t want to; I don’t need it. But I would like to contribute to this being a better place for everyone, not just for you Qataris or us expats, making all this money and having all these benefits.” Here, Julie claims status as a longtime resident who is committed to making Qatar a better place for all. She frames Qataris and expatriates as sharing certain economic traits and implies that there is a third, unnamed group, the workers.

Workers Every foreign laborer in Qatar is a sponsored worker, but colloquially the term worker refers to Asian, Arab, or African nationals in the labor and service classes. Westerners rarely refer to themselves or their peers as workers—they are expatriates or expats. “An Egyptian or an Indian must earn much more and be sponsored by an institution such as a university to be called an expatriate. Expatriates do not consider themselves to be migrants in any sense of the word. They are ‘living abroad and working,’ but are not migrant workers.”35 The semantic distinction between “expats” and “workers” illustrates the vast chasm that separates these two groups. The circumstances of low- wage migrant workers in Qatar has generated a mountain of negative press. The New York Times: “Qatar’s Showcase of Shame”; the Independent: “Qatar’s Workers Are Not Workers, They Are Slaves”; the Guardian: “Thousands of Qatar World Cup Workers ‘Subjected to Life-Threatening Heat.’ ”36 Qatar’s sponsorship system has been widely denounced as exploitive by labor organizations and human rights watchdogs. The Qatari government has a Human Rights Department that claims to be “committed to the principles of justice, charity, liberty, equality and

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morals.” Given the “democratic transformations” taking place in Qatar, the department endeavors to “strengthen the protection of human rights . . . and [perform] various humanitarian and social services to the public (citizens or residents) without discrimination.”37 Yet the Global Slavery Index ranks Qatar as the fifth-worst nation in the world for forced labor and estimates that there are more than thirty thousand literal slaves currently residing in the country.38 Qatar’s sponsorship labor system means that foreigners can only enter the country after first signing a contract with an individual or company that agrees to assume legal and financial responsibility for the employee.39 In the petroleum era, this process became monetized and has grown in accordance with the demands of oil-producing nations. Today, a transnational labor brokerage system consists of headhunters in sending countries linked to manpower agencies and large employers in receiving countries. Labor and service workers from other nations pay an average of $1,031 to brokers to obtain permits that enable them to legally enter Qatar. The cost of a work permit varies by nationality. For example, Bangladeshis pay more for their immigration costs than Filipinos do.40 Some migrant laborers obtain jobs through traditional networks, most often family members or friends who are already working in Qatar, but they too pay a fee to gain employment. The majority of migrant laborers take loans for the work permits and generally spend the first year of their contracts paying off the debt they accrued to get to Doha.41 Although doing so is risky, some obtain a visa from a phony sponsor and come to Qatar to seek work. A survey of 1,189 low-wage workers in Qatar reports that nearly threequarters are married, with an average of 2.4 children back home.42 Nearly half are Hindu, followed by a significant proportion of Muslims (37 percent), as well as smaller numbers of Christians and Buddhists. They have completed an average of 8.7 years of schooling. While virtually all are literate in their language of origin, less than a third speak English, and less than 20 percent speak Arabic. For nearly 70 percent, this is their first time working in another country. Most have not been in Qatar long and wish to return home for good at the end of their contracts. In particular, South Asian migrants view their time in Doha as temporary. Workers are involved in all facets of the service industries: opening doors to lobbies, cooking and serving food in restaurants, press-

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Construction workers in Doha often earn less than $300 per month, working six days per week in shifts that can exceed twelve hours. (Photo by Alexander R. Wilcox Cheek)

ing shirts at laundries, and driving taxicabs. Some are employed as dry cleaners, masons, carpenters, electricians, painters, salespeople, restaurant servers, shop clerks, and security guards. Others are members of municipal cleaning crews or are employed in building maintenance, agriculture, and roadwork. Domestic labor is gendered. Drivers and landscapers are male, while female domestics cook, clean, and take care of children. At the bottom of the labor hierarchy are janitors, dishwashers, window cleaners, garbage collectors, and hundreds of thousands of construction workers. Workers put in as many as twelve hours per day, six days per week, although a 2018 report found firms exceeding these limits, including one employee who had put in 124 consecutive days.43 Workers earn an average salary of $291 per month, $209 of which they remit back home and the rest of which they use to cover living expenses in Qatar. Nearly 90 percent of low-wage workers in Qatar receive housing as part of their compensation.44 Pay and working conditions vary by nationality, ethnicity, and religion. For example, Egyptians and Filipinos are paid more than Nepalis

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and Bangladeshis are.45 Arabs earn about $396 per month, compared to $281 for South Asians. Arabs also work fewer days per week and live with fewer roommates. Similarly, Muslims fare better than Hindus do. These discrepancies indicate that “even low-income Arab migrants with a cultural and linguistic facility in Qatari society, are better able to assert their basic rights, build and call upon social capital while abroad, navigate the bureaucratic complexities of work in Qatar, and respond appropriately to alterations in their living and working situation while abroad.”46 The salary for live-in domestic workers, who typically receive room and board from their sponsoring families, starts at $160 per month.47 In addition to gender, there is often a nation-based division of labor for domestic workers. For example, South Asian men are assigned as drivers and houseboys, while Filipina women are employed as nannies.48 A Filipina maid generally earns more than an Indonesian or Ethiopian maid. Basing salaries on rates found in the workers’ home countries effectively creates a stratified remuneration structure based on nationality. Critics call the system “racist, exploitative and perpetuating [of] global inequalities.”49 Qatar’s national development strategy asserts, “The country promotes social tolerance, benevolence, constructive dialogue and openness towards other cultures. Most important, it seeks to ensure justice and equality for all men, women and children of current and future generations.” Yet the same document reveals antipathy for migrant workers and makes clear that Qatar’s social development policies are designed to enhance “the well-being of Qatar and its citizens.”50 The 2030 plan concedes, “In order to realize Qatar’s future ambitions, it will be necessary to make up for the shortages of local labor with expatriate workers.”51 Yet the leadership despairs of this influx of workers, whose presence is said to contribute to a “low-wage, labour-intensive, low-productivity economy.”52 Because most of what little income the workers earn is remitted to home countries, rather than circulated locally, individual workers make a somewhat meager contribution to Qatar’s economy. Immigrants are also described as dangerous to Qatar’s traditional way of life. “While a large expatriate community broadens perspectives on other cultures and life-styles, it also threatens traditional Qatari values founded in Arabic

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culture and Islam.” Going forward, Qatar hopes to attract a better class of expatriate worker, “with a growing emphasis on the higher skilled.” Due to these and other concerns, the workers’ behavior, movements, phone calls, and mail are monitored and controlled.53

The Camp Construction workers were forbidden from living in central Doha after citizens complained that they were “menaces to the Qatari way of life,” and many have been relocated to the outskirts of town.54 Forty percent of migrant workers live in dormitory-style camps, 25 percent in single-family homes turned into dormitory-style living quarters, and 16 percent in apartments. They average more than six men per bedroom. During my first year in Doha, I visited one of these labor camps, located near a part of town known as the “Industrial Area,” home to a series of immense residential camps. This one was a colossal compound, several thousand acres, surrounded by an eight-foot concrete wall. I was surprised that there was no one guarding the gateway at the front entrance, that I could simply drive in without anyone stopping me or even taking notice. The site served as a standalone neighborhood, housing several thousand workers, mostly male, although a handful of women walked its constricted passageways. The compound’s streets were tight, unpaved dirt roads. It was 112 degrees, and everything was dusty and covered in thick layers of sand and dirt. Trash and litter were piled everywhere— fast-food containers, used tissues, plastic bags, broken glass, discarded soda cans, and crumpled milk cartons. The camp’s lone garbage container looked like it had not been emptied in a month, overfilled beyond capacity, to the point that it was surrounded by heaps of loose garbage, swarming with flies. An abandoned yellow school bus sat off to the side, its headlights, tires, and seats removed long ago, its interior stuffed with garbage. Lines of late-model cars and pickup trucks were parked tightly against the housing, row after row of one-story structures constructed from cracked stucco, cinder blocks, bricks, and even wood. Their outer walls were buried in a jumble of graffiti, topped by rusty, corrugated tin roofs. Most of these structures had no doors or windows, just pieces of cloth

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hanging in the doorways and newspapers taped over the windowsills. The exteriors of the housing units were surrounded by a spaghetti bowl of extension cords and clotheslines and littered with rusted appliances, old mattresses, discarded propane tanks, crumpled cardboard boxes, and piles of rocks and concrete. Several featured Qatari flags, affixed to broom handles and zip-tied strategically to an exterior fixture, drooping in the windless heat. Inside the housing units, four bedrooms accommodated thirty-two men. Each bedroom was crowded with four metal bunk beds, topped with thin mattresses. The workers had draped the lower bunks with sheets or clothing for additional privacy. The bedroom floors were awash in power strips, plastic trash bags, discarded food containers, piles of clothes, and the few material possessions that the eight workers who shared the room owned, mostly small appliances such as rice cookers and electric tea kettles. Every available inch of wall space was covered in posters of soccer players and clothing attached to hooks and wires. The bedroom featured a wall-unit air conditioner, although one of the workers told me that it broke down frequently. In one bedroom, there was a thirteen-inch color television that was shared by everyone. The kitchen was almost unrecognizable, caked in what appeared to be a decade’s worth of charred black grease and cooking oil. There were no proper appliances, just portable burners affixed to propane tanks. A spigot, like the kind to which one might attach a backyard hose, was the sole source of water. In the middle of the kitchen was a small wooden table but no chairs. A random assortment of dented pots and pans were scattered on a small metal shelf. The bathroom, shared by the thirty-two men who lived in the unit, was a brick outhouse with a floor constructed of cracked ceramic tile. The shower consisted of a small tap, located about two feet off the ground; the toilet was a feces-smeared five-gallon plastic bucket, located next to a hole in the ground.55 Low-wage workers are powerless under Qatar’s sponsorship labor scheme. They cannot compete in the local labor market or switch jobs without permission from their employers.56 Some workers claim that the terms of their contracts were altered after they arrived in Doha.57 Seven percent do not have residence permits, which are required by law. Nearly six in ten lack a mandatory medical ID card, which means that

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they cannot access the public health system.58 More than one in five workers report having salaries docked and/or withheld for security deposits, agent fees, insurance, and penalties. Domestic laborers experience isolation, which leaves them open to further forms of exploitation and abuse, compounded when the workers are female.59 Workers can sue employers, but doing so means being barred from all paid labor during the dispute. If workers win, their employment will be terminated, along with their visa and residency, and they will be deported back to their home country. Losing a case against an employer can result in years of financial servitude for the plaintiffs. Moreover, employers can accuse workers of violating any number of moral decrees, which may lead to arrest and/or deportation. Thus, low-wage migrant workers in Qatar encounter a system structured to give excessive power to employers and a legal system that is run by and for Qataris.

Family Day Every morning, thousands of buses and vans ship workers from housing compounds on the outskirts of town to any number of the vast construction projects in and around Doha. By law, laborers are not permitted to work if the temperature reaches 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit. It is rumored that the official temperature never exceeds 49 degrees, to ensure that construction never stops.60 The laborers generally have one day off per week, Friday, the Muslim holy day. On Friday afternoons, tens of thousands of male workers congregate throughout Doha, gathering on street corners, lining up along the Corniche, and assembling in parks. Located in a neighborhood that annexes downtown, the National is a cluster of shops and financial service companies that surround a small public square. On Friday afternoons, it serves as a gathering place for hundreds of South Asian workers. The workers come to the National to make small purchases in the shops, remit money back home, learn about prospective work opportunities, and socialize. A migrant worker named Motallob explains in Bengalese, “When we are at work, we don’t get an idea about the city life, how the city is and things like that. And when we come to the city,

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we feel better mentally and get some rest. When we work late nights, we can’t really meet any friends. There is nothing like city [where we live], there is no entertainment. Even if we want, we can’t really do anything, For example, [if] we want to eat, we don’t [have restaurants] there. So Friday is a holiday, our only holiday in a week. We can eat, we can buy many different things. And all of our Bengali friends, we don’t have to invite them.”61 The workers congregate at sites like the National on Fridays because there are few alternatives. Even workers who enjoy considerable autonomy in their home countries “come to understand [certain] public spaces of Doha as inaccessible and inappropriate for them.”62 Professional-class expatriates and Qataris can spend the day at one of Doha’s colossal shopping malls, where they can stroll and socialize in air-conditioned comfort. The workers are not welcome. Friday is “Family Day.” On Family Day, only married couples with children are allowed to enter Qatar malls, prohibiting any single man from going inside. Because most workers do not have wives and children living in the country, they are considered “bachelors.” This practice effectively bars non-Arab and nonwhite males from entering shopping malls on Fridays, although it does not stop them from trying. On Friday mornings, temporary signs declaring “Family Day” are posted at every entrance, with security guards standing next to them blocking the doors. Single Arab and white males are allowed to enter, breezing past the guards. Enforcement is arbitrary and runs along loose interpretations of race and nationality. Non-Arab and nonwhite males are likely to be stopped, even if they are well-heeled elites. “Bachelors not allowed,” a Filipino guard tells an Indian worker, pointing to the sign. As morning turns to afternoon, the traffic at the malls increases. Wave upon wave of workers approach the doors, trying to blend in inconspicuously with the rest of the shoppers, only to be turned away by the guards. Not easily rebuffed, the workers linger off to the side and try again a few minutes later or walk to another entrance and attempt to bypass a different guard. Some are dressed in their nicest clothes, hoping to be mistaken for members of the professional class, a ruse that occasionally works. Others work in teams alongside female domestic servants, posing as husband and wife. This strategy can be effective be-

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cause guards are hesitant to have much contact with a female, regardless of her ethnic background. It is impossible to keep everyone out. One guard is assigned to watch over an entire bank of doors, and it is easy to become overwhelmed. A few workers slip through, only to be kicked out later by security guards who patrol the mall’s interior. “This intolerance is existent in a lot of Middle Eastern countries,” says Fatima, a Moroccan woman who has lived in Doha for five years. “We do have some intolerance to outsiders and foreigners, whether it’s religion or ethnicity. They’re just treated differently, and they’re looked upon differently. That’s sad to see here.” Some Qatari and non-Qatari females believe that the purpose of Family Day is to keep allegedly uncivilized construction workers out of the mall, to allow women one day a week when they can shop without being ogled by strangers.63 Females complain about being catcalled and leered at by male workers, who sometimes work in teams, trying to snap surreptitious photos with their phones. The women defend Family Day as necessary—it is the workers’ fault, they insist. Regardless, the beliefs that sustain cultural practices such as Family Day reinforce the institutional nationalism of Qatar’s legal, economic, and immigration systems. These systems in turn affect everyday behaviors and beliefs.

Moral Conflicts Professional-class expatriates are not shielded from headlines that decry the conditions of low-wage migrant workers. Like Qataris, many expatriates are sensitive to what they view as unfair depictions of Qatar in the Western media. Most draw the line, however, when it comes to the workers, whose marginal treatment on a day-to-day basis is visible and impossible to deny. Doha’s wealth and atmosphere of luxury “has a way of making you forget the bad stuff or, worse, becoming inured to it,” writes Dane Wisher, an MFA who spent a couple of years teaching at a Doha community college. “As a human being you get used to passing emaciated workers on construction sites on the walk to the Kempinsky or the Four Seasons [hotels]. You get used to seeing Qatari men browbeat—and sometimes actually beat—South Asian drivers on the side of the road.

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You grow accustomed to watching workers on break line up in the shade of a single palm tree as the dirt sizzles around them in August. You stop registering the busses with no air-conditioning carrying the laborers to and from their cramped quarters. You stop noting the way the men press their dusty faces out the open windows for air.”64 Due to Qatar’s labor structure, many professional-class expatriates are insulated from the worst of these abuses. The expatriates work in professional settings that follow international standards of business decorum. “The way they treat the laborers is pretty poor,” concedes a professor at Education City. “There are some situations where it’s truly egregious. There are areas where the locals throw their weight around in ways that are disruptive and dishonorable. A lot of the narratives have truth to them, but there are two or three or four different cultures in Qatar. As expats, we live in a different culture, and the cultural mores of the United States and Europe dominate in the areas in which we operate, right down to relationships between laborers and the faculty. The service staff is treated differently than they might be treated in another setting. So a lot of it’s true, but it’s not true everywhere.” Professional-class expatriates are often versed in the structural dynamics of race and power and recognize their position in Qatar’s social hierarchy. While most are not privy to horrific abuses of laborers, they are aware that their presence contributes to the systematic disenfranchisement of the workers they encounter on a daily basis. Thus, professional-class expatriates not only witness the marginalization of workers but inadvertently contribute to it. “The racial hierarchy that exists in that country is absurd,” says Ethan, an American expatriate who quit his job in Doha after three years. “Anybody who’s been there can immediately see the exploitation that goes on. You know you’re living on the back of other people’s sweat the entire time. It makes you feel awful. Then you develop a kind of strange sense of entitlement, saying, ‘Yeah, well, I give the barber money occasionally.’ It makes you feel like a terrible person. In retrospect, you say, ‘What a horrible person I was. I could have done the Oskar Schindler thing. I could have done so much more.’ ” All professional-class expatriates must find a way to resolve any moral conflicts they have about living and working in Qatar or, like Ethan, return home because the dilemma becomes too burdensome. Some as-

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sert that the West has no business pointing fingers when it comes to the human rights abuses of migrants. Others attempt to put things in perspective. “It’s not like every worker here is being treated poorly or being beaten,” Desmond says. “It exists, but there are a lot of workers who are happy and content to stay. That’s one of the reasons you have people who have been born and raised in Qatar—they’re happy here.” Other professional-class expatriates deliberately make choices that reduce their contribution to Qatar’s transnational labor system. For example, Julie is part of an active household, with two working parents and two young children. For just a few hundred dollars per month, Julie could hire a live-in domestic helper who would cook, clean, run errands, and take care of her children. It is a line Julie has refused to cross for more than a decade. “We’ve never had a live-in nanny, never,” she avows. “That’s something that we would never have, but [our children] see that everybody else has a nanny, and they tell us they want to have a nanny. They talk about going to the hotels for brunch and things like that. It gets too Doha. It’s wonderful that they have all these opportunities and access to all of this, which I didn’t have. But at the same time, it would be nice for them to see that this is just in Qatar and the whole world doesn’t run like this. And again, we live a very normal life compared to many, many other people, and we take pride in that, and to us it’s important.” Some expatriates say, half jokingly, that Qatar would be far worse off if they were not there to keep things running. “I’m a little worried about these Qataris,” one Westerner tells me. “Qatar without the expats would lead into chaos. They wouldn’t know what to do with themselves. They would break out into tribes and try to get rid of each other. I’m a little worried about them. That’s all they know: the sword dance and how to sit around in Souq Waqif.”

Fire Fires happen all the time in Qatar; in 2015, the government reported 5,483 fire accidents.65 Fires are especially common during the hottest months, when electricity use soars. The Villaggio Mall fire of May 28, 2012, began at the Nike Store, when cheap fluorescent tube lighting

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malfunctioned and ignited an upstairs storage room filled with cardboard boxes. The storage room was located adjacent to a drop-off day-care center, the Gympanzee. The center was popular with expatriate parents, who enjoyed the convenience of having a place to leave young children while they shopped at the mall. Inexplicably, the day-care center was located on the second floor and had just one exit, a narrow hallway that led to a flight of stairs. Fire and smoke consumed the Nike storage room, trapping everyone inside the Gympanzee: four female Filipino and South African employees and thirteen toddlers. There were no windows or ventilation. As the blaze grew, fire alarms sounded sporadically throughout the mall. By most accounts, response from the Villaggio security was lackadaisical. They assumed it was a false alarm. Fire alarms sound regularly in Doha malls, and few people take them seriously. The shoppers, skaters, diners, and even the security guards just carry on with whatever they are doing. The journalist Tarek Bazley, who was at the Villaggio that day, described a fire alarm that resembled a doorbell ringing repeatedly. An attendant told him, “It’s usually a false alarm.”66 When things run smoothly, Doha appears idyllic, but its rapid growth and strategy of hiring inexpensive, low-skilled labor mean that no one is prepared to handle crises, a phenomenon that sociologists refer to as “trained incapacity.”67 Qatar’s low-wage service workers are steadfastly polite but are also instructed to be docile and obsequious. In an emergency, no migrant worker has the authority to take charge and give orders to people of higher-status. It is simply not done in Doha. In situations like the Villaggio fire, the results are tragic. At the onset of the blaze, most of the mall patrons dismissed the alarms. But the fire was serious and grew severe when smoke from the Nike Store mixed with the cheap, toxic, and highly inflammable paint that the Villaggio used to create scenes of rustic Italy on its walls. The sprinkler system failed to engage. The mall corridors filled with smoke, and people began to evacuate, some snapping smoky selfies on the way out. Firefighters from the Qatari Civil Defense arrived on the scene minutes later. They encountered nonworking emergency lighting and a sprinkler system that was not operational. Neither the security nor the

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management was able to locate floor plans for the mall. Instead, two hours after the blaze started, the firefighters attempted a rescue at the day-care center by drilling a large hole in the roof, where they could pull people out. It was too late. Everyone inside had already perished from smoke inhalation. Heartbreaking images of rescue workers pulling the bodies of lifeless toddlers out of the smoking rooftop were almost too much to bear. Two firefighters, one Iranian, the other Moroccan, died in the effort to save the children. The Villaggio fire made international headlines, and it struck everyone in Doha deeply. The thirteen toddlers who lost their lives were mostly the offspring of well-to-do expatriate families from countries like New Zealand, France, and Japan. Grief was widespread, followed by anger. The normally timid state-owned Qatar Tribune printed an editorial the next day asking, “How Safe Are Our Children in Doha?” The author wrote what everyone in town was thinking: “Today, we felt that even the otherwise tranquil and peaceful Doha is not safe. Our children are vulnerable. Our buildings and malls can turn death traps. . . . The tragedy must make us raise certain questions: How safe are our kids in Doha? How secure are fire hydrants and the sprinklers all over the city, in schools, in malls, in public buildings like cinema halls? How sound are the fire fighting equipment? How protected are we and our children in our homes? How safe is the public transport, especially the buses and other vehicles carrying our kids to school?”68 The Qatari leadership declares that its courts “maintain the highest ethical standards, act in accordance with internationally recognized best practices and deliver justice fairly and efficiently with a firm commitment to upholding the Rule of Law.”69 Attorneys for the families of the deceased, however, struggled for years to make headway through Qatar’s legal system, a patchwork of sharia law, tribal customs, and cronyism. The Gympanzee, which was not licensed as a day-care facility, was co-owned by an elite Qatari couple, members of the Al Thani family. The husband was Qatar’s ambassador to Belgium; the wife was the daughter of a prominent politician. In the wake of a police investigation, the pair fled to Belgium and refused to return to Doha, defying court orders and evading a trial appearance. Eventually, arrest warrants were issued for

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the wife and four people who worked for the Villaggio Mall. All were eventually found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, but—after more than five years of legal wrangling—a local appeals court overturned the convictions and dropped all charges. Collectively, the five were ordered to pay a total of about $55,000 in blood money to the families of the nineteen victims, an average of less than $3,000 per death. The Villaggio, which reopened three and a half months after the fire to record crowds, was ordered to pay a $5,500 fine.

Disposable Professional-class expatriates are part of the same package of goals that bring construction workers to Doha. They are paid handsomely and treated infinitely better, but at the end of the day, both sets of workers are disposable. Qatar’s labor laws are written to create a docile and obedient workforce that walks on eggshells so as not to offend its temperamental host. The hotel clerk’s obsequious toadying is the college professor’s selfcensorship in the classroom. That said, while expats and workers are disposable and mistreated, they are not equally disposable or identically mistreated. Expats and workers occupy two different worlds in Qatar. Expats live a life of privilege and luxury. They eat in fine restaurants, drive expensive vehicles, live in large homes, and send their children to private schools. They have good jobs that pay well and have outstanding benefits. Workers live in crowded conditions, eat a subsistence diet, and earn less than a dollar an hour. When the worlds of expats and workers collide, as they did at the Villaggio fire, it demonstrates not only the shared humanity of the groups but their similarities as foreign labor in Qatar. The Villaggio fire and the legal mockery that followed reveal the untruths behind Qatar’s nation branding. On its surface, Qatar appears every inch a contemporary country, with cutting-edge sprinkler systems, crack security and management teams, top-notch firefighting technology, and the training and know-how required to use it. Qatar claims that its legal system applies critical thinking and rationality to promote justice and support human rights. Instead, the fire lays bare the ineptitude of the Villaggio management, the mall security, and the fire department. It illustrates the in-

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competence of the government, including its safety inspectors, licensing examiners, insurance agents, and urban planners, who are also culpable for the loss of life at the Villaggio. It demonstrates how Qatar’s court system works in servitude to the Al Thani dynasty. Finally, it underscores the limits of Qatar’s narrative of modern traditionalism.

Conclusion The Limits of Modern Traditionalism

This book explores changing ideas about citizenship under the Qatari government’s program of modern traditionalism. The Qatari leadership’s efforts improve the material lives of citizens, but they also reinforce divisions between Qatari nationals and nonnationals. The scale of Al Thani ambition requires that Qatar rebuild its infrastructure in little more than a decade, while also undertaking a series of megaprojects related to education, sports, transportation, medicine, business, media, arts, and more. To achieve this, Qatar has imported millions of laborers, rendering Qatari nationals an ever-shrinking proportion of their country’s population. The nation’s growing foreign workforce raises fears that citizens will be subsumed by globalization or rendered unrecognizable by Westernization. These concerns, alongside institutional and cultural factors that separate citizens and foreigners, contribute to a growing sense of nationalism among Qataris. Because modern traditionalism reinforces national identity, it may inadvertently sustain some of the social conditions it was designed to alleviate. With modern traditionalism, the Qatari government strategically merges elements of the contemporary and the conventional into a narrative designed to advance its economic agenda and centralize power at home. Modern traditionalism envisions Qataris as cosmopolitan, empowered social justice advocates who also are devoted family members and value their rich cultural heritage. Externally, modern traditionalism brands Qatar as an A-list member of the global economic order. Internally, the narrative forges a Qatari national identity, buoyed by a labor system, immigration laws, financial regulations, and government policies structured to benefit nationals. This arrangement enriches citizens but also fortifies Al Thani reign by disempowering tribes and creating near-complete reliance on government largesse. Because 225

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modern traditionalism replaces tribal identity with national identity, it goes beyond mere branding and is used by the state as a mechanism to amass power through social, political, legal, economic, and cultural engineering. Petrofamilies are Qatar’s change agents, reflecting and reproducing modern traditionalism through discourse, embodiment, and action. Qatar has tasked petrofamilies with developing a knowledge-based workforce that will sustain it in the postoil era. Petrofamilies’ Muslim leanings, global perspective, and background in international education and travel make them ideal ambassadors for the government’s narrative. “The newer generation have so much more understanding of how to take what’s best from the West and implement it with our culture here,” says Maryam, a Qatari petrofamily member. “Even [Qatar University], with all its faults, there’s girls and guys there that understand the need for change. I’m not saying change is a loss of culture or religion; change is adapting other cultures and obtaining tolerance—how we can stay respectable people but grasp aspects of modernity that currently aren’t part of Qatari culture.” By helping usher Qatar to modernity, petrofamily members such as Maryam become actors for the state. Petrofamilies in Qatar advance the nation’s economic agenda and cede power to the Al Thanis. As demonstrated throughout this book, Qataris employ modern traditionalism for their own purposes and in ways the state does not necessarily intend. Some modify or adjust the narrative, emphasize elements that advance their personal interests, challenge or resist the narrative, or deploy it as a weapon against institutions such as the family or the government. Individual uses of modern traditionalism are multifarious and contextual. For example, couples in consanguineous marriages sometimes reimagine traditional practices as modern, while there are sportswomen who participate in athletics in ways that redefine contemporary behaviors as conventional. The forms of resistance implicit within these exchanges may lead to surface-level changes, such as marriages that are more “romantic,” fewer Qataris wearing the national uniform, or increased female sports participation. There have already been some modifications in these areas. Ultimately, surface-level reforms do little to alter the larger structural forces that constrain the inhabitants of Qatar. Powerful and deeply entrenched institutional stratification is more resistant to change.

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Doha News Modern traditionalism helps explain many of the seeming discrepancies that arise in Qatar, the duality that many residents say typifies the nation. Yet there are limits to the narrative’s potential to address contemporary life in Doha or have meaning for certain populations. Some aspects of life in Qatar are difficult to explain away with a benign narrative of modern traditionalism. Qatar’s predilection for playing the middle ground sometimes contributes to political difficulties in the Gulf. The nation’s fence-straddling has increasingly yielded pushback like a 2017 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Qatar Cannot Have It Both Ways.” The piece decries a “dangerous contradiction: Qatar invests billions of dollars in the U.S. and Europe and then recycles the profits to support Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and groups linked to al Qaeda.”1 Qatar survived a myriad of World Cup–related controversies, but its reputation and international standing continue to be called into question, often by the very global superpowers it aspires to join. Doha’s futuristic skyscrapers, megamalls, sports arenas, museums, and universities paint a portrait of a city at the forefront of modernity. A closer look, however, reveals towers that sit vacant, built primarily to create an awe-inspiring skyline. Its “ancient” souq was rehabbed fifteen years ago; its shopping malls are deadly firetraps; its sports stadiums are filled with rent-a-fans; its museums are barely patronized; and its colleges and universities lack rigor and fundamental academic freedoms.2 Tamim Al Thani presents himself as a genial benefactor of Qatar’s citizenry, but the flagrant human rights abuses committed by the leadership in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia in recent times are evidence that the Gulf rulers are above international reproach. Emirs who do not openly flout the law still tend toward repression. In the Gulf during the 1970s and 1980s, “authoritarian regimes, often dominated by the same individual for long periods of time, became the norm in most of the Arab States and Iran. Under these regimes, the power of the central state and its machinery of control increased markedly. In the course of enhancing their power and security, authoritarian rulers in [the Gulf] took measures to silence leftist opposition forces.”3 The silencing of diverse opin-

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ions is apparent in Qatar’s laws, which restrict freedom of speech and the right to protest and do not allow for elected leaders.4 Adding to this is the government’s ownership and censorship of the media. Qatar’s leaders vow to “stimulate and encourage dialogue among countries, religions, cultures and civilizations,” yet they systematically restrict basic forms of expression.5 In 2008, the government funded the Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF), whose aim was to expand free speech and press initiatives in the Gulf. Although DCMF had a $4 million annual operating budget, the government severely curbed its activities. DCMF’s chairman, a member of the Al Thani family, clashed with two different directors, both Europeans who were ousted in contentious public firings. It was not the first time the government interfered with media freedoms in Qatar. In 2009, the married expatriates Omar Chatriwala and Shabina Khatri started Doha News, an English-based online information feed that amassed coverage about Doha. In due time, it began to feature original content. Qatar’s de facto government-owned newspapers feature scant local coverage, and what they print is little more than state-approved press releases. Doha News quickly caught on as the primary source of community news in English. Within a few years, the site was receiving more than one million visitors per month.6 Doha News provided the only local coverage the day of the Villaggio fire, which overwhelmed the ability of the state-run media to deliver real-time reporting. Among the first journalists on the scene was Usama Hamed, a Syrian expatriate who had just completed his junior year as a journalism major at Northwestern University in Qatar. Hamed posted photos and information on social media, some of which were immediately disseminated by Doha News. When Hamed returned later to investigate further, he was arrested and jailed for ten days. It is not uncommon for student journalists to be detained by Qatari police, but Hamed’s arrest marked an escalation.7 Northwestern sent its government relations officer, a Qatari fixer that many private companies keep on staff, to intervene, but Hamed claimed that the journalism program failed to assist. An administrator from Northwestern Qatar told reporters, “Not on our campus, not in Education City, not our issue.”8 In 2016, the government blocked internet access to Doha News throughout Qatar. The site’s owners set up proxies, but the government

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banned those too. James Lynch, a director at Amnesty International, called it “an alarming setback for freedom of expression in the country.” Lynch added, “As the nation that founded the Al Jazeera media network and which hosts a centre dedicated to promoting global media freedom, Qatar should be at the forefront of those championing freedom of the press. Instead, the government appears to have specifically targeted a key source of independent and credible journalism in the country.”9 Despite these and other efforts to assist, the Qatari government killed Doha News—sponsors were unwilling to advertise on the blocked site and quickly jumped ship. Chatriwala and Khatri tried to negotiate with government officials, but no one seemed interested in keeping the site afloat. After more than a year of struggle, the pair left Qatar and sold Doha News to Star Reputation Consulting, Ltd., an India-based media company that has not updated the site since mid-2018.10 The Qatari government’s willingness to arrest journalists, censor news content, and silence independent voices represents a crack in the façade of modern traditionalism, evidence that Qatar’s claims to intellectual leadership and free expression are not what they appear. These and other forms of active government interference demonstrate the capricious nature of freedom in Qatar. By most accounts, Tamim Al Thani is conservative compared to his popular father, and Qatar has become more restrictive under his rule. In May 2019, the Qatari government permanently closed the Doha Centre for Media Freedom and let go its entire staff.11 Claiming intellectual leadership under these conditions is preposterous, and it may be catching up with Qatar. In 2020, the University College of London Qatar (UCLQ) ceased operations at Education City. Although it was not the first Western institution of higher education to severe ties with Qatar, the closure marked the Qatar Foundation’s most significant public failure to date. UCLQ opened in 2010 as the first entirely graduate institute at Education City. It offered master’s degrees in library science and museum studies, which aligned with Sheikha Mayassa’s high-profile art investments and Qatar’s intent to develop a regional museums industry. UCLQ was supposed to help transform Qatar into an academic hub for heritage studies. The esteemed university went so far as to adjust its curriculum at the Doha campus “to meet the emerg-

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ing educational needs of the State of Qatar’s 2030 Vision.”12 The reality, however, is that few Qataris attend Doha’s museums or share Mayassa’s enthusiasm for the business of art.13 “It’s boring,” says Heba, a twenty-three-year-old Qatari, when asked about Doha’s art scene. “The museums here just focus on the culture, the history. There’s not much variety. They’re made for only one class of people, the high-class.” Doha’s grand national museum was built for Qataris but holds little interest for citizens like Nahir. “I’m not gonna go see a museum about Qatari culture when I am Qatari and I live in Qatar and I know the culture. Why would I go there? To us, museums are just old people, the past. No one wants to see that now. Everyone is programmed to think of the future, modern, not old stuff.” There are critics who believe that the demise of UCLQ is a canary in the branch-campus coal mine. For example, in a 2019 Chronicle of Higher Education piece titled “How International Education’s Golden Age Lost Its Sheen,” Karin Fischer traces the rise and fall of the global satellite model. Some Western colleges and universities are questioning the utility and ethics of partnering with wealthy authoritarian states, and internationalization has declined as a priority for American institutions of postsecondary education. To date, it appears that the administrative enthusiasm for satellite campuses has exceeded student demand. “The elevation of international education blended high-minded ideals and bottom-line concerns. Ultimately, it satisfied neither.”14

False Narrative The shuttering of Doha News and UCLQ and other events lay bare the limits of modern traditionalism. The narrative emphasizes agency, but authoritarian contexts such as Qatar restrict the available options. Under such conditions, modern traditionalism is not a tool kit with an endless array of potential strategies. For certain populations, including the vast majority of Qatar’s inhabitants, the choices are limited or even nonexistent. The narrative of modern traditionalism simply does not work for everyone. The narrative does not work for Fatima, who quit the Comets basketball team because it could not accommodate her Islamic faith. Modern traditionalism promises that Muslim sportswomen can participate in

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sports without impediment. In reality, many Islamic women are unable to take part due to religious and familial restrictions. Because narratives of female empowerment focus on success and agency, they can obscure underlying social realities and exacerbate gender-based inequalities.15 Utilizing modern traditionalism’s empowered woman motif, Qatar claims to have a progressive gender climate. Yet a raft of Qatar-based studies, chronicling everything from limited workplace opportunities to domestic violence, lay bare the hollowness of that assertion.16 The narrative of modern traditionalism does not work for Dorje Gurung, the Nepalese schoolteacher who was arrested and deported after some twelve-year-old citizens complained. It does not work for the athletes who are brought in from other countries, naturalized, and then sent home the instant their use value expires. Qatar promotes itself as an exemplar of larger ideals such as freedom, equality, and human rights. Yet these incidents demonstrate the government’s differing treatment of expatriate workers, on the basis of nationality. The narrative does not work for Adam, a gay man being compelled to marry a female cousin. It does not work for the boyahs, who are marginalized and ignored. Qatar’s intolerance extends to myriad variations of allegedly unruly behavior, from public displays of affection among married couples to heterosexual couples dating to homosexuality of any kind. The government criminalizes and pathologizes some of these behaviors, promising to lock up and/or treat offenders. The narrative does not work for many Qataris either. Built on pleasantries and platitudes, modern traditionalism appears benign. Such narratives, however, are harmful in their contribution to inaccuracies about the Arab world. Qataris are dismayed by persistent stereotypes about camels, tents, and turbans, but modern traditionalism traffics in the worst of those images. Gulf governments use their petrowealth to disseminate Orientalist caricatures of Gulf Arabs in order to advance their economic and political agendas. Some citizens recognize the government’s branding efforts as harmful for these reasons. “There’s this Orientalist view of our history that they’re trying to communicate,” a Qatari man named Numa says of the government. “They show the jewelry, the camels, the desert—the culture as the product basically. They’re doing it in such a forceful way that we don’t buy it. There wasn’t Katara and Souq Waqif, and suddenly they just

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show up. We weren’t [prepared for] the Qatari identity being sold to the mainstream world.” The Qatari leadership relies on a host of real and exaggerated traditions to construct a national identity. It sometimes invents traditions wholesale. “Qatar doesn’t have a specific history,” says Kareena, a Qatari woman who believes that the country’s mutable history enables the nation’s leaders to pursue pet projects or personal interests under the guise of cultural preservation. Kareena is dismayed at the Qatar Foundation’s creation of the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, devoted to the works of classic composers such as Brahms, Chopin, and Mendelssohn. “That’s not part of Qatar’s history. That’s not part of Qatar’s anything!” she says. “It’s there because Sheikha Moza wants it to be part of Qatar’s present. It’s man-made, shaping the history. Five decades from now, people will look back and say the orchestra is part of Qatar’s past.” Sheikha Moza embodies modern traditionalism, but not every Qatari wants to follow her lead. Petrofamilies serve as Qatar’s brand ambassadors, but those who are unwilling to don the national uniform, sartorially or psychologically, pay a heavy toll. “You have that certain uniform,” a citizen named Hanan says of being Qatari. “You’re their representation of Qatar. You have to be this representation of Arab or Muslim woman. Once you don’t meet those expectations, there’s immediately a stigma to you.” Finally, Qatar’s low-wage migrant workforce illustrates the limits of modern traditionalism. It cannot be successfully enlisted to combat the image of a repressive, abusive, and authoritarian government. Qatar declares itself a nation that embraces human rights, freedom, and social justice. Its leaders claim to welcome newcomers with hospitality, courtesy, and respect. Such assertions fall flat, however, when the stark realities of the workers are brought to light. Qatar’s 2030 vision plan was written by and for the nation’s elite. The low-wage migrant workers who make up the majority of the country’s population have little ability to reinforce or respond to the narrative of modern traditionalism. These laborers are not part of the leadership’s internal audience. The workers appear only when Qatar is trying to convince critics and inspectors that it cares about human rights. Qatar is far from the only country in the world whose government espouses lofty ideals (“the land of the free”) yet propagates inequalities

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in practice. To some degree, every nation appears to be one thing until you start to dig deeper. But Qatar is unique in that it has an opportunity that is, perhaps, unlike any other in human history: to develop a country from the ground up, virtually overnight, without regard to cost. Qatar has money, determination, and resources. In Doha, if it can be dreamed, it can be done. There are no limitations other than the human imagination. Truly remarkable and unprecedented is the opportunity to reinvent a nation on this scale. It could be a new societal model. To date, that is not what is being built in Doha.

Promise and Progress Despite the foregoing and other failures, there are also signs of promise in Qatar. As the recent embargo crisis demonstrates, Qatar is different from its Gulf neighbors in certain respects. To Qatar’s credit, unlike every one of its Gulf contemporaries, it has exhibited a willingness to grow and adjust. Several times in recent years, Qatari leaders have amended the nation’s sponsorship labor laws, each time making modifications that improved conditions for workers, however marginally. The alterations are generally in response to international criticisms, showing a willingness to listen and learn on the part of the government. “They are always trying to change their mentality,” a Qatari named Salim says of his government. Freedom House believes that the regional embargo has emboldened Qatar to make modifications that have improved conditions for foreigners. In 2018, “the government promulgated modest reforms pertaining to permanent residency, migrant workers, and asylum that departed from the laws of Qatar’s peers in the GCC, indicating that the leadership no longer felt constrained by the GCC consensus given the diplomatic and trade restrictions imposed on the country.”17 Qatar’s flagship educational institutions are teaching a new generation of petrofamilies, many of whom are liberal and tolerant relative to their parents and grandparents. These Qataris express enthusiasm for the nation’s potential as a thought leader. Education, science, research, and technology are mentioned as areas where Qatar can make a name for itself. “Our education is the best,” a Qatari man named Kadar says. “We have good universities over here. We brought the best.”

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Some Qataris contrast Education City’s academic mission with Dubai’s supposedly shallow partying. “I see Qatar as being one of the leading countries in the Middle East, just because the education level here,” says a Qatari named Natalia. “Other Gulf countries are more focused on tourism—Dubai, for example. They don’t invest in education like Qatar does. We have so many universities here. With Qatarization, people are becoming more involved in building this society.” It is possible that the aims of Education City will bear fruit as its graduates eventually move into leadership positions. Ethan, the American teacher who had difficulties adjusting to life in Doha when he first arrived, was heartened when his students stopped class one afternoon and donned purple shaylas and ghoutras. “It was for homosexual awareness. That actually happened in my class. I was stunned.” Qatar’s empowered woman narrative has resulted in some measurable gains for women. So far, increased rates of higher education for Qatari females has not resulted in more women entering the workforce. In fact, the opposite has occurred—as Qatari women have gained in education, they have increasingly opted out of the workforce. But changes to the nation’s legal structure may provide much-needed institutional support.18 Qatari females from petrofamilies universally describe improved conditions for women relative to their mothers. “Women are getting more freedom, and they’re finding it okay to be stronger,” Mai says. “In the past, it might have been harder. If my aunt wanted to go find a job, it wasn’t socially acceptable for a woman to work. It just depended on the man. Today, it’s close to becoming normal that women go out, get an education, and get a job. Our generation is really happy that we can do that.” While some of these sentiments echo modern traditionalism’s empowered-woman motif, they come with new ideas about the appropriate role for Qatari women and may serve as a wellspring for other changes. Another positive sign is that the growing sense of nationalism among some young Qataris is tempered by those with more tolerant outlooks. Qataris are not homogeneous, and that diversity may help going forward. “I’m proud to be Qatari, but that’s not part of my identity,” says Nahir. “I’m not going to go around like, ‘I’m Qatari. That’s me.’ That’s not

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me. I’m not just Qatari. I’m me. I don’t think identity has anything to do with nationality.” Finally, even Qatar’s staunchest critics had to tip their caps to its winning the 2019 Asian Cup. The team’s triumph over Japan was an indicator that its bid for regional sports supremacy may be closer to fruition. Sweetest of all for Qatar was that the victory took place at a soccer stadium in Abu Dhabi.

Qatar 2030 The embargo by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and Egypt failed to produce its intended results. Qatar has not ceded to the group’s demands, and the international community has mostly refused to take sides. Through cooperation with Oman, Turkey, and Iran, Qatar has worked around the bottlenecks initially created by transportation and shipping restrictions. Qatar has used the embargo to advance its economic agenda and make connections to some of the globe’s most formidable nations. “Rather than being internationally isolated, Qatar has succeeded in deepening relations with the world’s major powers—the United States, China, Europe, Russia and India—and reinforced its position as mediator or key player in conflicts ranging from Afghanistan to Gaza.”19 The United States continues to be an ally, a relationship made especially close by Qatar’s ongoing hosting of the Al Udeid military base. In July 2019, US president Donald Trump welcomed Emir Tamim Al Thani to the White House to ink a deal worth a purported $185 million. “We’ve been friends for a long time,” Trump said in a brief welcoming speech. “We’re doing a lot of work now. They’re investing very heavily in our country. They’re creating a lot of jobs. They’re buying tremendous amounts of military equipment, including planes. And they’re buying commercial planes, as you know—very large numbers of commercial planes from Boeing. And we very much appreciate it.”20 In November 2019, Trump publicly thanked the Qatari emir for his country’s efforts to help free two Western university professors who had been held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan. On January 1, 2019, eighteen months after the Gulf embargo began, Qatar rescinded its membership in OPEC. Rather than wait around and

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hope for matters to improve, Qatar appears to be heading in a new direction. It may be the only Gulf nation with the cash and chutzpah to withstand a long-term blockade from powerful neighbors. Today, for the first time, Qatar is growing its own food and manufacturing everything from laundry detergent to tissue paper. Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani says, “We carried on; we moved on with our economy; we moved on with our life.”21 The history of the Gulf nations is one of struggle and reconciliation. Reports from late 2019 suggest that mediation efforts are under way, with Kuwait and the United States working with all sides to end the standoff. In October 2019, Qatar’s foreign minister—a member of the Al Thani dynasty—met with senior officials in Saudi Arabia about ending the embargo.22 In late 2019, after initially refusing to participate, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE sent soccer teams to Doha to compete in the Arabian Gulf Cup.23 This type of sports diplomacy is hardly surprising given the importance of the 2022 World Cup to the entire Gulf region. The World Cup has brought attention to Qatar like never before. When Qataris travel abroad, they no longer have to say they are from Dubai so people will know where they are from. Everyone knows Qatar now. Citizens like Kadar believe that in the coming years, Qatar will usurp its regional rivals in a quest for world dominance. “It’s competing with a lot of countries in the GCC at the moment,” he says. “It’s competing with Dubai, but we’ll pass them. Qatar will lead the future, not in just the GCC but also the overall world.” Some expatriates are optimistic too. They particularly view the Qatar Foundation and Education City as mechanisms for building a more tolerant and accepting society in the Gulf. “It’s already making a difference,” says one educator at Education City. “The country is making and has been making strides towards a system of equality.” There are concerns that perceived Westernization will result in a conservative backlash, but most expatriates view education as Qatar’s best chance for enlightenment. “We’re agents of chaos,” insists Will, an associate professor at Education City. “They may not see it that way, but that’s exactly what’s happening here. You know that picture of the conquistadors approaching the natives with the flag? Take off the armor and the sallet, and put on a cap and gown. It’s the same thing. We are academic conquistadors.”

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Other expatriates are less convinced. They see plenty of infrastructure development but not enough human advancement. “I don’t see genuine progress. I see these empty skyscrapers,” says Roger, an expatriate who has lived in Doha for more than a decade. “We go to the pyramids and look at the Mayan ruins. A hundred years from now, people will make tourist trips to Doha and say, ‘Look at these buildings.’ They’re pretty much ruins now. If something happens, whether it’s political or a natural disaster, people are going to leave, and this place will be deserted. They have to change their immigration policy, let people in, build a population that’s larger and more sustainable. That’s going to be hard for them. It’s going to take a lot longer than 2030.” With the 2022 World Cup just around the corner, the Qatari leadership is already looking to 2030, the next big milestone on the nation’s calendar. In 2030, the multidecade national development plan’s timeline will be complete. Given the pace of growth and change in Qatar, one wonders what Doha might be like in 2030. “I see Qatar being on top of the Gulf countries,” says a Qatari man named Farid. “We’re the richest country in the world, and it will portray itself as the richest country by having so many facilities and buildings. Since the World Cup in 2022 is coming, they had a 2030 vision. We have a really long vision, which is how well planned we are. They’ll make the best out of it.” Many Qataris predict that the nation’s development will resemble Dubai’s, that in the next decade Qatar will become more contemporary and fashionable. Most welcome the change. “It’s modernizing at an incredible rate,” Kareena says. “By 2030, more Qatari girls and Qatari guys will start leaving their traditional clothing and blend in, melt with the other cultures. The traditional aspect will fade away from the modernity aspect of it.” Mira forecasts that Doha will become a Gulf shopping mecca. “I don’t mean this in a bad way, but we’ll be known for consumer culture, where we have all these new shops opening and we have all these new industries and businesses happening—so consumer culture, luxury culture, cars, the automobile industry, stuff like that.” For others, the idea that Doha might become the Gulf ’s next Las Vegas is a nightmare, stoking fears about modernization. “I’m worried we might turn into Dubai,” a Qatari woman named Akeelah says. “I like the direction we’re taking, but I want us to still be in touch with the tra-

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ditions. I like Souq Waqif and these places that remind me of the olden days. I like where my country is going, but I hope in ten years, we’re still in touch with those traditions.” Classical theories of modernity assert that Qatar will progressively resemble the West as it undergoes continued development. It is not inconceivable, however, that a reversal of this process is also taking shape—that the West may progressively resemble nations like Qatar. As battles in the United States and Europe continue to be waged over immigration policy, the treatment of certain racial or ethnic groups, gender inequalities, and the gap between wealthy and poor, some Western nations have become increasingly conservative and authoritarian. Surely, some contemporary Western politicians must admire Qatar as an exemplar of how a powerful, taxphobic leader—along with his family and inner circle—can wield dynastic control in a nation where there are no paths to citizenship, officials are appointed rather than elected, and the media serves as publicrelations firm for the government. To that end, Qatar may serve as a cautionary tale for prosperous nations struggling to find cohesion and unity during times of social upheaval. In Doha, a small number of wealthy elite citizens are catered to by a massive population of low-wage foreigners, tasked with doing the dirty jobs that Qataris do not want to do. An authoritarian government leads with a politics of division, enacting policies that economically, physically, and legally segregate citizens from noncitizens. The result is a growing sense of division between the two sides, the haves and the willnever-haves. Should foreign workers speak up or step out of line, Qatar’s sponsorship labor system, immigration laws, and legal structure allow for their immediate censure and/or deportation. This book explores how Qatar’s rapid development impacts its people and how the people respond. Central to my analysis are the differences between Qataris and the various classes of foreigners who serve them. As demonstrated in this book, the institutions that prioritize Qataris over nonnationals help foster a culture where the distinction between citizen and foreigner is embedded into myriad facets of everyday life. These distinctions are reinforced through formal mechanisms such as immigration laws and also amplified through symbolic culture such as humor, material culture such as attire, and rituals such as basketball games and weddings.

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Because citizens sit atop Qatar’s nation-based social hierarchy, other groups use strategies of alignment to gain the residual benefits of proximity. Cultural attitudes and practices in Qatar reflect the institutionalized forms of nationalism embedded into the country’s legal, economic, and immigration systems. These in turn affect everyday behaviors and beliefs. The result is a prosperous but shrinking elite with a growing sense of nationalism and antiforeign sentiment. As Qatar continues to draw influence from the West, and the West continues its march toward authoritarianism, there are bound to be future clashes regarding the best path forward. Qatar’s historical knack for survival against all odds, and for controlling the narrative, should not be underestimated.

Acknowledgments

A book is a collective endeavor, and I want to acknowledge the many people whose contributions made this one possible. First and foremost, thank you to all of the research participants who took part in this project. New York University Press has been an idyllic home for this book. I thank Ilene Kalish, whose energy and enthusiasm for this project were infectious from start to finish. I appreciate your belief in me and this book and your guidance and wisdom throughout the process. Thanks also to the immense talents and hard work of Martin Coleman, Alexia Traganas, and Sonia Tsuruoka at NYU Press. Andrew Katz provided fastidious copyediting. Roger Petrilli’s meticulous cartography produced the maps at the front of the book. I am delighted to include the photography of my friend and former Education City colleague Alexander Cheek. Alex contributed immensely to my three years in Qatar; his considerable photographic talent is exceeded by his humor and intellect. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers whose constructive feedback and thoughtful suggestions were helpful through many drafts of the manuscript. My friend and former professor David Smith provided insightful comments at a key juncture. Reviewer number 2 kept me honest at all times. Discussing my Qatar research with scholars at the Professionals and Professions in the Developing World workshop at Brown University and the Faculty Research Workshop at Morningside College was instrumental in contemplating issues great and small. I would also like to thank those who copresented or attended talks about my Qatar research at conferences hosted by the American Sociological Association, Cambridge University, the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University, the Eastern Sociological Society, the Midwest Sociological Society, the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, and the University of Exeter. 241

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I owe a sizable debt to the journal and book editors whose feedback and ideas about my Qatar and Iraq data pushed me to do better work. Thank you to Karen Cerulo, Nitsan Chorev, Mikaela Dufur, Hong Fan, Julie Kmec, Alon Raab, Rana Raddawi, and Andrew Schrank. This book would not have been possible without the talents of my six research assistants in Qatar: Alanna Alexander, Maha Al-Meer, Aisha Al-Thani, Hassan Asif, Razane Cherk, and Mahdiyeh Mahmoodzadeh. Thank you for your dedication, hard work, and resourcefulness. I am also grateful to the Qatar Foundation for providing financial resources for these student assistants. I also want to thank the scholars with whom I have been fortunate to collaborate on research about Qatar. Our work together shaped my thinking in critical ways. Thank you Kimberly Gomez, Natasha Hongsermeier, Samira Islam, Rana Khaled, Peggy Levitt, and Esther Quiroz. Sociology would be a lonely discipline without colleagues like Bob Antonio, Abdallah Badahdah, Phyllis Baker, Jean Beaman, Kieran Bezila, Michaela DeSoucey, Gary Fine, Tom Gerschick, Amin Ghaziani, Wendy Griswold, Cherise Harris, Doug Hartmann, Charis Kubrin, Jooyoung Lee, Meggan Lee, Laurie Linhart, Stephanie McClure, Lee Miller, Matthew Oware, Mary Pattillo, Diane Pike, Tim Pippert, Saher Selod, Bill Staples, Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, and Berit Vannebo. My time in Doha was made all the better because of these smart, funny, worldly colleagues and friends and their families: Anahita Alivand, Sean Burns, Sandy Choi, Mary Dedinsky, Kira Dreher, Bijan Esfahani, John Gasper, David Gray, Jennifer Gray, Erik Helin, Blake Hounshell, Abe Kamarck, Kristy Kamarck, Joe Khalil, John Laprise, John Margolis, Silvia Pessoa, David Phongsaven, Mohana Rajakumar, Kulsoom Rizvi, Richard Roth, Trish Roth, Trish Seapy, Jeffrey Squires, Zachary Wright, and Byrad Yyelland. I would also like to extend my thanks to the students at Education City, who taught me so much during my time in Qatar. My return to the United States was enriched by three years at Morningside College, a special place brimming with equally special people. Pat Bass and Bruce Forbes offered mentorship and friendship in equal measures. Thanks also to Patrick Blaine, Abby Breaman, Aaron Bunker, Shannon Claxton, Steve Coyne, Terri Curry, Shannon De Clute, Bill Deeds, David Elder, Hope Foreman, Lexi Gerry, Greg Guelcher, Cody

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Hankerson, Jessica LaPaglia, Dave Madsen, Alexi Malatare, Brian McFarland, Heather McFarland, Terri McGaffin, Patrick McKinlay, Steph Peters, Jessica Pleuss, John Reynders, Betty Skewis-Arnett, Kurt Spearing, Chris Spicer, Dean Stevens, Sherry Swan, Christina Triezenberg, Bruce Weaver, Leslie Werden, Heather Wilburn, Rich Yates, and Jeff Zink. Sheila Brummer and Ed Disterhaupt also contributed to our time in Sioux City. I would be remiss not to give a special mention to the talented members of the Ugly Band, whose musicianship and friendship were like a song: Scott Arnett, Alan McGaffin, Jeremy Schneider, Larry Triezenberg, and Terry Waugh. At Rhode Island College, I am fortunate to be part of a department full of interesting, intelligent, worldly sociologists who also happen to be terrific people: Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur, Tanni Chaudhuri, Desirée Ciambrone, Roger Clark, Rachel Filinson, Jill Harrison, Pamela Jackson, Darek Niklas, Tamara Nopper, and Carse Ramos. Thanks also to Joyce Fife, whose diligence and intelligence make us all look good. Others at RIC I would like to thank are Amy Avila, Michelle BrophyBaermann, Holly Shadoian, Earl Simson, and the dedicated faculty and staff at Henry Barnard Laboratory School. A number of students have also made my time at RIC special, including T. J. Clifford, Mandy Duffy, Mike Johnson, Chris Martin, Jake Robatielle, Cameron St. Lawrence, and Nicole Suarez. Special thanks to the Amor, Harkness, Maxfield, and Taylor families and to my friends Greg Douros, Kathryn Kollet, Doug Lerner, Paul Marinescu, Jon Niccum, Ken Perreault, Eliott Reeder, Jeff Roos, and Spencer Wright. We do not get to see each other much these days, but when we do, it is like no time has passed. To my son, Ben, who was born in a Doha hospital, you are a creative, energetic, hardworking, intelligent, observant, funny, focused, helpful, and loving soul. You approach each day with a joy and passion that inspires all who know you. I love you so much, and I am proud and lucky to be your dad. To my daughter, Emma, you are a hilarious, mischievous, lively, diligent, intelligent, generous, caring, perceptive, fun, wonderful soul. Your laughter and spirit enliven and invigorate everyone around you. I love you so much, and I am proud and lucky to be your dad.

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To my wife, Laura, who gave up a rich life in Chicago to marry me and move to Qatar, thank you for joining me on this journey through life. I appreciate your many intellectual contributions to this book, our innumerable conversations about every facet of Qatar over the past decade. I thank you for always believing in me. And for being the best mother our children could ever hope for. For all you do, every day, to make all of our lives better, thank you. I look forward to our next great adventure—and to our next great conversation. Life is good, and it is good because of you. I thank you all.

Appendix Researching Qatar

I was an outsider when I moved to Qatar in 2010. For the next three years, I worked as a joint faculty member at two Education City (EC) institutions, Northwestern University Qatar (NUQ) and Carnegie Mellon University Qatar (CMUQ). Most of the students were members of petrofamilies, bright and worldly. Many of them had grown up in globetrotting households, headed by educated parents with professional jobs. The petrofamily youth did not describe themselves in strict nationalist terms. As one explained, “I’m from Egypt, but I grew up in Beirut, and I have an Omani passport.” Like college students everywhere, the undergraduates at EC were technologically savvy and consumed most of their television, movies, and music online via laptop, tablet, and phone. The female students in particular had absorbed speech patterns of American popular culture, injecting unnecessary “likes” into their conversations and speaking with what linguists call uptalk, where intonation rises at the end of sentences to the point that statements sound like questions. “My name is Muna? I’m from, like, ten different countries?” In writing this book, I eliminated most superfluous “likes” and “ums.” Some participant quotations were edited for clarity or to remove redundancies and verbal pauses. My position at EC involved teaching sociology courses as social science electives for students majoring in programs at any of the institutions on campus. When I was not teaching, planning course work, or meeting with students, I looked for topics to research. I had spent the previous six years studying underground rap music in Chicago and initially considered continuing that work in Doha, where young people are as obsessed with hip-hop culture as anywhere else. I sat in on the recording session of a local rapper and spoke with several people about hiphop informally. But I was also interested in examining other elements 245

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of culture in Doha, so I filed paperwork with Northwestern’s Internal Review Board (IRB) for a project that would examine various facets of youth culture in the Middle East. One morning, a few weeks into my first semester, an undergraduate student came to my office to discuss ideas for an assignment I had given her class—to join a group, study it, and write about the experience. The student’s name was Samira Islam. Samira hailed from Bangladesh but had moved to Qatar with her parents years ago. She was Muslim but, like many of the non-Qatari female students on campus, did not wear a head scarf or cloak. Samira was majoring in business at CMUQ and minoring in sociology. In my office that morning, she told me she was a member of the CMUQ women’s basketball team and thought it might make an interesting topic for the assignment. The global popularity of sports makes them an important topic for sociologists. The most-watched programs on television each year are sporting events such as the World Cup and the Super Bowl. Sports infiltrate every aspect of society, and whether it is organized sports in which children and adults participate, informal sports like pick-up basketball or baseball games, or athletic activities such as working out or doing yoga, sports are part of the day-to-day lives of people in every corner of the globe. They are also a microcosm for society, a platform on which people work out important issues. I had not been in Qatar long, but it was clear that the country aspires to be a regional sports hub. Understanding more about female sports in Qatar might have provided Samira a framework for exploring larger social issues in Qatar and the Gulf. That female athletes were active on the EC campus was interesting in and of itself. Women playing sports back home in the United States was not really a big deal—about half of all American female high-school students participate in organized sports, and female presence in athletics does not raise eyebrows. This is not so in Qatar, where sportswomen at all levels are sometimes viewed askance by family members and/or the broader community. How these athletes negotiate their involvement in sports under these pressures was intriguing. Given the importance of shaylas and abayas for young women living in Qatar, I wondered how female Muslim athletes navigate Islamic clothing regulations. Inquiring

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about these matters had the potential to reveal something larger about gender inequality, non-Western feminism, and women’s role and status in society in this part of the world. I was genuinely curious about all of this. I wanted to know what Samira would discover. Samira and I came up with a list of questions she could ask her teammates. The questions were mostly geared toward the players, but I suggested that she also interview the coaches for a broader perspective. With interview guide in hand, Samira began conducting research, reporting back to me intermittently throughout the semester, both in person and through field notes that I assigned to students in the class. She interviewed several players from the team as well as the coach and assistant coach. Each time Samira turned in a set of notes or told me about another interview, it raised more questions. We added them to her interview guide. A unique feature of global campuses like EC is that they draw scholars working in a variety of disciplines from all corners of the globe. A joint faculty member at two universities, I was one of just two sociologists at EC. In both institutions, I was a member of departments composed of colleagues from the liberal arts and sciences. This structure led to considerable interaction between a global cadre of scholars from multiple disciplines and backgrounds. One day you were having lunch with an Egyptian political scientist who specializes in Arab revolutions, and the next day you had a committee meeting with an Australian anthropologist who studies migrant workers in the Gulf. Discussing the topic of Qatari sportswomen with this array of scholars led to a considerable broadening of my perspectives. There were also informal conversations with students, friends, family members, and casual acquaintances. These discussions were wide ranging, covering every topic found in this book. These conversations, which took place over my three years in Doha and beyond, were instrumental in gaining an understanding of Qatar from multiple perspectives and generating ideas for research. As my first semester at EC ended, the topic of female sportswomen in Qatar struck me as interesting enough to start researching as part of my youth-culture project. Not wanting to make off with Samira’s idea, I asked her to collaborate, and she agreed. To begin, I attended local soccer and basketball games, a small number of which I videotaped. I used

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some of that data to write the descriptions of the basketball game at EC. The interview quotes used in conjunction with the basketball game described in chapter 3 were from interviews conducted separately and at other times. I also conducted a series of interviews with female athletes at EC, some of whom had taken one of my classes. Interviewing students who had taken my classes was fairly easy. The student athletes knew me well enough to feel comfortable, and had learned enough about sociology to get some sense of why I was asking the questions I was asking. To recruit interview participants from the other branch campuses at EC, I sent a mass email to the women’s basketball coaches at each institution, asking them to forward a description of the project and interview request to their players. Drawing on my professional-development funds, I offered participants a twentyfive-riyal payment, about seven US dollars, to sit for an interview. Those student athletes who were interested contacted me and we set up a time and place to meet. I conducted several interviews in my office, but interviews also took place in coffee shops, cafes, and other public areas around EC. On two occasions, Samira and I cointerviewed student athletes who did not want to be seen alone with a male professor. My interviews typically lasted about an hour and were semistructured, based on our interview guide. I did not find it difficult or uncomfortable to interview strangers from other parts of EC. It was a self-selected group, students who had responded to my mass email. Students who were wary of the interview process did not respond. All interview participants signed a consent form. At the end of each interview, I asked participants if there were other sportswomen who might want to be interviewed, and I recruited several people this way. Each interview I conducted yielded deeper insights but also raised additional questions. An adage of interview-based research is that data collection is finished when the researcher is not learning anything new, when the interviewees are saying things that others have said before them. With the sports research, I never got to that point, mainly because of the diversity of students on campus. A female who grew up playing tennis in Kuwait had a completely different perspective than a woman who played soccer professionally in Iran or played cricket in Pakistan or played volleyball in Morocco or raced horses in Costa Rica.

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I never reached that end, that place where I was hearing the same things over and over again. Samira and I made audio recordings of all interviews. Each time a new interview was completed, either Samira or I transcribed it verbatim. We conducted the interviews in English, although participants sometimes reverted to Arabic during interviews with Samira. In those instances, she translated the Arabic portions to English. We assigned pseudonyms to each participant to ensure anonymity. Using a software program called HyperResearch, I coded the interviews, reading through them and marking paragraphs and sometimes even sentences by themes. I divided the themes into smaller subcategories. This systematic process enabled me to search for patterns or tropes that arose repeatedly during interviews. Ideally, these patterns reveal truths that go beyond the researcher’s subjective interpretation of the data. Ultimately, coding and unearthing patterns in the interview transcriptions enabled Samira and me to understand how issues relevant to female athletes in Qatar were part of a larger set of circumstances for women in this part of the world. In the end, we interviewed thirty-five female student-athletes, two former athletes, and three coaches. My collaboration with Samira culminated in our coauthoring a short feature in Contexts, a public sociology magazine produced by the American Sociological Association. Titled “Muslim Female Athletes and the Hijab,” our article examined the challenges encountered by Middle Eastern sportswomen vis-à-vis their sartorial practices. Samira graduated in the spring of 2011, got married, and began the life of a working professional in Doha. I continued the sports project by myself.1 Beyond Qatar

Pursuing this line of research on my own eventually led me to Sulaimani, Iraq. In late 2011, I attended a documentary screened at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival. The movie was about a women’s basketball team in Iraq and had a wonderful title, Salaam Dunk. It focused on the difficulties encountered by a group of college students in their efforts to build a basketball program under tremendous political, economic, and social constraints. The Iraqis lacked both governmental support and resources from their school, the American University of Iraq Sulaimani (AUIS). The players initially practiced in a tiny courtyard and sometimes shot

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free throws in the rain. There were conflicts between some Kurd and Arab players, but sports seemingly helped reduce these tensions. As fortune would have it, Qatar had flown the entire AUIS basketball team and its coach from Iraq to attend the festival screening. After the film, I introduced myself to the coach and some of the players and told them about my research on female athletes. In January 2012, I flew to Iraq, where I conducted participant-observation fieldwork and thirtytwo formal interviews with female Kurd, Arab, and Turkmen athletes, as well as four Western, expatriate coaches, who were faculty members and administrators at AUIS.2 My interview data from Iraq are not included in this book, but the fieldwork enriched my understanding of issues related to ethnicity, gender, and sports in the Middle East but also of Qatar, its politics and culture, and its relationship to the MENA. Crucially, my interviews in Iraq highlighted the salience of nationality and citizenship in MENA nations experiencing petro-based development. Upon returning to Doha, I became increasingly attuned to the dynamic tensions between the Qatari nationals and the various classes of noncitizen. I added questions about this to my interview guides and made it an area of focus. Another regional trip that informed my perceptions of Qatar was a visit to New York University’s branch campus in Abu Dhabi, where I had lengthy informal conversations with faculty members who had been recruited to teach there. My experiences in Doha, and those of the professional-class expatriates I met doing similar work in Iraq and Abu Dhabi, sparked an interest in a project about Western-trained academics working at international branch campuses of Western universities. The research included interviews with colleagues in Doha (including some professionals who did not work in academia), but in 2014, via Skype, I interviewed faculty at branch campuses in Qatar, the UAE, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The non-Qatar interview data are not included in this book, but they helped me situate the Qatar data within a global context. During my three years in Doha, I was able to travel for personal and professional reasons, journeys that also influenced my ideas about Qatar and its place in the world. For example, a trip to Beirut, Lebanon, revealed the colonial influence of France in the MENA and also the effect of long-standing ethnic conflict and civil war. This in turn enhanced my understanding of Qatar’s involvement in Lebanon and Syria.

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Beyond the region, I ventured to the Chinese cities of Beijing and Hong Kong and three cities in India: Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur. These trips were important for understanding the transnational linkages between Qatar and others parts of Asia. I presented at academic conferences in several European cities, including Athens, Cambridge, Catania, and London, and also spent time in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, and Valencia. I presented papers at academic conferences in four US cities: Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, and New Orleans. All of this helped me situate my data within Qatar’s cosmopolitan, transnational milieu. Beyond Sports

Wanting to foster a world-class educational environment at EC, the Qatar Foundation (QF) provided small pools of money for facultystudent research initiatives. Through one of the QF programs, I employed a series of undergraduate research assistants over a period of more than two years. I recruited some from my classes, selecting particularly resourceful and hardworking students. Others responded to advertisements posted on QF’s online employment portal. Working on various topics over different periods of time, my research assistants set out to conduct series of interviews, this time expanding beyond sports and into new realms of social life in Qatar. These topics arose organically and connected to one another in sometimes nonintuitive ways. Part of my initial interest in sports was to understand how Muslim female athletes navigate Islamic clothing regulations. Many of the female athletes I interviewed spoke of friends who had quit playing sports due to hijab restrictions. I wanted to interview some of those women to see which factors enabled participation and which factors reduced or eliminated participation. I began interviewing nonathletes about their hijab-related experiences. Eventually, that became a standalone project, separate from sports. Central to the experiences of the female athletes and the hijab wearers were matters of reputation and the role of women in contemporary Qatar. This led to a project that explored dating, sexuality, and marriage. Because I was an outsider to Qatar, researching some of these topics would have been impossible without the talents and resourcefulness of the six undergraduate research assistants: Alanna Alexander, Maha

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Al Meer, Aisha Al Thani, Hassan Asif, Razane Cherk, and Mahdiyeh Mahmoodzadeh. Every one of these individuals made invaluable— and unique—contributions. Five of the research assistants were Arab women, one of whom was Qatari, and one was a Pakistani male. All were fluent Arabic speakers, self-identified as Muslim, and were lifelong residents or had spent several years living in Doha. These multiple intersecting statuses were essential for recruiting participants. Because the research assistants were themselves members of petrofamilies, their networks were composed largely of other petrofamily members. While many of my interviews in Qatar took place in and around EC, the students were deeply integrated into the community and tapped personal networks that extended far beyond campus. The research assistants were not the only students who increased my understanding of Qatar’s culture. A significant portion of my learning about Qatar took place during classes. The students at NUQ were communications and journalism majors who were adept with digital filmmaking technologies. In my second year at EC, the MENA media expert Joe Khalil and I cotaught a course titled “Youth Cultures in the Middle East.” We assigned students to create short documentary films about some facet of youth culture in Doha. This technique yielded so many fascinating projects that I assigned similar projects in several other classes. Using video cameras and smart phones, the student-generated footage captured elements of Doha culture to which I, an outsider, had little access. Topics included soccer, restaurants, nonprofits, hip-hop, jazz musicians, underground street racing, motorcycle clubs, falconry, lesbianism, weddings, immigration, labor camps, and much more. From 2011 to 2013, students in several of my courses produced 531 blog posts about various elements of their lives in Qatar. The posts, which feature hundreds of original photos, remain online at https://qatarcultureclub .blogspot.com. Through these endeavors, the insights and ideas generated by the Doha petrofamily members who populated my classrooms provided an education of their own. Midway through my time in Qatar, I taught an upper-level research seminar with just six students, one of whom was a Qatari, born and raised in Doha. I assigned the students to conduct semester-long research projects on a topic of their choice. We met weekly to discuss the

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projects. The students brought in written notes, photographs, video footage, and other materials from the field. A good deal of conversation revolved around sex, dating, and matrimony—topics that matter to undergraduates everywhere. We also discussed politics, religion, the media, consumerism, and more. I felt free to ask any question about any topic, and I believe the students felt the same way. These seminars revealed insights into culture in Qatar and broadened my understanding in new ways. Rana Khaled, one of the students in the seminar, chose to study inner-family marriage, which accounted for about half the marriages in Qatar at the time. Rana, who identified as Palestinian, had grown up in a nation-hopping petrofamily that spent most of its time in and around the Gulf. Her research in the class consisted of informal interviews, the results of which she shared during discussions. The students weighed in with their own thoughts and experiences. I was intrigued, in part because the students—having grown up consuming Western pop culture in technology-laden environments—were aware that first-cousin marriage was considered taboo in the West. Yet the practice was common in Doha, and the students expressed ambivalence about it. The practice also seemed connected to other subjects I was studying. At the end of the semester, I asked Rana if she wanted to collaborate on a project about marriage.3 Existing studies explained why consanguineous marriage was desirable in some parts of the world, particularly tribal societies such as Qatar. There was almost nothing in the literature about how this process actually happened. Understanding that trajectory—the how, rather than the why—guided our collaboration. Because the study of marriage was not strictly about youth culture, I filed a separate IRB application for the project and put together a research protocol statement, recruitment letter, and consent form. These materials were given to all participants. On the basis of the literature and Rana’s preliminary findings from the class, we put together a longer interview guide. Rana then conducted a series of formal interviews, bringing the audio files to me to be transcribed. On the basis of those findings, we would adjust our interview guide once again, and the process would begin anew. Rana’s interviews were outstanding, but she had limited access to Qataris willing to discuss their marriages. I recruited another student,

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Aisha Al Thani, as a research assistant and assigned her to this topic. She delivered prodigiously, returning with audio recordings of ten in-depth interviews with Qataris about every element of consanguineous marriage. A key difference with the marriage project was the increased number of male participants. There are very few qualitative studies of men in Qatar. Qatari men often appear in studies of Qatari women in deviant contexts such as domestic violence, patriarchy, or marauding in SUVs. I urged my research assistants to seek out men to interview about all of the subjects we were now studying. Hassan Asif, who delivered a number of outstanding interviews with Qatari and non-Qatari men, was instrumental in this regard, but every research assistant found males to interview. I hope this book makes a contribution toward portraying Qataris, including men, in a more holistic and humane light. Another informative fieldwork experience was collaborating with the sociologist Peggy Levitt, who traveled to Qatar in 2013 to conduct research on curators, directors, and other Western-trained museum professionals.4 During Levitt’s time in Doha, we conducted fieldwork and twenty-eight formal interviews with Doha-based museum workers. While that data are not included in this book, hearing and analyzing the perspectives of the museum professionals gave me a better understanding of transnational labor networks, work under state censorship, and Qatar’s sponsorship labor system. Conducting interviews with professionals who had no connection to EC shed light on several of my research topics but from different vantage points. Finally, Levitt’s focus on how museums help shape a sense of nationality was key to my increased focus on the divide between Qataris and foreigners. Interviews I conducted during my second and third years in Doha tended to be wide ranging, often beginning with one topic before spiraling into others and circling back again. Through this process, I continued to discover connections between these subjects. When I heard about female athletes, my first questions were about the hijab. Issues of the hijab led to marriage. At the center were Qatar’s two most powerful statuses, gender and nationality. Beyond Interviews

In addition to conducting formal interviews, I relied on other qualitative methods to collect data for this project. I kept a journal the entire

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time I was in Doha, and some of the informal observations contained within were helpful for remembering small details. For example, I wrote a number of entries that described incidents related to Family Day that were helpful in recalling and describing those interactions. I conducted observational research and wrote formal field notes after spending time at the Sulaimi Oasis, Bayview Towers (a fictional name), and the worker residential camp, all of which are described in chapter 6. I also took photos in these settings, which were essential to my recollection. I was able to access the first two settings due to my position as a faculty member at EC. I visited the labor camp, a number of times, on my own volition. These visits began during the fall semester of 2010 and continued every few months for about a year. At the time, I was able to simply drive into the labor camp, which I happened into by accident one day while lost. Intrigued, I returned when I had more time and brought a camera. Because this camp housed female residents, it may have been easier to access. That I could gain entry to a labor camp without being stopped did not particularly surprise me because no one had ever said the camps were off-limits. In fact, the labor camp was so easy to access that I typically included it on sociological tours of Doha that I would give to scholars visiting EC. In 2012, the visits stopped when the camp installed a security gate and stationed guards at the entrance. Due to increased negative coverage from the international press over the country’s treatment of workers, Qatar began cracking down on outside visits to labor camps. On my last trip to the camp, I was leading a tour that was temporarily stopped and held by security. It was clear that the days of easily accessing worker housing had come to an end. In the fall of 2010, I attended what was purported to be Doha’s first stand-up comedy concert, held in a downtown hotel venue that seated several hundred patrons. The show featured comedians touring the region and local acts; it intrigued me because they practiced their craft within the context of Qatar’s legal and cultural restrictions. There were also some Qatari comedians, who appeared somewhat less concerned about violating community standards. The stand-up comedians struck me as having parallels to female sportswomen—participating in activities that upset the local order, that pushed at the existing boundaries. The boundaries here, however, were not necessarily rooted in gender but in nationality and social status.

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In spring 2012, I attended my first QSUC show. I took some photographs and wrote a long set of formal field notes. I soon realized that field notes were inadequate for analyzing a setting where words are so carefully considered. I returned for five more shows over a period of several months, all held at the same venue (Bistro 61) and featuring the same core roster of performers. I audiotaped all of these performances in their entirety. Portions of these shows were videotaped by QSUC and posted online, which were essential for my recollection. I also attended two other non-QSUC performances featuring local comedians. (In chapter 1, I present a typical QSUC show. In analyzing and writing up the data, I drew on routines and bits from several shows I attended.) Finally, I attended two of the QSUC workshops, which lasted about two hours each and which I audiotaped in their entirely. At some point during these observations, I conducted in-depth interviews with two of the primary comedians. My intention was that these data would serve as the foundation for a larger project about comedy and nationality, which was sidelined by my departure from Qatar. The Participants

Primary data for this book stem from 130 formal interviews conducted from 2010 to 2014. Of the 130 formal interviewees, there were 84 females (65 percent) and 46 males (35 percent). When asked an open-ended question about nationality, 55 of the participants (42 percent) self-identified as Qatari, and 75 of the participants (58 percent) self-identified as non-Qatari. Twenty-four of the interviewees were American, European, and Canadian expatriates. Many of the other nonnationals self-identified as being from nearby Gulf states or the greater MENA region. The participants ranged in age from 18 to 60 years old, with an average age of 23.5 years (median = 21 years). One hundred percent of the Qataris (n = 55) and about 71 percent of the nonnationals (n = 53) selfidentified as practicing Muslims with low to high levels of religiosity. Due to the relative youth of this cohort, the majority of participants in this study have always known Qatar as a wealthy country. Unlike their parents and grandparents, who lived in Qatar prior to its explosion of carbon dollars and growth, the relatively young participants I interviewed had lived in a prosperous nation their entire lives.

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To protect the anonymity of subjects, I changed most names and some identifying details. Because the book’s analytical framework is rooted in distinctions between citizens and noncitizens, I changed the names of all Qataris but did not alter their nationality, nor did I attribute any quote to a Qatari that was not actually spoken by a Qatari. I changed the nationalities of non-Qatari participants. The idiosyncratic history of the Gulf creates a context in which it matters if a quote was spoken by a Bahraini citizen versus someone from the UAE. Altering these details, however minimally, changes the context and meaning of what was said. Protecting the anonymity of my research participants, however, outweighed those concerns. Moreover, my interest in this book is not in detailing the intranational dynamics between Qatar and specific countries but in the binary distinction between nationals and foreigners. Thus, altering the nationalities of non-Qataris has minimal impact on the overall analysis. Still an Outsider

Three years in Doha taught me a great deal, but I was still an outsider the day I departed. Writing of Abu Dhabi, Jane Bristol-Rhys describes the common expatriate lament of separation from nationals. The expats have lived in Abu Dhabi for several years but “never once have had a conversation with an Emirati. They see Emiratis in the malls, shopping, chatting in coffee shops, going into cinemas and walking around. There is no contact or communication.”5 Because of my position at EC, I interacted with Qataris frequently. Granted, these interactions took place in scripted environments with Qataris from petrofamilies, a niche of the larger population. But these were also the citizens who were being tasked with guiding Qatar in the future. EC is a bubble, one filled largely with privileged classes of professional expatriates, privileged classes of students—and the several thousand poor migrant workers who take care of them. Caution, then, should be taken in generalizing the findings here to other populations. Qatar is a unique country, and petrofamilies are a distinct subset of its population. As a sociologist, I am aware that books like this are sometimes considered Orientalist in nature. As an outsider to Qatari culture, there is an inevitability that some of what I have written is Orientalist because I am a white, male American writing about the Middle East. My perspectives

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on everything from modernity to race to gender are informed by my demographics, background, experiences, and outlook. I began this project with few preconceived notions and took cues from research assistants, participants, students, faculty, and members of the community. I claim no expertise in regard to Arab culture. After three years in Doha, I felt as if I was just beginning to get a toehold. But insiders have biases and blinders too, and outside perspectives can be instructive in important ways. Outsiders notice things that insiders may overlook. Moving back to the United States also gave me a new perspective, one that enabled me to understand and appreciate my data in ways that enriched my understanding of Qatar and Qataris. I hope this book presents Qatar and Qataris in a more heterogeneous light, capturing some of the diversity and humanity often missing in government and media narratives. Three years in Qatar changed my ideas about the Gulf and its inhabitants. I hope this book increases your understanding as well.

Notes

Introduction

1. Katzman 2017. The Muslim Brotherhood is a Sunni revivalist group that was formed in Egypt in 1928, eventually diffusing to Jordan, Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, and Bahrain. Today, it has approximately eighty million followers in Egypt, where it continues to influence politics. The Brotherhood has generated debate about its worldview and methods, which include adherence to sharia law and willingness to use violence to further its agenda (Wickham 2013). In April 2019, US president Donald Trump advocated for formally designating the group a foreign terrorist organization (Savage, Schmitt, and Haberman 2019). 2. See Krieg 2019. 3. Prosor 2014. Prosor asserts that wealthy Qatari individuals have sent hundreds of millions of dollars to finance terrorist organizations. 4. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a transcontinental geographic region that includes eighteen countries and territories and is home to about 6 percent of the world population. Under some definitions, countries such as Turkey and Sudan are considered part of the MENA. Afghanistan and Pakistan are not typically included, although they are geographically proximal and share some cultural traits. The Arabian Peninsula is a MENA territory home to seven nations: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Yemen. The region is sometimes referred to as the Gulf, because these countries are located on or near the Arabian Gulf (or Persian Gulf), a body of water feeding from the Indian Ocean that is said to be the largest single source of crude oil on Earth. The Gulf moniker also stems from the Gulf Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC), a political and economic alliance, established in 1981, that consists of six Arabian Gulf monarchies with varying degrees of petroleum resources: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. In this book, I refer to these six countries collectively as “Gulf ” nations. 5. Jodidio 2015. 6. International Monetary Fund 2017. Russia and Iran are, respectively, the world’s top-two producers of natural gas. Hamad’s efforts were aided by Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Al Thani, who served as Qatar’s foreign minister from 1992 to 2013 and its prime minister from 2007 to 2013. The Middle East scholar Kristian Coates Ulrichsen (2014, 4) asserts, “These two men emerged as the architects of a

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7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

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strategy of aggressive internationalization that put Qatar on the map as a dynamic regional actor.” CNBC 2017. Salacanin 2015. Human capital is an essential component of successful national development, particularly educated workers who are flexible, are trainable, and possess the critical thinking and analytical skills required to solve problems in the everchanging knowledge industries (Weber 2011). Ginesta and San Eugenio 2014. Local critics decry Education City’s mixed-gender environment, Westernized curriculum, and English-only classrooms, which are perceived to favor Western professors over Qatari or Arab scholars (Wildavsky 2010). Others question Education City’s agenda or objectives (Rostron 2009). Qatar’s five-year, $45 million partnership with Houston Community College was beset by difficulties and scaled back at contract’s end (Wermund 2016). See Hamilton 2012. For details regarding the interviews conducted for this book, see the appendix. All quotations come from transcriptions of these interviews. To protect the anonymity of subjects, I have changed all research participants’ names and some identifying details. Virtually all big-ticket projects in Doha—schools, museums, sports, airlines, the media—are state-owned enterprises. “Al-Jazeera is privately held, but the government has reportedly paid to support its operating costs since its inception in 1996” (Freedom House, n.d.). Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2008, 13. Ginesta and San Eugenio 2014, 230. World Population Review, n.d. Katzman 2017; Amnesty International 2016; Scharfenort 2012. The rapid population growth in Qatar and its Gulf neighbors is even more impressive when outmigration is considered. According to 2005 census data, 44 percent of noncitizens had resided in the UAE for one to four years, the modal duration of residence (Lori 2012). Snoj 2019. Qatar is currently divided into eight municipalities. The first was created in 1963, what is now known as Ad-Dawha, which includes the city of Doha, home to nearly a million inhabitants. Two other large municipalities (Al Rayyan, population six hundred thousand; and Al Wakrah, population three hundred thousand) form the outlying suburbs of Doha. Another large city is Al Khor, located on Qatar’s northeast coastline, close to its oil and gas fields, about thirty-five miles from Doha. Al Khor is populated by about two hundred thousand inhabitants, most of whom work in the petroleum industry. Lusail is a planned city under construction about fifteen miles north of Doha’s city center.

Notes

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

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Palgrave 1865, 231. Weiner 2008, 107. Siegel 2011. Edwards 2011. Slackman 2010. Following the 9/11 attacks, Middle Easterners have been increasingly depicted in the media as violent terrorists or tasteless nouveau rich. Though contemporary, these descriptions continue the Orientalist convention of viewing Arabs as morally and culturally inferior to Westerners (Kerboua 2016; Altwaiji 2014). Koch 2014, 1120. Although these laborers travel from other countries to Qatar for work, legally they are not migrants; they are temporary contractual employees with limited opportunities for permanent residency or citizenship. They are required to leave the country when they are terminated or their contracts end. This distinction, certified through transnational labor agreements, results in workers with fewer rights and benefits than migrant laborers might enjoy. The Gulf states are not unique in their use of legal and contractual technicalities to disenfranchise foreign labor (Lori 2012). In the book, I use the terms foreign and foreigner to describe noncitizen residents of Qatar, reflecting both the symbolic and empirical properties of those terms in Qatar, as well as their everyday use there. Cambridge 2019. Independent 2018. Al-Malki et al. 2012, ix. Nagy 1998, 86. Harkness 2019; Harkness, Quiroz, and Gomez 2018; Harkness and Hongsermeier 2015; Harkness 2012; Harkness and Islam 2011. For example, Al-Muftah 2017; James-Hawkins, Qutteina, and Yount 2017; Mitchell et al. 2015; Knez, Benn, and Alkhaldi 2014. El Guindi 2005. Gender-polarized clothing is not unique to Qatar or Islam. Variations on “traditional” cloaks and headscarves for men and women differ by country, culture, nationality, and/or ethnic group throughout the world. NonQatari Muslim women from other national, ethnic, or racial groups wear a variety of culturally specific head wraps that conceal the hair and/or face. Throughout this book, I refer to women wearing any combination of the abaya and shayla as “covered,” reflecting the use of that term in Qatar. Moghadam 2005, 117–20. Torstrick and Faier 2009. Ottsen and Berntsen 2014. Al-Qasimi 2011. Toth 1994, 183. Never-married Qatari women, regardless of age, are typically called “girls” and self-refer as such. The term woman assumes that a female is married and thus not a virgin. To call an unmarried Qatari a woman could be taken as an insult. In this

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42. 43.

44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

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book, I do not use the term girl to describe anyone eighteen or older, but I retain the use of the word girl when quoting others. Various forms of resistance typically accompany globalization (Merkel 2012; Kahn and Kellner 2007; Rumford 2003; Hewison 2000). Some people view the encroachment of Western corporations, institutions, and culture as a form of soft power (Nye 2008), designed to take over and usurp the existing culture and replace it with Americanized corporate homogeneity. Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2008, 1–2. The concepts of tradition and modernity are contested though are generally agreed on as broadly defined constructs, however problematic. The postcolonial scholar Edward Said (1978, 42) wrote that the essence of Orientalism was “the ineradicable distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority.” Ginesta and San Eugenio 2014, 230; Kamrava 2013, 9. Corporations have long employed various branding strategies (Biraghi and Gambetti 2015), but the notion has also been applied to individuals (Vallas and Cummins 2015), places (Anholt 2010), cities (Kavaratzis 2009), and countries (Dinnie 2015). Al-Ghanim 2012. Nagy (1998, 87) describes Qatar’s new middle class, which includes dual-income families headed by college-educated “engineers, civil servants, teachers, healthcare professionals, university professors, and small-business owners.” At a minimum, she writes, these families employ a live-in maid or houseboy. Daloz 2009, 107–8. Alharahsheh, Mohieddin, and Almeer 2015. Harkness and Khaled 2014. Hassan 2018.

Chapter 1. Welcome to Doha

1. Katara, Catara, Guttur, and El-Katr are earlier forms of the word Qatar (Rahman 2005). Katara Cultural Village’s maze of forty single-story buildings—designed in a mélange of architectural styles—contains art galleries, cafes, restaurants, indoor and open-air theaters, a mosque, an opera house, the Qatari Fine Arts Society, the Qatar Music Academy, and the Qatar Photographic Society. At its center is a fullsized outdoor Greek amphitheater. Katara opened in 2010, and its design “sought inspiration from Arab and international cultures and merged them with Qatari heritage” (quoted in Jodidio 2015, 184). 2. The plight of blue-collar migrant laborers in the Gulf generates headlines, but there are large populations working in midlevel and professional occupations. Relatively high-status service workers manage hotels, sell cars and other pricey goods, and clerk in banks. These migrants “do not consider themselves to be a part of [the “abused worker”] story; they are office workers, shop clerks, nurses, engineers, teachers, drivers, draftsmen, doctors, and librarians” (Rhys 2010).

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3. Qatar Foundation’s sponsorship of Barcelona began in 2010, with a recordbreaking five-year, €150 million deal. 4. In Doha, the Adhan, or call to prayer, sounds five times each day, at approximately 5:30 a.m., at noon, in the midafternoon, at sunset, and again around 8:00 p.m. The call to prayer is intoned by a member of the church known as a muezzin, a male selected for his vocal ability and religious devotion. Typically, a muezzin recites the call to prayer into a microphone that is projected via loudspeaker from atop a mosque’s minaret. When the call to prayer sounds, Muslims are supposed to go to a nearby mosque, prayer room, or place of worship, and pray. 5. In 2014, Qatari customs agents stopped the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay after they discovered a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne in his luggage. The agents confiscated the liquor, to the dismay of Ramsay, who told reporters, “It was the first time I’ve ever been stopped by customs. The alarm went off and I got called into a little room” (Morley 2014). 6. Welchman 2012. The QSUC comedians occasionally reference dating restrictions onstage. For example, one comedian begins a joke, “A friend of mine is trying to get married here in Qatar. And it’s very hard. He doesn’t have his family around, and of course he can’t walk around the street and find a fine lady and get married. It doesn’t work like that here.” 7. Not all regions of these countries are equally conservative. For example, Saudi Arabian cities such as Jeddah and Dammam are known for being relatively progressive. 8. The Wahhabi strain of Islam was established by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792), a religious scholar and reformer who hailed from Arabia and aspired to return Islam to its monotheist roots (Smyth 1994). Al-Wahhab’s teachings caught on, and he gained a large following, the Wahhabis. He eventually teamed with an Arabian emir named Muhammad bin Saud, whose son married al-Wahhab’s daughter. In 1744, the pair founded Diriyah, the first emirate of present-day Saudi Arabia. The two structured the government around Islamic principles, chiefly in consultation with the Quran. Still operating under these principles, the Wahhab and Saud families continue to rule Saudi Arabia. At various points during the 1800s, the Saud-led Wahhabis took up arms against Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman, inflaming regional tensions that remain present today. The Wahhabis were infamous for their fanaticism, justifying violent raids on neighboring towns and villages under the premise that they were spreading authentic Islam. Even then, Wahabbism was controversial in the Gulf. The Al Kahlifa tribe of Bahrain rejected the doctrine, but it was embraced by a neighboring Qatari tribe, the Al Thanis (Smyth 1994). Many of today’s Wahabbis continue to advocate for an orthodox interpretation of the Quran, including strict adherence to rituals and practices, and are opposed to Western secularism, particularly the growing influence of Europe and the United States in the Gulf (Smyth 1994). Though Qatar’s interpretation of Wahabbism is milder than

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9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

28. 29.

Notes

Saudi Arabia’s, its advocacy of Wahabbism distinguishes it religiously from most of its Gulf neighbors and generates criticism (Toth 1994). Murphy 2009. Freedom House, n.d.; US Department of State, n.d. Karasz 2019. Qatar’s liquor laws are detailed in Articles 270–77 of the penal code. For example, Article 270, Law No. 11 of 2004, states, “Whoever drinks any alcoholic beverages in a public place . . . shall be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months and/or a fine not exceeding three thousand Qatari Riyals.” The penalty also applies to being “drunk on a main road” or disturbing others while intoxicated (Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan.qa). Dun 2014, 192. Gulf Times 2014. Freedom House, n.d. Freedom House, n.d. Scott 2014. Captain Jack Sparrow, post to Qatar Living 2014. In the text, I have edited the post for clarity. Martin, Martins, and Wood 2016. Gulf Times 2018. Freedom House, n.d. The Pearl-Qatar is an artificial island, designed in the shape of an oyster and touted to be Doha’s version of the French Riviera. Surrounded by sandy beaches and palm trees, the Pearl blends expensive, condo-style apartments with chic retail outlets and fine-dining restaurants. The design and layout are similar to Dubai’s man-made island, Palm Jumeirah. Al Ajami ultimately spent more than four years in prison before being released in 2016. Harkness and Levitt 2017. Brannagan and Rookwood 2016. In relationship-based cultures such as Qatar, the connections forged via social media “act as important links in the relational chain that allows citizens to communicate shared cultural norms and behavioral expectations” (Vieweg and Hodges 2016, 531). This includes “participatory surveillance,” in which, for example, Qataris use social media to report allegedly inappropriate speech or behavior to the Ministry of Interior. The performers come and go too. At Bistro 61, an expatriate comedian introduced himself by telling the audience, “It’s my first time in Qatar. It’s been three months, and I should be leaving in a week.” Furlan 2016. Doha has one of the highest rates of car ownership per capita in the world: 72.4 motor vehicles per one hundred people, creating high levels of air and noise pollution (Azzali 2015).

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30. From July 15, 2019, to October 21, 2019, a gallon of gas averaged $1.92 (GlobalPetrolPrices.com, n.d.). 31. US Department of State, n.d. 32. Government data show that in 2013, traffic accidents were the leading cause of external deaths (i.e., death due to accident, injury, violence, etc.) in Qatar, accounting for 62.5 percent of all external causes. The figure was higher for Qataris (85.3 percent) than for non-Qataris (54.3 percent) (Qatar Supreme Council of Health 2015). 33. Marjorie in Qatar 2004. 34. US Department of State, n.d. 35. Moza bint Nasser Al Missned, or Sheikha Moza, as she is known locally, is the second wife of Qatar’s previous emir and a prominent public figure. She is best known as the cofounder and chair of the Qatar Foundation. Her name is frequently spelled “Mozah” outside Qatar. 36. Toth 1994. 37. Al-Subaiey 2011; Vora 2014. 38. Zellman, Constant, and Goldman 2011, 37. 39. Stasz, Eide, and Martorell 2007. 40. See Bromber and Krawietz 2013; Kamrava 2013; Stasz, Eide, and Martorell 2007; Nagy 1998, 2006. 41. Stasz, Eide, and Martorell 2007; Al-Misnad 2012. 42. A “tea boy” refers to a low-status migrant worker (Nagy 2006). Tea boys typically prepare and serve beverages and snacks at workplaces and other organizations. Most tea boys are also expected to clean and perform other small tasks. 43. Scharfenort 2012, 211. 44. Alshawi and Gardner 2013, 56. “Bedouin” refers to nomadic desert-dwelling Arabian tribes that were populous throughout the Gulf and were the earliest denizens of what is now Qatar (see chapter 2). There is a long history of migration related to maritime trade activities between Qatar and what is now Iran. The PersianQataris were once a servant class, which impacts their present-day status (Nagy 1998). There is a small number of Qataris with dark skin, descendants of slaves brought to Qatar from East Africa during the nineteenth century. Some slaves earned their freedom by working in the pearl industry; others remained enslaved until the mid-twentieth century. “The Africans gradually became integrated into Qatari society, many even assuming the names of their owners. Today they are simply considered as Qataris” (Zahlan 1979, 18). 45. Sandridge et al. 2010. 46. Nagy 2006, 120. 47. Anderson 2006. 48. Nagy (2006, 122) refers to these groups as “perpetual visitors.” Foreign workers in the United States and Europe can sometimes leverage long-term residency into citizenship by pitting various government and legal institutions against one another (Lori 2012).

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49. Rhys 2010. 50. All the Gulf nations feature some form of sponsorship labor system, although specific requirements vary slightly by country. Comparative analysis of the labor regulations in Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia finds that they are structurally and functionally similar (Zahra 2014). Gulf sponsorship schemes share two common features: (1) regulation and oversight are performed by a single government entity; (2) employers are legally responsible for sponsored workers, dispersing the regulation of workers and labor laws across the citizenry and throughout institutions (Lori 2012). Some scholars believe sponsorship evolved from Bedouin practices, in which individuals were made temporary tribe members and given food and shelter in exchange for providing some type of service. Others contend that the “guest worker” label reinforces “tribal narratives of hospitality” and fits the larger economic agendas of the Gulf sultanates (Lori 2012, 15). 51. Doha’s growth and lack of strategic planning have resulted in a metropolis characterized by fragmented clusters, including “themed” districts such as Aspire (sports), Katara (culture), Souq Waqif (leisure), and Education City (Azzali 2015). 52. Gardner, Pessoa, and Harkness 2014; Gardner et al. 2013. 53. Coser 1960. 54. Amnesty International 2016a. 55. Ratcliffe 2018. Qatar is not the only Gulf nation to distance itself from the stigma of kafala. In 2006, the Bahraini government abolished kafala, forming the Labor Market Regulation Authority in its place. The new agency did little to replace the existing sponsorship system, although modest reforms occurred. 56. Interviews with workers find that many are happy to have employers hold their passports because they believe it is the safest way to store important documents (Gardner et al. 2013). 57. Freedom House, n.d. 58. Lori 2012. 59. Emerson 1969, 169. 60. Fine and DeSoucey 2005. 61. Romero and Cruthirds 2006. 62. Romero and Cruthirds 2006, 60.

Chapter 2. Modern Traditionalism

1. Visit Qatar n.d. 2. Eisinger 2000. 3. See Eickelman 2016. All of the Gulf nations are monarchies, which have become somewhat rare in the larger MENA region. The six Gulf monarchies have some mildly distinguishing features. Saudi Arabia and Oman are absolute monarchies, where the emir has complete autonomy with no legal restrictions. The seven states of the UAE are run as individual absolute monarchies, with a collective federation whose president is one of the state emirs. By contrast, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar are constitutional monarchies, whose rulers are supposed to govern based on a

Notes

4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

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constitution, although in reality the emirs exercise significant control. Jim Krane (2009) dubs the Gulf nations “tribal autocracies” because they are run by a single ruler who has absolute power but whose power stems from tribal lineage that is passed down generationally. Lori 2012. Lori 2012. Koch 2019. Badu and hadar believe they have “a degree of relatedness or similarity derived from their shared settlement patterns and lifestyles.” These groups “overlap with factors of kinship, geographical origins, occupation and language” (Nagy 2006, 129). Jokes sometimes circulate poking fun at the badu’s desert-dwelling origins, depicting the group as backward and unsophisticated. Hadar women are sometimes stereotyped as sexually promiscuous. Badu sometimes claim to be the “original” Qataris (Nagy 2006). The seven monarchies of the UAE are Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharja, and Umm al-Qaiwain. Differing levels of natural resources among the seven emirates results in economic and political imbalances tipped in favor of wealthy Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and, to a lesser degree, Sharja. CIA 2018. Fromherz 2012. Zeineddine 2017. Cleveland and Bunton 2013. Kaltham Ali Al-Ghanim (2012, 338) describes the process of tribal formation in the Gulf: “Groups of extended families form bands (badanat) that trace their descent to a common founder and are connected by blood relationships through the men. These groups together form larger kinship units such as clans and then tribes. Kinship subdivides and branches out in this system; each individual comes to have kinship relations of the first and second degree and then further out until everyone descended from the original line is included.” Solidarity among tribal members is strengthened via cross-cousin marriages throughout the kinship network. Fromherz 2012. Toth 1994. Qatar’s badu generally remained on the Arabian mainland until winter, when Qatar’s modest rainfall produced patches of grazeable scrub that drew multiple tribes. Bedouin tribes had a “highly developed sense of geography [and] a very sophisticated understanding of weather conditions” (Zahlan 1979, 16). Zahlan 1979. Cleveland and Bunton 2013. Cooke 2014. Eickelman 2016. Potter 2017. Crystal 1995, 33. Bose 2009. Crystal 1995.

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23. Hawkins 1987. 24. Potter 2017. Pearl fishers paid various tributes to local tribal leaders (Crystal 1995). Today, Qatar’s lack of taxes continues to attract foreign workers. 25. Teixeira 2010, 176. 26. Bowen 1951. 27. Niebuhr 1792. 28. D. Wilson 1883. 29. Whitelock 1844; Bowen 1951. The popularity of pearling in the Gulf gave rise to related industries, such as boatbuilding in Kuwait (Crystal 1992). 30. Palgrave 1865, 232. Muhammad Al Thani was a successful merchant who traded in pearls and dates and also led prayers in Bidda’s largest mosque. During his time in Qatar, Palgrave visited Al Thani at his castle, using Orientalist terms to describe him as “shrewd” and “wary” but having a “good-humored easiness of demeanor” (1856, 237). To Palgrave, Al Thani seemed more like a pearl-trading merchant than a tribal leader. 31. Zahlan 1979, 20. 32. Zahlan 1979, 22. Sharon Nagy (1998) describes East African migrants’ transition from slaves to household servants in Qatar during the 1950s and 1960s. 33. Bowen 1951, 171–73. 34. Rumaihi 1986. 35. Zahlan 1979. 36. Rahman 2005. 37. The Bani Utub was composed of loosely connected families from central Arabia. Famine drove the tribe from Arabia in the late seventeenth century. The Bani Utub originally settled in Qatar but migrated north, where it founded the city of Kuwait in the early eighteenth century. The Al Khalifa family were powerful, wealthy sea merchants who departed Kuwait over economic and other disagreements with al-Sabah, the ruling family (Crystal 1992). With little cross-national regulation and mobility via ship, departures in search of more favorable terms or resources were fairly common in the Gulf at this time (Potter 2017). 38. Zahlan 1979. 39. The Bani Utub tribe established Khalifa rule in 1783, after conquering Bahrain with assistance from Qatari tribes (Crystal 1995; Zahlan 1979). Bahrain is an archipelago of thirty-three islands. Qatar’s northwestern coast, where Zubarah is located, is less than twenty miles from Bahrain’s main island, separated by a shallow strait. 40. Crystal 1995. 41. Today Zubarah is a partly excavated archeological site known for its wellpreserved military fortress that dates to the 1930s, long after the village was abandoned. These square forts were common to small towns and villages at the time, symbolizing “the most powerful man whose responsibility it was to protect the townspeople from marauding Bedouin” (Zahlan 1979, 15). Still, Qatar’s leadership has exploited the symbolic value of a historic pearling village as authentic

Notes

42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56.

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Qatari heritage. In 2013, following a multiyear application process, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added Zubarah to its list of World Heritage Sites. “Through its association with the ruling Al-Thani family, Zubarah as an archaeological site has made the transition from representing Qatar’s local heritage to validating the lineage of the current ruling family, and finally as a desired World Heritage site has become a symbolic authorization of Qatar’s presence on the world heritage stage” (Exell and Rico 2013, 678–79). Crystal 1992. Oman and Saudi Arabia have never been subject to colonial rule by a Western nation, whereas Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar have extensive histories of colonial rule (Bromber and Krawietz 2013). Bose 2009. Smyth 1994. Qatar was viewed as a dependent of Bahrain and did not sign either treaty. Crystal 1995, 30. Forty Qatari ships were also seized in the 1867 raid (Zahlan 1979). Crystal 1995. Fromherz 2012. “According to desert law, a ruler’s territory extended as far as he could enforce the payment of zakat [an obligatory tax under Islamic law]. This tax was paid by the tribes whose dirah the ruler claimed as his own in return for which he ensured their protection” (Zahlan 1979, 17). The British controlled the Suez Canal from 1875 until 1956 and rerouted much of its mercantile shipping operations away from the Gulf. Crystal 1995. Crystal 1995. The government promotes Jassim Al Thani as the “founder” of Qatar. In 2007, then heir apparent Tamim Al Thani decreed December 18 Qatar National Day, sometimes called Founder’s Day, to mark the date Jassim Al Thani succeeded his father, Muhammad Al Thani, in 1878. National Day strategically fuses Qatar’s history with the Al Thani dynasty. Allen Fromherz (2012) argues that revising history to construct Jassim, rather than his father, as Qatar’s founder was an intentional ploy to reduce tribal sovereignty and enable Jassim’s descendants to consolidate power. In 1913, the Ottomans officially relinquished control of Qatar. Nyrop 2008. The Hawar Islands remain in dispute. In 1991, Qatar filed an international lawsuit against Bahrain, claiming ownership of the largely desolate but resource-rich land. Judgments levied by international courts in 1994, 1995, and 2001 ruled in Bahrain’s favor. In 2014, Bahrain opened a short-lived resort hotel on one of Hawar’s otherwise-barren islands. Some people suggest that Qatar’s unwillingness to develop present-day cities in or around Zubarah stems from its historical perception as a Bahraini outpost (Fromherz 2012).

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57. Although the population center of Qatar transitioned from Zubarah on the west coast to Doha on the east coast, the long-standing relationship between the Khalifas in Bahrain and the Thanis in Qatar continues to inform regional politics. A series of marriages between the two tribes further cemented their connections, and today the Khalifas are considered by many people to be second only to the Al Thanis in power and influence in Qatar. Illustrating the deep ties between these two dynastic tribes and the states over which they preside, the national flags of Bahrain and Qatar are identical, save for a slight difference in color. 58. Toth 1994. Qatar also lost its contacts outside the region, due in part to the fact that international shipping lines dried up. Thus, external communication just prior to the discovery of oil was limited to networks between local towns and villages (Zahlan 1979, 24). 59. Krane 2009. 60. Bristol-Rhys 2007, 24. 61. Bahrain began to export oil in 1934 and was the first Gulf nation to develop a petroleum-based economy. It used its newfound wealth to create a public education system and start the region’s first Arabic-language newspaper. This early development and reduced reliance on migrant workers, relative to Qatar and the UAE, render Bahrain a “more politically and social complex state” (Cleveland and Bunton 2013, 412). 62. Lori 2012. 63. Smyth 1994, 31. 64. Khalaf 1999, 99. According to Mehran Kamrava (2013), Qatar’s previous emir, Hamad, cut a similar father figure. His number-one domestic objective was “making Qataris wealthy” (131), and he was careful to present himself as a “man of the people, an emir who personifies the romanticized image of the Arab rule who is at once gracious and magnanimous, just and down-to-earth, worldly and wise, visionary but keenly aware of his past” (119). 65. Cabalion et al. 2018, 179. 66. Nagy 1998. 67. Toth 1994. 68. Rhys 2010. 69. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was formed from the unification of two Arabian kingdoms in 1932, and Bahrain gained independence from Britain in 1961. Britain’s decision to jettison its territories east of the Suez Canal was the result of declining use of the region, heavy recovery costs from World War II, and increasing public demand to reduce colonial expansion (Krane 2009). The seven UAE nations’ strategy of banding together helps illustrate the precarious political situation that characterizes the small Gulf nations. The withdrawal of Britain’s colonial rule left these tiny, sparsely populated sultanates vulnerable to larger, more powerful neighbors, some of whom had expansionist aspirations of their own. For example, as Bahrain was gaining independence from Britain in 1971, it was

Notes

70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76.

77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

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claimed by Iran. Historically, Qatar has maintained a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, partly due to a mutual affinity for Wahabbi Islam but also for protection. Nagy 1998. Lori 2012. Zahlan 1979, 11. Toth 1994. Another outcome of these military actions was a more pronounced preference for foreign labor from South Asia, rather than Arabs from neighboring countries. This was attributed to security concerns about pro-Iraq/anticoalition Arab groups that arose in the wake of these conflicts. Fears over terrorism, coupled with dwindling proportions of citizens, led to a series of reforms in the Gulf, including legislation that made it increasingly difficult for migrants to obtain citizenship (Lori 2012). The majority of naturalized Qatari citizens are migrants from neighboring Arab nations who arrived in the 1950s (Nagy 2006). Cleveland and Bunton 2013. Ten families currently control the Arabian Peninsula: Al Thani (Qatar), Al Said (Oman), Al Sabah (Kuwait), Al Khalifa (Bahrain), Al Nuhayyan (Abu Dhabi), Al Nuaimi (Ajman), Al Sharqi (Al Fujayrah), Al Maktum (Dubai), Al Qasimi (Ras al Khaymah and Sharjah), and Al Mualla (Umm al Qaywayn) (Smyth 1994, 30–31). Fromherz 2012, 21. Al-Ghanim 2012, 250. Cooke 2014, 10. Alshawi and Gardner 2013. Cooke 2014. Cooke notes that tribal and modern are not necessarily opposing poles, but can work in tandem. Western academics, curators, and professionals sometimes conflate tribalism with primitiveness. Quoted in Crystal 1995, 162. Levitt 2015. Crystal 1995, 33. Crystal 1995, 163. Crystal 1995, 163–64. Qatar Museums, n.d.-a. Levitt 2015, 127. Bromber and Krawietz 2013. Mohammad and Sidaway 2016. Zeineddine 2017, 209. Visit Dubai 2018. Beginning in the early 1960s, the region was serviced by Gulf Air, an airline collectively owned by Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, and Dubai. Dubai launched Emirates in 1985, followed by Qatar Airways in 1994. In 2003, Abu Dhabi started Etihad (Bromber and Krawietz 2013). National airlines are crucial to the economic diversification agendas and branding efforts of Gulf nations and have played a pivotal role in the global development of the region.

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94. In 2002, Dubai’s emir, Sheikh Mohamed, decreed that foreigners could purchase real estate. A feeding frenzy of investment ensued, with properties changing hands several times before they were even constructed, sold based on architectural drawings (Krane 2009). When the real estate bubble later burst, Dubai became an internationally known metaphor for economic overreach in the Gulf. 95. Krane 2009. 96. Krane 2009. 97. More than other countries in the region, the UAE has garnered headlines and criticism for handing stiff jail sentences to Europeans who kiss in public or blacklisting scholars who conduct research on local populations. In 2018, the UAE created an international stir when it sentenced Matthew Hedges, a thirtyone-year-old graduate student, to life in prison on trumped-up charges of spying during a research visit. (After a series of horrific stories were published by international news agencies, the UAE government pardoned and deported Hedges.) Like Qatar, the UAE has also been criticized for its treatment of low-wage migrant workers. 98. Qatar Tourism Authority 2016. 99. Kamrava 2013, 9. 100. Al Jazeera has been condemned for its hands-off treatment of Qatar. Some observers believe the network’s primary function is to promote Qatar’s brand twenty-four hours a day (Ginesta and San Eugenio 2014). 101. Hamdan 2011. The Doha Debates was broadcast from 2005 to 2012. In 2018, it was relaunched with a “majlis” format that allegedly provokes conversation rather than contention (www.dohadebates.com). 102. Fromherz 2012. 103. Guardian 2014. 104. Al Thani 2015, 14. 105. Al Thani 2015, 14. 106. Quoted in Foreign Policy 2015. 107. Brannagan and Rookwood 2016. 108. The Muslim feminist scholar Fadwa El Guindi (2005, 69) points out that understanding MENA cultures requires “the integration of dualities.” In exploring the merging of tribal and modern culture in four Gulf states, the Arab cultures scholar Miriam Cooke (2014) employs the Quranic concept of barzakh to explain the “undiluted convergence” of seemingly disparate phenomena. Rana Sobh, Russell William Belk, and Justin Gressel (2008) propose that women in the UAE and Qatar use “syncreticism” to merge modern and traditional clothing practices. 109. Swidler 1986, 281. 110. Swidler 1986, 276. 111. Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2008, 2. 112. In the more extensive Qatar National Development Strategy 2011–2016 (Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2011), “Islam” or “Muslim” is used fourteen times in the 286-page document. Furthermore, when these words are

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employed, they are almost always paired with another term that dilutes their religious connotation. For example, in the 2030 development plan, the word Islam is always conjoined with the term Arab (“Arab and Islamic identity”) (Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2008). In the fourteen uses of Islam or Muslim in the national development strategy, the word appears conjoined with Arab eight times and abutting family values and Sharia culture and traditions one time apiece. Only four times does the word stand alone, without being paired with another word or term. 113. Cooke (2014) examines the hybridization of modernity and tribalism in four Gulf countries. I found virtually no evidence that Qatar uses the word “tribal” in its nation-branding attempts. Cooke notes that “the word tribal may not be used explicitly” in such efforts and offers an example from the 2011 Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival, whose theme was “Tradition and Modernity” (2014, 67). I argue that such linguistic choices are deliberate, intended to deemphasize the tribal and foreground the more opaque notion of tradition. In doing so, tribal influence is reduced, and dynastic Al Thani power increases. 114. Similarly, words such as “tribe(s)” “tribal,” and “tribalism” do not appear anywhere in the 2030 development plan, but “tradition(s)” and “traditional” are used eight times. 115. Fromherz 2012, 12, 29. Cooke asserts, “Nation trumps tribe in the quest for international recognition” (2014, 65). 116. Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority, n.d. 117. Golkowska 2014, 52. 118. Visit Qatar, n.d. 119. Museum of Islamic Art, n.d. 120. Museum of Islamic Art 2016. 121. Levitt 2015. 122. Jodidio 2015, 20. 123. See Cooke 2014; Kerr and Wiseman 2013; Zenker and Braun 2010; Kavaratzis 2009. 124. See Harkness, Quiroz, and Gomez 2018. 125. Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2008, 12. 126. Al-Khouli 2012. 127. Qatar Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics 2016. 128. In 2001, there were 50,495 Qatari females aged fifteen or above, 36,646 (72.6 percent) of whom were economically inactive and 13,849 (27.4 percent) of whom were employed or seeking work (Qatar Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics 2002). In 2017, there were 101,225 Qatari females aged fifteen or above, 64,011 (63.2 percent) of whom were economically inactive and 37,214 (36.8 percent) of whom were employed or seeking work (Qatar Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics 2017a). 129. Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2017. 130. Al-Muftah 2017, 20.

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131. Harkness, Quiroz, and Gomez 2018. 132. Day 2017. 133. Florida 2007, 10–11. 134. Florida 2007, 181. 135. Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2008, 11. 136. “There is often a disconnect between the social morals of traditional Qataris and the progressive internationalism of the emir and his immediate family” (Fromherz 2012, 157). 137. Abbasi-Shavazi et al. 2008; Jahromi 2011; Jawad, Al-Sinani, and Benn 2011. 138. CBS News 2012. 139. Doha News 2011. 140. Valdini 2012. 141. Quoted in Levitt 2015, 129.

Chapter 3. Inventing Traditions

1. Scharfenort 2012. 2. In the submission materials for the World Cup, the Qatari government reported that soccer was the most-viewed television programming in Qatar, with 77 percent of men and 64 percent of women watching games (FIFA 2010, 28). 3. Brannagan and Rookwood 2016. 4. Keh 2018. 5. Auto wraps are constructed from thin sheets of clear vinyl that can have any lettering or image printed on them. These decorations, which alter a vehicle’s exterior appearance, are popular advertising tools. High-quality wraps last several years, but owners can also have them removed. In Qatar, having an auto professionally wrapped and decorated “is generally understood to be the realm of citizen-nationals only” (Koch 2019, 195). The ritualistic auto parades that take place on holidays such as National Day are a mechanism by which citizens publicly distinguish themselves from expatriates. 6. Rajakumar 2014, 246. 7. Paul Michael Brannagan and Joel Rookwood (2016) provide a mixed-methods analysis of media and fan responses to Qatar’s being awarded the 2022 FIFA World Cup. 8. J. Wilson 2010; Montague 2010. 9. In 2012, following an investigation, FIFA declared a lifetime ban on the prominent Qatari Mohamed bin Hammam, who resigned his presidency of the Asian Football Conference and membership on FIFA’s Executive Committee. FIFA cited repeated ethics violations and conflicts of interest as its reasons for the ban. See FIFA 2012. 10. Koch 2018a. 11. Maennig and Du Plessis 2009. 12. Silva 2014. 13. Qatar Olympics Committee, n.d.

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14. Scharfenort 2012. 15. Many of Qatar’s athletic deals are made through Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), which was founded in 2004 to generate profits via sports internationally and at home. In 2010, QSI covered the €150 million cost to have the Qatar Foundation’s name prominently displayed on front of FC Barcelona’s soccer uniforms, the first time in history the team had allowed this type of sponsorship. (The deal was renewed five years later, with Qatar Airways replacing Qatar Foundation on the jerseys.) In 2011, QSI purchased outright Paris’s preeminent soccer team, Paris Saint-Germain. The firm also owns an athletic clothing company, Burrda Sport. 16. Broch 2016. Because of the worldwide popularity of soccer, it in particular serves as a “paradigm of how political actors use sports organizations on the front line of their social, national, and international public relations battles” (Ginesta and San Eugenio 2014, 228). 17. Brannagan and Rookwood 2016, 177. 18. Ibid. 19. In 2018, a New York Times reporter (Keh 2018) described the construction of Al Janoub Stadium, where six hundred vehicles were in operation at once and “4,000 migrant laborers in fluorescent clothing rotated in and out in shifts under a punishing sun.” 20. Doha Metro’s soft opening took place in May 2019, ahead of schedule. 21. Hamad International Airport opened in 2014, nine years after groundbreaking. 22. Ginesta and San Eugenio 2014. The number of stadiums was reduced from nine, and the construction costs increased. In March 2015, in a historically unprecedented move, FIFA announced that the 2022 World Cup would be rescheduled from the summer to November and December. 23. In FIFA’s bid evaluation report, it noted that Qatar’s ability to actually produce these technical and architectural marvels created substantial risk because the facilities were unbuilt and the promised technologies did not exist (FIFA 2010). In 2018, a New York Times writer (Keh 2018) visited Khalifa International Stadium, an existing venue being rehabbed for the World Cup, and reported that the cooling system worked. 24. Qatar has promised, following the 2022 games, that half of Al Janoub’s seats will be removed and donated to a country in need. The venue will then be repurposed as an arena for the Al Wakrah city soccer team (Zaha Hadid Architects 2019). 25. Zaha Hadid Architects 2019. Al Janoub means “stadium of the south.” 26. Kiebus 2013. 27. Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan.qa. 28. Gulf Times 2015. 29. When widely disseminated and consumed, criticism of this nature constitutes “soft disempowerment,” in which, in a reversal of the soft-power model, nations “upset, offend or alienate others, leading to a loss of attractiveness or influence” (Brannagan and Rookwood 2016, 178). 30. New York Times 2017.

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31. Koch 2018b. 32. Bromber and Krawietz 2013. The measure banned anyone under eighteen from jockeying. Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Faisal Al Thani, president of the committee that oversees camel races, said the change was part of a government effort to “entrench a culture of human rights” (New York Times 2004). 33. Caine and Caine 2005. 34. Sulayman Khalaf (1999) provides an ethnographic account of the commodification of camel racing in UAE, where the traditional cultural pastime became a virtually unrecognizable tourist attraction as part of the government’s state-building efforts. “The collapse of traditional economic activities within the context of the overall rapid economic modernization triggered by oil wealth brought a realization of the importance of preserving and reviving traditional culture. The camel in general and racing camels in particular came to be in the thick of this cultural revival phenomenon” (86). Despite stereotypes about Arabs and camels, the races became a “significant component in the enterprise of statecraft and state formation, and as cultural festivals for preserving and promoting national cultural identity which appears threatened by multiple global cultural flows and dynamics” (85). 35. Cabalion et al. 2018, 189. 36. Hobsbawm 1983, 1. 37. Koch 2018b. 38. Qatar Museums, n.d.-b. 39. Xavier Ginesta and Jordi de San Eugenio (2014) describe the crucial role of Al Jazeera in the dissemination of what they call “country branding” via sports, particularly soccer. In Qatar, Al Jazeera features fifteen channels that broadcast nothing but sports around the clock, including 80 percent of all televised soccer games in the world. 40. FIFA 2010, 26. 41. Brannagan and Rookwood 2016. According to a government survey, 65 percent of Qataris had not attended any soccer matches during the previous season. (Qatar Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics 2014). The survey found seven major reasons for the lack of attendance. “Hot, humid, and windy, dusty” weather was near the top (2). Nearly eight out of ten respondents under the age of twentyfour cited the “weak ties linking the sports clubs’ supporters” as a reason for not going (2). The report added, “For females, culture related issues are raised such as traditions and customs that prevent them from showing themselves at stadiums, in addition to the non-adaptation of the stadiums’ terraces for females” (1). 42. Koch 2018a, 2016. 43. Koch 2018a, 2019. 44. Bonesteel 2014; Associated Press 2014. 45. Collins 2015. 46. Reiche 2015. 47. Reiche and Tinaz 2019.

Notes

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63.

64.

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Campbell 2011. Qatar Olympic Committee 2011. Qatar Olympic Committee 2011. Qatar Olympic Committee 2011, 28. Qatar Olympic Committee 2011, 28. In 2008, there were 13,700 registered athletes in Qatar—approximately 74 percent were Qatari citizens. Qatar Olympic Committee 2011, 18. Longitudinal research on Qatari women finds that 23.5 percent qualify as physically active, while 44.1 percent are considered inactive (Sayegh, Van Der Walt, and Al-Kuwari 2016). Qatar Olympic Committee 2011, 38. Surk 2011. Dun 2016. Straits Times 2016. Sayegh, Van Der Walt, and Al-Kuwari 2016; World Health Organization 2012b. Al-Bibi 2014. The games are held at Qatar Academy’s high school, which is separate from an elementary school that shares the name. For example, see Texas A&M University at Qatar 2010. The number varies slightly at any given time because spectators come and go and arrive at different times. At this game, the Eagles drew about twice as many spectators as the Comets, including everyone in attendance who was not a student. The Eagles also brought in more female spectators than the Comets, whose male fans outnumbered females by two to one. These numbers do not reflect demographic differences between the respective universities affiliated with each team. Ramadan is the annual Muslim holy month. In Qatar, from sunrise to sunset, Muslims fast, drink no liquids, and are not supposed to smoke cigarettes or have sex. Certain groups are exempt from fasting and restricting water, including young children, pregnant women, and those suffering from serious illnesses. Non-Muslims are asked to refrain from smoking, eating, or drinking in public and to maintain a higher-than-usual sense of decorum. Alcohol and pork sales are forbidden. Doha’s five-star hotels serve extravagant iftar meals during Ramadan that are popular with Qataris and well-to-do expatriates. The commodification of this religious observance romanticizes Qatar’s Bedouin past and cosmopolitan Arab present. For example, in August 2010, faculty and staff at Education City were emailed a flier advertising the Ritz-Carlton Doha’s monthlong “Ramadan Nights” event: “Arabian horses and camels greet you at the entrance to our Ramadan tent, setting the scene for a truly memorable Ramadan experience. We have a Lebanese band and tannoura dancer to entertain you while you sample the very best of regional cuisine, with refreshing Ramadan juices, fresh breads from our saaj oven and a multitude of tasty Middle Eastern delicacies.” Mocktails (“sunset sips”) and flavored tobacco (“sweet smoke”) were available. The Ritz also set up a temporary souq, where one could “choose handicrafts and gifts from friends and family.

278

65.

66.

67.

68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76.

77.

78.

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Ladies will enjoy the henna experience and children have a valuable opportunity to learn about the traditional skills of falconry.” The night might conclude in a Ritz-Carlton “Ramadan Retreat,” complete with lavish spa treatments and use of a private swimming pool. The state-owned Qatar Airways cosponsored the event. Haifa, a Jordanian basketball player, describes similarly indiscriminate recruiting tactics: “With the new freshmen, we always pick out some people and go, ‘You look like you should play on a team’—because she’s tall or something. And a lot of them would say, ‘We don’t have experience. We haven’t played basketball before or sports in general.’ ” In Qatar, “the extended family still shows a high degree of unity and integration among its members and contributes to a large extent in expanding the scope of social relationships. It is not just a network of individuals, but rather family groups and units branching off from the father as well as the mother” (Al-Ghanim 2012, 336). “When Qataris speak of ‘family’ they can be referring to any portion of a multigenerational, extended family linked primarily though the male line. ‘Family’ overlaps with distinctions of sect, cultural history and geographical origins” (Nagy 2006, 127). Rasmi and Daly 2016. Kleindienst-Cachay 2011. This is true for Muslim women outside Qatar as well, where societal pressures to conform to the tenets of Islam are sometimes less stringent (Koca et al. 2009; Kay 2006; Palmer 2010). Family prohibitions have been a noted barrier to athletic involvement for non-Muslim women in Western countries (Migliaccio and Berg 2007). For an exploration of cultural boundaries for sportswomen in Qatar, see Harkness 2012. Al-Sinani et al. 2013, 15. See Walseth and Fasting 2003. Sports in Qatar are coded male and female in ways that are broadly similar to the universal gendering of athletics. Heritage sports such as falconry are male dominated, in media images but also in practice—women are largely excluded from hunting expeditions (Koch 2018b). Hardman et al. 2013; Al-Mohannadi and Capel 2007. World Health Organization 2012a. A study of female soccer players in Qatar reports, “The immediate family context was the most important support mechanism for the continuation of their efforts to pursue the sport” (Knez, Benn, and Alkhaldi 2014, 1769). In studies, Qatari women stated that “because of the multiple roles in family, work and community, they were less likely to commit to regular exercise” (Donnelly et al. 2011, 11). The desire for gender-segregated exercise spaces is prevalent among Muslim females in Qatar. Ghalia, a nineteen-year-old Qatari, connects gender segregation and the hijab. Ghalia enjoys organized sports but does not play for any teams. She

Notes

79.

80.

81.

82. 83.

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claims that the hijab stops her from taking part in sports: “I don’t do sports, but I like to work out. Sometimes I get jealous that men can work out at the Corniche and I can’t. I have to wear a shayla. And okay, I could wear it. I thought of wearing a hoodie and sweatpants and going to [a park] in the morning, when no one’s there, and riding a bicycle. But I’ve never done it. I wouldn’t want anyone I know to see me do that. I think there should be a time when the Corniche is closed just for women or something. Sometimes I get sick of just working out at home or in the gym.” Research on Muslim female athletes finds that segregation by sex is typically the desired arrangement in sports. Some Muslim women will not participate in athletics if men are present (Kay 2006). Several scholars have described female athletes from the MENA who don sports gear that is similar to the clothing they wear in their everyday lives, which conceals arms, legs, and/or hair: Al-Ansari 2011; Pfister 2011; Jiwani and Rail 2010; Walseth and Fasting 2003. Such strategies have been successful for high-profile athletes from other Gulf nations. For example, the Bahraini runner Ruqaya Al-Ghasara participated in the 2008 Olympics while wearing a head scarf and fully covered arms and legs. AlGhasara was “regarded as a devoted Muslim who competes at the top level of her sport without giving up her Islamic faith, represented through her dress.” On the other hand, another Bahraini track star, Mariam Jamal, did not cover while running, dressing instead in the shorts and tank tops more typically associated with Olympic-level runners. Consequently, Jamal is “not considered by some people a good role model for Muslim girls,” implying that Al-Ghasara’s tactic is more effective (Al-Ansari 2011, 86). The Muslim sportswomen’s struggle to combine functionality with larger cultural dictates is also found in the West, where clothing for highly athletic sports such as gymnastics, figure skating, and cheerleading is (hetero)sexualized (Roth and Basnow 2004; Wright and Clarke 1999). Women & Sport 2010, 15. BBC 2014; FIBA 2017.

Chapter 4. The National Uniform

1. Al-Ghanim, Gardner, and El-Menshawy 2017. 2. Peterson 2017. 3. Of the fifteen largest malls in the world, only two are located in the MENA, and both of those are in Iran (whose status as a MENA nation is sometimes contested). Nearly all of the fifteen mega-malls are situated in large cities with hot, humid climates. 4. Simmel 1997, 207. 5. In Doha, Arabs from neighboring countries wear analogous attire to Qatari males, but each nation’s clothing has unique elements, micro details that make them distinguishable to insiders (see Khalaf 2005; Ingham 1997). While strongly linked to female citizens in Qatar, the abaya and shayla are not specific to any country. For example, women in the UAE also wear these garments, which have a

280

6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

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regional association with the Gulf. Echoing the sentiments of covered women in Qatar, Masifa, an Emirati woman interviewed by Jane Bristol-Rhys, calls the abaya and shayla the “national uniform” (Bristol-Rhys 2010, 112). Golkowska 2014, 52. Al-Qasimi 2010, 46. In Saudi Arabia, women’s adherence to sartorial laws is monitored by a government entity, the Commission for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice. Arat 2005; Ahmed 2011; El Guindi 2005; Lindholm 2014; Salime 2011; Shirazi and Mishra 2010. Ruby 2006; Siraj 2011; Siriwardane 2014; Zwick and Chelariu 2006. El Guindi 2005; Mule and Bathel 1992. Bushman 1984; Bickman 1971. Northwestern University in Qatar 2008. Qwertyness, post to Qatar Living 2012. Buhadi 2012. Doha News 2012. Doha News 2012. Nagy 1998, 85. In addition to indexing clothing, the word hijab serves as proxy for a larger set of Islamic codes of morality, conduct, and dress. For Muslim women in Qatar, to practice hijab is to adhere to Islamic principles that include austerity, gender segregation, and displays of religious and spousal devotion (El Guindi 2005; Nakamura 2002). The attire symbolizes these practices and beliefs and functions as a public declaration of a woman’s devotion to Islam (Lindholm 2010). Zahedi 2008. See the Quran online, https://quran.com/24/31-37. There are any number of translations of the Quran; the wording here is generally similar across various editions. Some translations implore women to conceal their “beauty” from men, which is where the injunction for Muslim women to cover their hair stems from (Lindholm 2014). Many women in Qatar point to the fuzziness of this Quranic verse, interpreting it in ways that support their desired (if not always lived) sartorial practices. For example, see Fernea 2002; Meer, Dwyer, and Modood, 2010; Nayebzadah 2010; Ruby 2006; Shirazi 2001; Siraj 2011; Williamson 2014; Zwick and Chelariu 2006. Amer 2014; Roche, Roche, and Al Saidi 2014; Kahf 2008; Zwick and Chelariu 2006. Ahmed, Roche, and Al Quraini 2016. DeCoursey 2017. Kahf 2008. These pressures are exerted on all women in Qatar to some degree. The state constitution compels noncitizens to obey the country’s laws, traditions, and customs. Many non-Qatari Muslim women wear some form of hijab, but others do not cover, behavior that is unusual for Qatari females.

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27. Kahf 2008; Lindholm 2014. 28. These prohibitions stemmed from a desire to take part in growing international economic flows but also to consolidate power at the local level by dismantling existing tribal leaderships. Forbidding traditional clothing facilitated these political maneuverings because it eliminated “tribal affiliations that were evident in specific dress forms” and reduced the “potential for political uprising and coup” (Lindholm 2014, 155). 29. Kahf 2008, 32–33. 30. Cooke 2014, 127. 31. Quoted in Khalaf 2005, 252–53. 32. The revival of traditional Islamic clothing in the MENA was launched by female university students in Egypt in the early 1970s. Most of the students were conservatives who hailed from rural areas. They wore loose, long-sleeved robes to signal their religiosity and rejection of then-popular Western fashion. Over the next decade, the practice spread throughout the country, eventually diffusing across the MENA and to cities in Europe and North America. Writing of the early movement in Egypt, Homa Hoodfar (1991, 106) notes that readopting the hijab is a way for females to “protect the gains and possible opportunities that modernization has brought. Veiling has become an instrument through which women publicly dissociate themselves from some of the culturally disapproved traits and characteristics attributed to the stereotype of the modern woman. At the same time, veiling enables these women to safeguard their traditional rights.” 33. Al-Qasimi 2010. 34. This reversal was neither linear nor smooth (Kahf 2008). 35. Lindholm 2014. 36. Sobh, Belk, and Gressel 2008. 37. Christina Lindholm (2013, 46) calls the contemporary abaya and shayla a “modern reinvention of a centuries-old style.” 38. Unadorned, utilitarian abayas are sometimes described as sartorial equalizers, similar to how school uniforms supposedly eliminate hierarchies and competition (Ossman 2002; Thomas 1994). Following this logic, the development of expensive, fashionable abayas as signifiers of wealth and status would create the opposite effect: spawn competition and hierarchies among women. Some scholars claim that the abaya has been transformed from a functional object to a fashionable garment, one that connotes wealth, good taste, sophistication, high status, modernity, sexuality, and individuality over the collective (Lindholm 2014; Sobh, Belk, and Gressel 2012). 39. Chrisman-Campbell 2016. 40. Almotahajiba, n.d. 41. Trajectories to covering also vary by the articles of clothing females wear. Some begin by donning an abaya but not a shayla. For others, the shayla comes first. Still others wear both items from the outset. These practices are contextual, and females make real-time adjustments to suit changing circumstances.

282

| Notes

42. Shakira Hussein (2007, 2) asserts that the dichotomy between hijab as freely chosen and as being forced on women is an oversimplification: while both discourses are grounded in the empirical experiences of women, “many Muslim women ‘negotiate’ rather than ‘choose’ over issues such as dress, and they do not negotiate on equal terms.” 43. Sobh, Belk, and Gressel 2008, 342. 44. Stratton 2006, 70. See also Salime 2011. 45. Detlev Zwick and Cristian Chelariu (2006, 381) note, “A range of opinions exists among Muslims regarding the times and places—ranging from prayer only to all the time—that women are expected to be veiled.” 46. A study of young Muslim women in the UAE found that many “wear the shayla farther back on their head instead of covering the hair and neck completely. This allows others to see their hair near the forehead; their hair is often dyed and styled, and accessories such as earrings and necklaces are visible as well. . . . The majority of the participants believed it is acceptable to show off a little hair, generally a couple of inches of their bangs, but any more exposure was met with criticism” (Sobh, Belk, and Gressel 2012, 362). 47. I asked a Qatari woman named Maryam to clarify the difference between a’aib and haram, and she replied, “There’s a huge difference. When they say it’s haram, it’s forbidden in our religion, it’s sinful. When something is a’aib, it’s not right, it’s not proper. As little kids, things like lifting up our skirts in the classroom as threeyear-olds: a’aib. It’s not taboo, but they teach us all these little things like, ‘You guys aren’t supposed to dress inappropriately. That’s a’aib. It’s not really haram.’ ” 48. See Kanafani-Zahar 1983. These notions are not limited to Qataris and are widely shared among covered women in Doha. For example, a Moroccan woman named Fatima tells me how she chose head wear based on its appeal as a garment and how attractive it made her face look: “I don’t think [a certain type of hijab] suits my face because its very round. I am kind of picky about the type of scarf I wear. I used to wear those veils that allow me to exercise without having to worry about my veil in high school, but it looked ugly.” 49. Non-Qatari Muslim women wear abayas, shaylas, or both, but many do not cover at all. “I don’t believe in wearing the hijab,” says Reem, an Iranian Muslim who does not wear an abaya or head scarf. “Why should I wear it? I see so many girls wearing it and praying five times a day but, at the end of the day, going around and fooling around with guys.” Although Qatari women encounter the most intense pressure, noncitizen Muslims who do not cover describe being judged for it. For example, one non-Qatari Arab college student had attended a high school where the majority of her peers were Qatari. “They would look down at me because I wasn’t wearing the hijab. They would say, ‘She goes out with guys, and she has a boyfriend.’ I don’t, but they would say that. And the guys would treat me differently.” 50. Jackson and Monk-Turner 2015, 30. Lindholm (2012, 7) provides a comparative analysis of head coverings in Islam and Christianity. She notes that in the United

Notes

51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

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States, religious women, including Mennonites and the Amish, wear unadorned clothing and head covers that signify “their religious affiliation, piety and intentional separation from the world.” For example, see Ruby 2006; Awan et al. 2011; Jackson and Monk-Turner 2015; Read and Bartkowski 2000. Respectively, the stories are from Blackwood, Hopkins, and Reicher 2015; Ahmed, Roche, and Al Quraini 2016; Trainer 2017, 372; Hoodfar 1991, 107; and Al-Qasimi 2010, 50. Al-Qasimi 2011; Nagy 1998. Mitchell et al. 2015; Nagy 1998. Donnelly et al. 2012, 1123. Dareen, an eighteen-year-old Qatari, cautions that female-only affairs may be less restrictive but still come with limitations. “Not all things are allowed, even in a female-only party. You can’t show off lots of your body, especially your chest.” “Participants describe these events as similar to the Oscars red carpet because they leave public modesty behind and realize their most glamorous fanciful selves . . . . Wedding and party halls serve as safe havens for fashion where traditional cultural norms are ignored and vanity is indulged” (Sobh, Belk, and Gressel 2012, 362). For weddings recorded in 2018, September was the most popular month for Qatari unions, with March a distant second. Relative to other months, there were fewer Qatari weddings from December to February (Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2019). Lindholm 2014, 162. Al-Qasimi 2010, 63. Kahf 2008, 36. So-called waisted abayas became popular in many parts of the Gulf around 2005. Al-Qasimi (2010, 59) opines that women who wear attire in this manner resist the notion that abayas are to be loose and not accentuate the figure yet conform to conventions of length and color: “In this construction, the abaya-as-fashion notably disrupts its primary signification without ever fully displacing it.” Kreidler 2012, 143. On gang practices, see Garot 2010. Al-Qasimi 2010. See Vieweg and Hodges 2016; Rajakumar 2012. Walsh 2018. Clothing is sometimes used to convey ideology, social identity, collective identity, and group membership. It can also signify divergence or be used as a form of resistance (Clarke and Turner 2007; Hebdige 1979).

Chapter 5. Venus and Mahrs

1. Five-star hotels that are located along Doha’s waterfront often feature private beaches available to hotel guests or paying members of the public.

284

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

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Notes

Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2011, 166. Helen Ziegler & Associates, n.d. Lindholm 2014. Arnett 2000. Bogle 2008; Grello, Welsh, and Harper 2006. Sassler 2010. McGinnis 2003. Nagy 2006. World Health Organization 2018. The exact figure was 12.78. Less than 2 percent of marriages in 2018 involved Qatari males under twenty years of age (Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2019). Alharahsheh, Mohieddin, and Almeer 2015. For marriages recorded in 2018, nearly 57 percent of Qatari females had a high school education, while close to 30 percent held a college degree. For males, these rates were 42.7 percent and 38.4 percent, respectively (Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2019). Some of these differences are due to Qatari females marrying younger than Qatari males do. Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2018, 202. Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2019. See Hamad Bin Khalifa University 2016–17, 15–16. Noor Al-Qasimi (2011) describes similar phenomena at universities in the UAE. At one campus, female students are required to sign an agreement of sexual conduct. At an all-female campus, students are monitored for public displays of affection. Badry and Willoughby 2016. Ultraorthodox families in Qatar refuse to let their offspring attend college at all. For Qatar’s University’s code of dress and public behavior, see Qatar University 2016–17. Qatar University, n.d., 12. Al-Maria 2012, 191, 196. Rates of use among Qataris for Instagram (65 percent), Twitter (46 percent), Facebook (44 percent), and Snapchat (39 percent) illustrate the widespread use of these technologies (Vieweg and Hodges 2016). Medium 2017. Schielke 2009. Qatari women’s desire to marry young is sometimes criticized as regressive and counterfeminist. This stance overlooks that status and power for women in Doha remain where they have traditionally been found—within the family, rather than in educational and occupational settings. In Qatar, there is a “status hierarchy among women based on their position in the kinship group, such as grandmother, mother, adult sister, or aunt. Such kinship positions are more important in determining social status within family structure in this region than are education or wealth” (Al-Ghanim 2012, 346).

Notes

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

33.

34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

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Rajakumar 2012. Leage and Chalmers 2010. Scharfenort 2012. Cornell Daily Sun 2011. Scharfenort 2012, 224. Scharfenort 2012. A situation in which two same-sex individuals are holding hands publicly in Doha is not typically defined as a sexual act. Bert Archer (2015) provides a detailed journalistic account of using “hook-up apps” to explore Doha’s secretive gay scene and engage in sex with young Qatari and expatriate men. Overall, Archer finds the males in Doha to be “more furtive than frightened.” Badry and Willoughby 2016. The term derives from the English word boy melded with the Arabic feminine suffix ah. Due to the controversial nature of boyahs, little research about this group has been conducted. Of the existing studies, many rely on virtual data gathered from online sources such as message boards and social media exchanges (Trainer 2017; Al-Maria 2012; Al-Qasimi 2011; Nigst and Garcia 2010). Sarah Trainer (2017, 375) interviewed a boyah who dressed the part at school “specifically because she knew it would upset and anger her family and she had no other means at her disposal to show her displeasure with her life under their roof and dictates.” Similarly, Lorenz Nigst and Jose Sanchez Garcia (2010, 9) assert that homosexuality “is not necessarily the most important aspect of their behavior; rather, the transgression of gender norms seems to be by far more important.” Noor Al-Qasimi (2011) believes that boyahs signify visible expression and display of homosexuality, regardless of intent. Nigst and Garcia 2010, 7. Writing about the Gulf region, Al-Qasimi (2011, 288) asserts that “it is not uncommon for homosexual men and women to marry one another willingly, enabling them to conduct independent homosexual lives within the constraints of heteronormative subordination.” Buunk, Park, and Duncan 2010; Allendorf 2013. Al-Ghanim 2012, 347. Applbaum 1995. Coontz 2004. Hortaçsu 2007; Allendorf 2013; Hurvitz 1975; Nasser and Dabbous 2008; Shaw 2001. Faulkner and Schaller 2007. Qatar Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics 2017b. Quoted in Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2008, 11. Miriam Cooke (2014, 41) asserts that these government subsidies are only available to citizens who marry and have children with other citizens, thus “strengthening the national composition of the state” by increasing the proportion of Qataris.

286

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Notes

45. Qatar Law of the Family, Article 17: “Males are not allowed to enter into marriage contracts before the age of eighteen (18). Females are not allowed to enter into marriage contracts before the age of sixteen (16)” (Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan.qa). 46. From 2009 to 2018, the average age at first marriage for Qatari females rose slightly from 23.9 to 24.5. The rate for males, 26.7, remained the same. Qataris marry about three years earlier than non-Qataris living in Qatar. In 2018, the average age at first marriage for non-Qatari females was 27.2 and was 29.7 for their male counterparts (Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2019). 47. In 2009, the rates for Qatari females and males were 27.7 and 29.4 per one thousand citizens, respectively. A decade later, these rates had dropped to 20.1 for females and 23.3 for males (Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2019). 48. Qatar Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics 2017b. 49. Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2018, 222. 50. See Qatar Law of the Family, Articles 25–26. If the father is not available to act as “guardian” of the marriage, the legal code provides an ordered list of family successors (Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan.qa). Such restrictions are not uncommon in the Gulf. Women in the UAE, “no matter what their age, need the approval of a male relative in order to marry” (Bristol-Rhys 2007, 27). 51. Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2011, 166. 52. Hoodfar 1997. 53. A metastudy (Tadmouri et al. 2009) reports that about one-third of all marriages in the MENA are between cousins, although there is wide regional and national variation and data are sometimes unreliable. 54. Rates of consanguineous marriage among Qataris have fluctuated in recent years. A 2004 survey found that 54 percent of all unions were between first or second cousins. Records show that 42 percent of marriages recorded in 2007 were consanguineous. That number jumped to 48.5 percent in 2009, 47 percent in 2010, 38 percent in 2014, and 42 percent in 2016 and 2018 (Bener and Alali 2006; Qatar Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics 2017b; Qatar Statistics Authority 2015, 2010). For Qatari marriages recorded in 2018, 25.46 percent were first cousins, and 16.8 percent were second cousins (Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2019). Survey data of working Qatari adults reported that 35 percent of marriages were first cousins, and 9 percent were second cousins. The survey takers reported a similar split for their parents: 22 percent first cousins and 15 percent second cousins (Sandridge et al. 2010). Data provided by the Qatari government include marriages registered internally and abroad. 55. Sandridge et al. 2010, 61. For modernization and consanguinity, see Al-Arrayed 1999; Applbaum 1995; Fox 1975; Givens and Hirschman 1994; Khlat 1988; Khoury and Massad 1992; Otani 1991; Xiaohe and Whyte 1990; Zang 2008. 56. Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2019. Studies of inner-family marriage report that first cousins are preferred over second cousins (Abbasi-Shavazi et al. 2008; Hussain 1999; Jurdi and Saxena 2003; Shaw 2001).

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287

57. Clarke 2007. Qatari family law forbids marrying a “first degree” relative such as a parent, grandparent, sibling, or offspring. 58. Al-Gazali et al. 1997; Clarke 2007; Hussain 1999; Shaw 2001; Weinreb 2008. 59. Arab nations with strong tribal traditions have higher rates of consanguinity within tribes (Radovanovic, Shah, and Behbehani 1999; Shah 2004). 60. “The scarcity of natural resources led to unification under a shared lineage: Tribal solidarity facilitated control of the scarce resources for which the tribes were competing. Continued control and monopolization of these resources required continuing tribal solidarity—complete loyalty to the tribe and the identity it represented. Thus there was a pressing need for intermarriage within the line of descent. Marriage between relatives therefore became more common, came to be regarded as mandatory, and was endowed with a spiritual and ethical value, even though its basis was the economic motive of seeking to preserve the family’s or tribe’s resources and to keep them from being transferred to competing tribes” (Al-Ghanim 2012, 342). 61. Bener and Alali 2006, 244. 62. Al-Ghanim 2010, 249. For Qataris, marriage is built on the notion of “maintaining lineages and hereditary traits while preserving genealogy through intermarriage between the individuals of one tribe” (Al-Ghanim 2012, 344). 63. Cooke 2014. 64. Al-Ghanim 2012, 346. 65. The Ajam are an ethnic group of Persian descent that formed a merchant class in preoil Qatar. Today, the term Ajam indexes Persians or Persian speakers. The Hula are an ethnic group of Iranian descent (Potter 2016; Nagy 2006). 66. Qatar’s legal code requires that husbands permit wives to finish their schooling, “provided that this shall not conflict with her family duties” (Qatar Law of the Family, Article 68; Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan.qa). By law, Qatari men can marry up to four wives. In practice, polygamy is rare but not obsolete. For marriages recorded in 2018, nearly 91 percent of Qatari males had just one wife. About 8 percent of Qatari males getting married in 2018 already had another wife; less than 1 percent were already married to two or three females (Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2019). Article 57 of the Qatar Law of the Family states that a wife has the legal right to “equal treatment to the other wives in the case of polygamy.” Article 61 states that a man cannot force two wives to live in the same household without their (revocable) consent (Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan.qa). 67. The Qatari government requires all couples getting married to fill out a “marriage contract” form with basic information such as name and date of birth. This “contract,” analogous to a marriage license in the United States, is distinct from a milca. In 2001, 76.5 percent of Qatari men and 84.2 percent of Qatari women signed milcas when registering for marriage (Qatar Statistics Authority 2012). The Qatari government no longer provides data about milcas in its annual marriage and divorce report.

288

| Notes

68. See Bristol-Rhys 2007. Payments of this type predate historical marital records and are still prevalent in societies around the world. Some people distinguish a dowry from a mahr, because dowries are typically paid to parents, whereas a mahr is paid to the bride. In practice, mahrs are sometimes paid to families or are used to cover wedding-related expenses. Thus, I use the terms mahr and dowry interchangeably in this book, reflecting the use of these terms in Qatar. 69. Bristol-Rhys 2007, 22. 70. Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan.qa. 71. Bristol-Rhys 2007. 72. Qatar Law of the Family, Article 56 (Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan.qa). 73. A mahr is due at the time the marriage contract is signed, but in practice it is sometimes made in installments, some of which are paid after the couple is married. “The wife may refuse to consummate marriage until dowry is paid. However if the wife agrees to copulate with her husband before receiving the dowry, it becomes a debt upon the husband” (Qatar Law of the Family, Article 40; Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan.qa). 74. Divorces among Qataris follow patterns similar to marital rates. In 2016, 64 percent of divorces took place among unrelated couples, while first cousins accounted for 20 percent of divorces and second cousins 16 percent (Qatar Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics 2017b). 75. Bristol-Rhys 2007, 24. 76. Bristol-Rhys 2007, 30. 77. In India, the size and cost of wedding ceremonies are forms of conspicuous consumption used to signal status (Bloch, Rao, and Desai 2004). 78. Bristol-Rhys 2007, 26. 79. Menon 2016; Bristol-Rhys 2007. 80. Menon 2016. 81. Pivac 2015. 82. Qatar Law of the Family, Articles 46, 57, and 61 (Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan .qa). The husband is not obligated to pay these expenses if a woman is unwilling to consummate the marriage. 83. Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2011, 171. 84. Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2018, 220. 85. Doha Bank, n.d. 86. Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan.qa; Lindner et al. 2007. 87. Article 18 states, “The notary may not refuse the authentification of the contract as a result of the medical examination if the parties so desire” (Qatar Legal Portal, www.almeezan.qa). 88. Qatar Statistics Authority 2015. 89. Giddens 1992; Drigotas and Rusbult 1992; Cherlin 2004. 90. Cherlin 2004. 91. Doha International Family Institute, n.d. 92. Alharahsheh, Mohieddin, and Almeer 2015.

Notes

| 289

93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

Alharahsheh, Mohieddin, and Almeer 2015. Bristol-Rhys 2007. Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2018, 226. Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2018, 225. Alharahsheh, Mohieddin, and Almeer 2015. In 2018, there were 2,184 marriages involving a Qatari husband. Of these, 1,902 wives were Qatari, 150 were from a Gulf country, and 90 were from a non-Gulf Arab country. Asia and European nations accounted for most of the remainder (Qatar Planning and Statistics Authority 2019, 13). 99. Alharahsheh, Mohieddin, and Almeer 2015.

Chapter 6. Expats and Workers 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Nagy 1998. Nagy 2006, 128. Zahlan 1979. Cooke 2014. Lori 2012; Nagy 2006. Daloz 2009, 105–8. White clothing is sometimes thought to be an indicator of higher standing, such as the distinction between white- and blue-collar jobs. “In many societies, scrupulously dirt-free clothes have been an imperative means of validating status, in sharp contrast with the bulk of the population.” Immaculate, light-colored clothing such as the white thobes signals that the wearers are sophisticates who “pay visits to undirtied places only” (Daloz 2009, 66). Oishi 2015. US Department of State 2015. Gardner et al. 2013. Harkness and Levitt 2017. Mimiz Blog 2010. Molotch 2019. Nagy 2006. Azzali 2015, 303. Nagy 2006. Nagy 2006. Furlan and Petruccioli 2016. The bulk of Qataris’ private interactions with expatriates are with the low-wage domestic servants who live in their household (Nagy 1998). Nagy 1998, 85. Lori 2017, 744. Harkness and Levitt 2017, 241. FIFA 2010. Beydoun and Baum 2012. Kaphle 2013a.

290

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48.

| Notes

Kaphle 2013b. I Love Qatar 2009. I Love Qatar 2009. Harkness and Levitt 2017, 234. Miller-Idriss and Hanauer 2011. Nagy 1998, 85. Nagy 2006, 122. Lori 2012. Nagy 2006, 128. Rhys 2010. Aziz and Hussain 2014; Liew 2017; Conn 2017. Qatar Ministry of Interior, n.d.-a. Global Slavery Index, n.d. Under the sponsorship labor arrangement, professional-class expatriates who sign contracts to work in Qatar become the legal “sponsors” of their trailing spouses and dependent children. This means they assume legal and financial responsibility for them. The degree to which noncitizens can reside in Qatar with their families is stratified across the labor force by nationality and occupation; skilled professionals are generally able to bring family members, whose relocation expenses, housing, and schooling are subsidized by employers. Low-wage foreign workers rarely bring spouses and children with them. Gardner et al. 2013. These discrepancies may generate or reinforce ideas about nationality and social worth. They stem from differences in the accords signed by Qatar and various sending nations. For example, the Filipino government has been relatively proactive in contractually protecting its citizens from economic and physical exploitation while working abroad. As a result, in Qatar, low-wage Filipino workers are paid more than, for example, low-wage workers from Nepal, whose government has fewer resources to insulate its overseas workers. An unintended consequence of this system is that Qatari employers will replace entire fleets staffed by Filipino and other higher-paid nationalities with lower-paid Nepalis (Gardner et al. 2013). Transnational workers in Qatar are prohibited from joining or forming workplace unions. Lori 2012. Gardner et al. 2013. Keh 2018. Gardner et al. 2013. Some workers from countries such as Egypt and the Philippines believe salary discrepancies are justified because most of the money is remitted back home, where their relatives experience higher costs of living than families living in Nepal or Bangladesh do. Gardner et al. 2013, 13. Rhys 2010. Nagy 1998.

Notes

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

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Nagy 2006, 124. Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2011, 162. Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2008, 7. Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2011, 15. Nagy 1998. Quoted in Paschyn 2012, 19. Andrew Gardner (2010) has conducted extensive ethnographic research on labor camps in Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, and other MENA territories. He points out, “These camps are recognized by unskilled transnational laborers as the best potential accommodations they might encounter while in the Gulf, for these large camps typically provide a constellation of amenities not always available in other types of camps, including air conditioning, a canteen/cafeteria, secure water sources, constant electricity, or recreational facilities” (55). This is reflected in survey data: only a handful of workers report insufficient supplies of water, electricity, and air-conditioning (Gardner et al. 2013). Gardner et al. 2013. Amnesty International 2014. Workers do not always perceive contractual alterations to be negative. One study finds that workers whose positions or pay are changed report higher levels of overall satisfaction than those whose contracts match their experiences (Gardner et al. 2013). Furthermore, many workers are aware that the terms of their contracts will change—they agree in advance to work at lower rates or do different jobs. The contracts are written so as to satisfy the wage and other requirements of sending nations and are then reduced accordingly once the worker arrives in Qatar. Domestic workers, however, frequently describe contractual changes as unexpected and detrimental (Amnesty International 2014). Gardner et al. 2013. Amnesty International 2014. According to the Qatar Meteorology Department (n.d.), the official temperature has only exceeded forty-nine degrees Celsius twice, both in summer 2010. Since then, the highest recorded temperatures during the hot summer months have remained just below this figure. Islam 2011. Nagy 1998, 99. In 2011, the Wathnan Mall opened, billing itself as Qatar’s first “family-only” mall. Bachelors are barred entry seven days per week from 3:00 p.m. until the mall closes at 1:00 a.m. Wisher 2015. Qatar Ministry of Interior, n.d.-b. Daily Mail 2013. Burke 1984. Jha 2012. Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre, n.d.

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Conclusion

1. Al Otaiba 2017. 2. Harkness and Levitt 2017; Badry and Willoughby 2016; Bogos 2016; Fromherz 2012; Weiner 2008. 3. Cleveland and Bunton 2013, 345. 4. Freedom House, n.d. 5. Doha International Family Institute, n.d., 4. 6. Napieralski 2018. Doha’s Arabic newspapers are said to offer more local news, effectively restricting the audience for that coverage. 7. Redden 2012. 8. Letzter 2013. 9. Amnesty International 2016b. 10. Rashid and El-Deeb 2017. 11. Arab Weekly 2019. 12. Redden 2019. 13. Levitt 2015. 14. Fischer 2019. 15. Baker 2010, 2008; Budgeon 2015; Harris and Dobson 2015; Messner 2011. 16. Bahry and Marr 2005; Felder and Vuollo 2008; Al-Ghanim 2009; Alemadi et al. 2010; James-Hawkins, Qutteina, and Yount 2017; Katzman 2017. 17. Freedom House, n.d. 18. Golkowska 2014. 19. Dorsey 2019. 20. White House 2019. 21. Hubbard 2018. 22. Kalin and Zhdannikov 2019. 23. MacDonald 2019.

Appendix 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

See Harkness and Islam 2011. See Harkness 2015, 2012. See Harkness and Khaled 2014. See Levitt 2015; Harkness and Levitt 2017. Bristol-Rhys 2010, 9.

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Index

a’aib (shameful), 141–42, 282n47 abayas (cloaks), 2, 17, 50–51, 91–92; adornment of, 136–37, 137, 281n38; with belts, 152, 283n62; citizenship shown by, 125–28, 279n5; expatriates avoiding, 133; as modern reinvention, 136, 281n37; modern traditionalism and designer, 151, 154; as national uniform, 137; online shopping for, 137–38; people interactions influencing, 152–53; policing of, 141–42, 152–53, 282n45; Qatari women social requirement as, 9, 138–41, 261n34, 282n42, 282n46; shaylas with, 9, 133, 136–41, 153–54, 261n34, 281n37, 282n42, 282n46; shopping malls for wearing, 137–38; as zipped or not, 152 Abu Dhabi, 70, 77 Africa, 64, 195–96, 210–13, 268n32 air conditioning: in buses, 190; in homes, 7, 200, 215; laborers and, 216–17, 219, 291n55, 291n61; Qataris and government-paid, 197; in shopping malls, 6, 19, 124, 217, 279n3; in stadiums, 97 Al Ajami, Mohammed, 31, 264n23 Arabian Gulf: Arabs from, 41; Bahrain and Hawar Islands of, 69, 269n56; Britain and Qatar borders in, 68; British colonialism in, 66–70, 74, 270n69; characteristics of, 60–61, 61; citizenship and, 194; dialect variations in, 59–60; El Guindi on, 272n108; ethnic groups in, 59; families controlling, 271n76; foreign labor dependence by, 59; as GCC

nationality status, 188, 209, 233, 236, 259n4; hijab resurgence and, 135–36, 281n32; history of, 58–59; oil revenues reliance by, 59, 70; pearl trade of, 63–64, 268n24; on politics, 227–28; port cities of, 62–63; Qatar embargoed in, 1, 69, 233, 235–36; Qatar relationship to, 16, 76; with rulership, 59, 266n3; Souq Waqif as, 56–58, 57, 58; sponsorship labor system for, 42, 45–46, 266n50, 266n55; Suez Canal influence on, 68, 269n50; sultanates and brand of, 75–76; for transportation, 59; tribe formation in, 61–62, 267n12; tribes and marriages in, 188 Arabian Peninsula: families controlling, 271n76; Qatar alignment by, 209 Arabic language, 59–60, 202, 292n6 Arabs: Katara Cultural Village and, 22, 262n1; naturalization for, 271n74; Souq Waqif as, 56–58, 57, 58 architecture: Dubai boom and bust in, 76, 272n94; Al Janoub Stadium construction in, 98, 275nn24–25; Souq Waqif as traditional, 56–58, 57, 58, 266n51; traditions emphasized in, 57, 58, 84, 86, 90; women sports complexes as, 106–7; World Cup stadiums as, 94, 97–98, 275n19, 275nn22–23; of Zubarah, 67, 69, 268n41 Asian Cup (2011), 95, 102 Asian Games (2006), 95 Aspire sports complex, 95, 109, 266n51 Al Ateeq, Saad bin Ateeq, 78–79 auto wraps, 93, 274n5

315

316

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Index

badu. See Bedouin tribes Bahrain: Bani Utub tribe conquering, 268n39; Britain and independence by, 72, 270n69; colonialism for, 66–67, 269n43; constitutional monarchy of, 59, 266n3; Hawar Islands awarded to, 69, 269n56; Iran claiming, 270n69; kafala replaced by, 266n55; Al Khalifas of, 66, 68; oil revenue for, 70, 270n61; pearl trade of, 63–64, 268n24; port cities of, 62–63; Qatar battle with, 66, 68, 269n47; Qatar embargoed by, 1; tourism for, 61 Bani Utub tribe: Bahrain conquered by, 268n39; from Qatar to Kuwait, 66, 268n37 Barcelona, 23, 263n3 beaches, 135, 158, 283n1 Bedouin tribes: as badu, 59, 267n7, 267n14; definition of, 265n44; family units and period of, 13, 18, 171–72, 176, 178; hadar as not, 59, 267n7; as marauding, 268n41; past as, 56, 61–62, 98, 100, 277n64; Qataris including, 40, 265n44; romance of, 83, 98, 100; sports of, 98, 100–101, 276n34; temporary membership in, 266n50. See also tribes boyahs, 166–67, 285nn32–33 brand: clothes uniform for, 127–28; Dubai with, 76; “fake fans” reducing sports, 103; fire and Qatar, 223–24; Al Jazeera for, 272n100, 276n39; modern traditionalism as, 16–17, 78, 85; petrofamilies for Qatar, 126–27; of Qatar, 12–13, 262n44; Qatar and investment friendly, 77–78; religion deemphasized in, 122; slave headlines affecting, 7, 98–99, 275n29; sports for, 97, 275n16; sultanates and national, 75–76 bribery, 98–99, 275n29 bridal jewelry (shabka), 174

Britain: colonialism of, 66–70, 74, 270n69; hijab in London, 150; independence from, 72, 270n69; oil and national boundaries by, 70; Qatar and treaty of, 67, 269n45; Qatar ruler and borders from, 68; Zubarah awarded by, 67, 69 Buddhism, 27 “call to prayer,” 24–25, 25, 263n4 camel racing: Bedouin tribes and, 98, 100–101, 276n34; migrant children in, 100, 276n32; SUVs and robots in, 100–101, 101 Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMUQ), 190 censorship: of Al Ajami, 31, 264n23; expatriate coping as self-, 204; of internet, 29; of media, 228–29; of movies, books, journalism, 28–29; Twitter surveillance and, 31, 264n26 Christianity, 26–27 citizenship: athletes without, 17, 103–4; non-Qatari clothes and, 195, 289n7; oil revenues influencing, 55; Orientalism and, 8, 261n25; “perpetual visitors” versus, 265n48; from pre1930s, 194; Qatar avoidance on, 202–3; Qatari interactions and, 201, 289n19; Qatar National Vision 2030 on, 14, 232; social position and identity from, 194; thobes and abayas showing, 125–28, 279n5; workers and expatriates versus, 225 cloaks. See abayas; thobes clothes: brand and uniform as, 127–28; bridal jewelry and, 174; ghutrahs as, 2, 9, 51, 122, 125–26, 192, 261n34; hijab micropractices in, 18, 141–47, 149–50, 154; Islam shown through, 128; for membership and resistance, 156–57, 283n68; modern and traditional, 272n108; of non-Qataris, 126,

Index

195, 289n7; petrofamilies and Qatar, 126–27; Qataris on expatriate, 130–33; Saudi Arabia on, 280n7; shaylas as, 9, 133, 136–41, 153–54, 261n34, 281n37, 282n42, 282n46; social status by, 124; for sports, 150; standards relaxing on, 130–31; thobe cloaks in, 2, 9, 17, 50–51, 91–92, 125–28, 261n34, 279n5; travel and sports, 150; Western type, 147, 283n56; women in modest, 131–32. See also abayas; hijab CMUQ. See Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar colonialism, 66–67, 269n43 comedians: Bistro 61 audience for, 22–24, 27, 31–32, 49–53, 264n27; cultural failure by, 41–42; culture by, 50; on deportation threat, 30–31, 45; differences worked out by, 54; on driving, 32–34; on expatriates, 32, 50–51; on family life, 29–30; on hierarchy, 40, 45, 53; laws influencing, 22, 31; on “management positions,” 38–39, 265n42; on marijuana smoking, 36; on marriage practices, 37; on nationalities, 23–25, 30, 46–47; passports and permits for, 22; Qatar addressed by, 16; on Qatari power, 51–53; QSUC and spaces for, 21–22; on racial hierarchies, 48–49; taboo topics and, 47–48; Western style for, 50; as women, 48–49 communications, 270n58 consanguineous marriages: family security and, 170–71, 181–83, 286nn53–54, 286nn56, 287n57, 287n59, 288n87; as traditional, 182–83; Western contrasted with, 182–86 conservatism: globalization versus, 89; modern traditionalism assuaging, 89, 274n136; women empowerment versus, 87 corruption, 2, 98–99, 275n29

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covering (hijab), 134, 138–41, 153–54, 280n18, 280n20, 282n46, 282nn41–42 culture: comedy filling out, 50; expatriate training on, 204; hijab and sects in, 144, 282n50; invention of sports, 100–104; modern traditionalism including, 83–84, 84; National Museum in, 75; Qatar preserving, 11–12; women on Qatar, 10–12, 261n40. See also traditions DCMF. See Doha Centre for Media Freedom deportation: politics and fears of, 202–3; threat of, 19, 30–31, 45, 165, 201–2, 204, 216, 238 development: investments and, 2–3, 5, 10, 77–78, 275n15; petrofamilies for, 16; Qatar National Vision 2030 on, 11–12, 229–30; QF and, 4, 23, 37, 87, 203, 236, 263n3, 265n35 DFI. See Doha Film Institute divorce, 176, 187–89, 288n74, 289n98 Doha, 6–7, 88, 260n20; Dubai vying with, 16; pearl trade of, 63–64, 268n24; Qataris, expatriates, labor in, 198; Qataris as strangers and, 129; sports and life in, 102–3, 276n39, 276n41; sports mascot for, 95; Al Thani tribe in, 65–66; “themed” districts of, 266n51; US military base in, 73, 271n74; West Bay of, 34, 43, 198–99, 199, 200 Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF), 228 The Doha Debates, 78, 272n101 Doha Declaration of the Family, 186–87 Doha Film Institute (DFI), 88 Doha News, 228–30 domestic help: exploitation of, 45, 216, 291n57; in Qatari families, 14, 49, 71, 212, 289n19; salaries for, 213; slaves to, 268n32 Dubai, 16, 61, 70, 76–77, 103, 272n94

318

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Index

economy: foreign labor demand in, 71; knowledge economy for, 3–4, 88, 260n9; middle-class in, 14–15, 262n46; oil, gas and half of, 70; Qatar and wealth in, 60–61; Qatar average income and, 2; Qatari women and restrictions on, 155; Qatar lacking taxes in, 268n24; recession for, 70; sports diversifying, 17, 94–95, 275n15; taxes and, 68, 268n24, 269n49; urbanization diversifying, 75 education: affection prohibited by, 161, 284n15; CMUQ in, 190; enlightenment from, 236; gender segregation in, 9, 29, 114, 127, 161, 166; hijab uniform in, 138; Houston Community College and, 4, 260n12; marriage postponed and enhanced by, 160–61, 185–86, 284n12; milca on, 172–73, 287n66; Ministry of Education in, 116; modern traditionalism failing, 231; Moza for, 37, 87, 265n35; public affection prohibited in, 161, 284n15; Qatari student power in, 202; QF transforming, 4, 260n9; QF urban legends on, 203; QU with conservative, 161–62, 284nn16–17; tolerant generation from, 233–35; traditions and children in, 127; UCLQ ceasing operations in, 229–30; women in, 86–87 Education City, 236; boyahs at, 166–67, 285nn32–33; homosexuality acknowledged at, 166; international universities in, 4, 260n11; mixed-gender environment at, 4, 161, 260n11; Qatari self-segregation at, 201; as “themed” district, 266n51 El Guindi, Fadwa, 272n108 embargo, 1, 69, 233, 235–36 Emirates airline, 76, 271n33 English language, 24 Etihad airline, 271n33

expatriate professionals: abaya and shayla avoided by, 133; apartments for, 198–200; benefits for, 196; on “call to prayer,” 24–25, 25, 263n4; in central Doha, 198; changes among, 32; citizens versus, 225; comedians for Qataris and, 32, 50–51; commitment lack from, 206–7; contract responsibility for, 211, 215–16, 290n39; coping strategies of, 204; cultural-sensitivity training for, 204; dating among, 158–59; deportation threat on, 19, 45, 165, 201–2, 204, 216, 238; as disposable, 223–24; globalization enjoyed by, 196–97; on immigrant population, 237; kafala and, 42, 45–46, 266n50, 266n55; on laborers treatment, 218–20; limited permanent residency for, 45–46; mistreatment of, 44–45; modern traditionalism failing, 231; as non- Qatari, 194–95; as outsiders, 200–201; as professional-class, 19, 22; as Qatar-aligned insiders, 209–10; Qatari lumped as, 129; on Qataris, 220; Qataris insulated from, 19; Qataris on clothes and, 130–33; Qataris on lifestyle and, 197; Qataris rejecting, 205; Qatar National Vision 2030 on, 213; Ramadan and, 52, 277n64; service by, 205–6; of Southeast Asia, 23; stratification of, 18–19, 195; travel and exit-visa for, 44–45; unions disallowed to, 290n40; wealth and poverty of, 5–6; from Western nations, 195; women to men ratio and, 60; workers versus, 210. See also foreign labor familial reputation: abayas policed for, 141–42, 152–53, 282n45; dating and, 18, 158, 162–64, 263n6; hijab judgment for, 142–44, 282n49; hijab public and private in, 147–48; marriage practices and, 163–64, 284n23; women

Index

and, 113–16, 121–22, 140, 142–44, 160, 163–64, 166, 175, 277nn66–67, 278n70, 278n76 Family Day, 217–18 family security: comedians on, 29–30; consanguineous marriages and, 170–71, 181–83, 286nn53–54, 286nn56, 287n57, 287n59, 288n87; Doha Declaration of the Family on, 186–87; globalization challenging, 186; marriage and wealth in, 168, 170, 172, 285n44; marriage for, 187–88; nomadic tribes and, 59, 267n7, 267n14; Qatar and wealth in, 60–61; Qatar for, 187–88; shopping malls for, 218, 291n64; youth marriage practices and, 160, 284n11 FIFA World Cup (2022): for branding, 97; foreign labor for, 7, 97, 275n19; Hamad International Airport for, 97, 275n21; Hammam banned and, 274n9; nationbuilding with, 5, 27; Qataris opposed and supportive of, 99–100; rapid transit system for, 97, 275n20; slavery allegations and, 7, 98–99, 275n29; stadium construction for, 94, 97–98, 275n19, 275nn22–23; traffic celebrating, 93–94, 274n5; viewer numbers for, 274n2; world reaction to, 94, 274n7, 274n9 fire, 220–24, 228–30 fitna (social disorder), 159 foreign labor: air conditioning and, 216–17, 219, 291n55, 291n61; Arabian Gulf dependent on, 59, 266n50; brand and “fake fans” as, 103; camp dormitories for, 214–15, 291n55; citizens versus, 225; contract changes for, 215–16, 291n57; contract costs to, 211, 290n40; country sources, 72; dependency on, 5–6, 260n18; deportation threat on, 19, 45, 165, 201–2, 204, 216, 238; as disposable, 223–24; domestic help as, 14, 45, 49, 71, 212–13, 216, 268n19, 289n19,

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291n57; expatriates on treatment and, 218–20; expenditures and demand for, 71; families not joining, 211; growth willingness on, 233; human rights and, 210–11; as immigrant population, 41, 49–50, 237; kafala sponsorship system and, 42, 45–46, 266n50, 266n55; legal system exploiting, 98, 215–16, 218–20; modern traditionalism failing, 230–32; national identity threatened by, 213–14; National shopping and socializing by, 216–17; passports of, 45, 266n56; in poverty, 61; Qatari contract responsibility for, 211, 215–16, 290n39; Qatar National Vision 2030 on, 213; residences banned for, 98; in service, 194–95, 205–6; slavery diminishment and, 68; from South Asia and Africa, 195–96, 210–13; in south Doha, 198; sports teams of, 103–4; stratification of, 18–19, 195; treatment of, 6–7, 213, 218–20, 261n27; unions disallowed to, 290n40; women to men ratio and, 60; work, nationality and wages for, 211, 211–13, 290n45; as workers, 210; for World Cup, 7, 97, 275n19; World Cup slave headlines on, 7, 98–99, 275n29. See also expatriate professionals GCC. See Gulf Cooperation Council gender, 4, 9, 130, 161, 260n11 gender segregation: in education, 9, 29, 114, 127, 161, 166; homosexuality enabled by, 165–66, 285n30; Islam with, 85; in sports, 111–12, 121, 278n78, 279n79; of weddings, 18, 148, 164, 178–80; of women, 146–48, 163–64, 280n18 ghutrahs (head scarves), 2, 9, 51, 122, 125–26, 192, 261n34 globalization, 15, 89, 186, 196–97; modern traditionalism on, 83, 273n113; views on Qatar and, 11, 262n41 Global Slavery Index, 211

320

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Index

El Guindi, Fadwa, 272n108 Guinness Book World Records, 45, 77, 103 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): for the Arab States of the Gulf, 188, 209, 233, 236, 259n4; willingness after embargo and, 1, 69, 233, 235–36 hadar (settled villagers), 59, 267n7 Hamad Bin Khalifa University, 161, 284n15 Hamad International Airport, 97, 275n21 Hammam, Mohamed bin, 274n9 haram (sinful), 91, 141–42, 152, 282n47 Hawar Islands, 69, 269n56 head scarves (ghutrahs), 2, 9, 51, 122, 125–26, 192, 261n34 hierarchy: alignment with, 239; clothes showing, 124; expatriates understanding, 218–20; housing by, 197–98; invented traditions reinforcing, 101–2; jokes on, 40, 45, 53; national uniform for, 128–29; Qatari power in, 40, 45, 53; as racial, 39–40, 48–50; thobes and abayas in, 17; tribes supporting, 73–74, 271n81; Western influence on, 41 hijab: accessories individualizing, 152, 283n62; comfort and concealment, 143–44, 282n48; as decision, 138–40, 282nn41–42; education and uniform of, 138; familial reputation and, 142–43; international freedom from, 149; on Islam, 134, 145, 280n18, 280n20; judgment over no, 144, 282n49; MENA with bans and, 134–35, 281n28; micropractices in, 18, 141–47, 149–50, 154; Moza changing, 156; for national identity, 156–57, 283n68; by occasions, 151; path to wearing, 140–41, 282n46; public and private dichotomy in, 147–48; Qatar women legal requirement on, 134, 280n26; resurgence of, 135–36, 281n32; sects and culture in, 144, 282n50;

stores for, 140–41, 145, 283n52; time and change on, 144–45; as traditional taboo, 135 hijab (covering), 134, 138–41, 153–54, 280n18, 280n20, 282n46, 282nn41–42 hijab micropractices, 18, 141–44; marital suitors and, 146; as MENA country specific, 149; no males present in, 146–47; reasons for, 154; tradition versus modernity for, 145–46; for Western influences, 149–50 Hinduism, 27 homosexuality: as acknowledged, 166; boyahs and, 166–67, 285nn32–33; enabling of, 165–66, 285n30, 285n35; from gender segregation, 165–66, 285n30; legal system on, 165; marriage practices and, 167–68, 285n35; modern traditionalism failing, 231; Moza on, 165; same sex hand holding and, 165, 285n29; students supporting, 234 housing, 98, 197–200; air conditioning in, 7, 200, 215; foreign labor dormitories as, 214–15, 291n55 Houston Community College, 4, 260n12 human rights: camel racing with children and, 100, 276n32; international criticism on, 98–99, 275n29; legal system and, 227; modern traditionalism for, 88; Qatar on workers and, 210–11; Qatar record on, 2, 259n2; Al Thani, T., and, 1–2, 227 immigrant population, 41, 49–50, 237 India, 288n77 international opinion: “fake fans” upbraided by, 103; FIFA World Cup (2022) and, 94, 274n7, 274n9; hijab freedom and, 149; hijab micropractices in, 149–50; on liquor and Qatar, 98–99, 275n29; on Qatar and terrorism, 2, 227, 259n2; Qatar globalization and, 11, 262n41; Qatar response to, 99;

Index

slave headlines as, 7, 98–99, 275n29; on sports fan safety, 98–99, 275n29 invented traditions, 74–75, 86, 93–123, 136, 232–33, 281n37 investments, 2–3, 5, 10, 77–78, 275n15. See also development Iran, 26, 62–63, 208–9, 270n69 Iraq, 72–73 Islam: brand and deemphasizing, 122; call to prayer and, 24–25, 25, 263n4; clothes showing, 128; college and conservative, 161–62, 284nn16–17; dating and, 159–60; fitna and dating as, 159; gender segregation in, 85; haram sin in, 91, 141, 152, 282n47; hijab and, 134, 145, 280n18, 280n20; identity retained by women, 150; liquor banned under, 26–28, 263n5, 264n12; marriage courting in, 175–76, 288n73; MIA and art of, 85, 86; petrofamilies and, 226; Qatar National Vision 2030 on, 82, 272n112; Quran and, 134, 280n20; shaylas and hair coverage in, 153–54; sports segregation for, 118–21, 278n78, 279nn79–81; as Wahhabi, 26, 60, 78–79, 263n8; women sports with, 113–16, 121–22, 277nn66–67, 278n70, 278n76 Al Janoub Stadium, 98, 275nn24–25 Al Jazeera media network, 5, 78, 260n14, 272n100, 276n39 kafala (sponsorship system), 42, 45–46, 266n50, 266n55 Katara Cultural Village, 22, 158, 262n1, 266n51, 283n1 Al Khalifas, 66, 68, 270n57 knowledge economy, 3–4, 88, 260n9. See also education Kuwait: Bani Utub tribe to, 66, 268n37; colonialism for, 66–67, 269n43; constitutional monarchy of, 59, 266n3;

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321

labor regulations of, 266n50; oil urbanization in, 72; Operation Desert Shield and Storm for, 72–73; pearl trade of, 63–64, 268n24, 268n29 Labor City, 98 land ownership, 198 languages, 59–60, 202 legal system: comedians in, 22, 31; dating and marriage in, 18, 158–59, 162–64, 169, 173, 180, 182, 263n6, 286n45, 286n50, 287n57, 287n66, 288n73, 288n82; fire and, 222–24; foreign labor contracts under, 215–16, 291n57; foreign labor costs and, 211, 290n40; gender beliefs in, 9; growth willingness on, 233; hijab in, 134, 280n26; on homosexuality, 165; human rights and, 227; labor sponsorship in, 42, 45–46, 266n50, 266n55; on land ownership, 198; on liquor, 26–28, 263n5, 264n12; marriage legal age in, 169, 286nn45–47; racial hierarchies and, 49–50; as sharia, 26, 135–36, 259n1, 263n56, 269n49; unions disallowed in, 290n40; worker exploitation and, 98, 215–16, 218–20 liquor, 36, 98–99, 275n29; Qatar banning, 26–28, 263n5, 264n12 mahr (payment series), 173–74, 183, 288n68, 288n73 majlis (semipublic reception rooms), 147 Al Maktoums, 76 marriage agreement (milca), 172–76, 183, 288n68, 288n73 marriage contract, 173, 287n67 marriage practices: arranged and status quo in, 169–70, 286n50; comedian on, 37; as consanguineous, 170–71, 181–83, 286nn53–54, 286nn56, 287n57, 287n59, 288n87; contract at wedding and, 173, 287n67; courting in, 175–76, 288n73;

322

| Index

marriage practices (cont.) dating and, 18, 158–59, 162–64, 169, 173, 180, 182, 263n6, 286n45, 286n50, 287n57, 287n66, 288n73, 288n82; divorce in, 176, 288n74; education enhancing and postponing, 160–61, 185–86, 284n12; education prohibiting affection and, 161, 284n15; family status from, 163–64, 284n23; family wealth in, 168, 170, 172, 285n44; fitna as Muslim dating, 159; gender segregation of weddings and, 18, 148, 164, 178–80; on genetic disorders, 182, 288n87; Gulf and tribe, 188; hijab in, 148–49, 283n57; hijab micropractices and, 146; homosexuality and, 167–68, 285n35; Islam and, 159–60; legal age for, 169, 286nn45–47; marriage subsidies in, 169, 285n44; milca and polygamy in, 172–73, 287n66; in modern traditionalism, 187; non-Qatari and divorce, 187–89, 289n98; non-Qatari and Qatari in, 187–89, 289n98; polygamy and, 172–73, 287n66; popular months for, 148, 283n58; public holding hands and, 158–59; Qatari women and essential, 163–64, 284n23; sex after, 175–76, 288n73; shabka and bride in, 174; social media for, 162–63; sports and women in, 116–17, 278n77; tribal discrimination in, 172, 287n65; tribes and, 171–72, 287n60, 287n62; wedding ceremony and costs in, 176–81, 288n82; by youths, 160, 284n11 Mayassa, Sheikha, 87, 229–30 media, 228–30, 292n6 Media City, 77 men, 60, 146–47 MENA. See Middle East and North Africa MIA. See Museum of Islamic Art middle-class, 14–15, 262n46 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 2, 134–35, 149, 259n4, 272n108, 281n28

milca (marriage agreement), 172–76, 183, 288n68, 288n73 Ministry of Culture, 22, 28–29 Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 116 mixed-gender environment, 4, 161, 260n11 modern traditionalism, 12, 262n43; action strategies in, 81; Al Ateeq as, 79; as brand, 16–17, 78, 85; censorship and crack in, 228–29; conservatism assuaged by, 89, 274n136; culture in, 83–84, 84; designer abayas as, 151, 154; duality and harmony in, 79–81, 272n108; failures of, 230–32; fire disproving, 224; hijab change in, 144–45; for human rights, 88; knowledge economy for, 88; limits of, 19, 74, 227; marriage in, 187; Moza as, 232; for national identity, 225; as not working, 230; Orientalism in, 84–85; petrofamilies for, 16, 226, 232; Qatar dealing with, 13; Qatar elements of, 13, 80; Qataris using, 226; Qatar National Vision 2030 on, 82; Ramadan and, 121; shaylas in, 136, 281n37; sports working with, 121–22; tribes not in, 83, 273n113; tribes reduced by, 225–26; women empowerment in, 86, 154–55. See also clothes; national uniform monarchies, 59, 266n3, 267n8 Moza, Sheikha, 37, 87, 155–56, 165, 232, 265n35 muhajababes, 140–41 Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Mosque, 78–79 Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), 85, 86 Muslim Brotherhood, 1, 259n1 national identity: citizenship and, 194; clothes for, 156–57, 283n68; FIFA World Cup (2022) for, 5, 27; foreign labor threatening, 213–14; hijab for, 156–57, 283n68; housing by, 198;

Index

modern traditionalism for, 225; naturalization and, 208; Qatari, 40, 58, 194, 198, 207–8; segregation reinforcing, 198; social position from, 194; tribes overtaken by, 102 nationalities, 8, 23–25, 30, 46–47, 200; in foreign labor, 211, 211–13, 290n45; Qataris not meeting, 35, 201, 289n19 National Museum of Qatar, 75 National shopping, 216–17 National Tourism Council, 77 national uniform, 141–42, 282n47; gender and, 130; non-Qataris not wearing, 133; prestige and, 128–29; Al Thanis supported by, 157. See also abayas; thobes nation building, 16–17, 73–78, 94, 96–97 natural gas, 2, 72, 259n6 naturalization, 271n74 nomadic tribes (badu), 59, 267n7, 267n14 non-Qataris: citizenship and clothes of, 195, 289n7; clothes of, 126, 195, 289n7; clothing boundaries for, 130–33; divisions reinforced with, 225; expatriates as, 194–95; insider alignment by, 209–10; Iran lineage downplayed by, 208–9; Qatari differences with, 238–39; Qatari interactions with, 35, 201, 289n19; Qatari marriage with, 187–89, 289n98; Qataris and, 194; sports teams and, 103–4; uniform over, 128–29 oil revenues: in Arabian Gulf countries, 59, 70; Bahrain and, 70, 270n61; citizenship salience after, 55; external communications before, 270n58; families changed by, 13; liquefied natural gas and, 2, 259n6; OPEC collective bargaining on, 71–72; poverty before, 70; Qatar losses on, 3; Qatar modernization from, 71; Qatar on OPEC, 235–36; traffic and gasoline in, 33, 265n30; US purchases for, 72. See also natural gas; petrofamilies

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Olympics, 10, 95, 102 Oman, 59, 62–64, 66–67, 266n3, 268n24, 269n43 online, 137–38, 140–41, 145, 162–64, 228–30, 283n52 OPEC. See Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Operation Desert Shield and Storm, 72–73 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 71–72, 235–36 Orientalism, 8, 64, 84–85, 261n25, 262n43, 268n30 Ottoman empire, 69, 269n54 Palm Jumeirah island, 77 passports, 22, 45, 104, 266n56 payment series (mahr), 173–74, 183, 288n68, 288n73 The Pearl-Qatar, 30, 264n22 pearl trade: African slavery in, 64, 268n32; of Arabian Gulf, 63–64, 268n24; cultured pearls impacting, 69; diving conditions in, 64–65, 268n32; of Kuwait, 63–64, 268n24, 268n29; Qatar and, 6, 63–64, 69, 268n24; Al Thani, M., and Qatar, 64, 268n30; of Zubarah, 66–67, 268n39, 268n41 permanent residency, 45–46, 208 “perpetual visitors,” 265n48 petrofamilies, 13–16, 74–75, 126–27, 226, 232 politics, 59, 97, 202–3, 227–29, 266n3, 275n16 polygamy, 172–73, 287n66 population growth, 169, 285n44 poverty, 5–6, 61, 70 public displays of affection, 26, 125, 158–59, 161, 165, 284n15, 285n29 Qatar: founding myth for, 74–75; Katara, Catara, Guttur, El-Katr as, 262n1; location and maps of, iv, v, 2; population of, 5–7, 260n18, 261n25 Qatar Airways, 271n33

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Qatar Distribution Company (QDC), 27 Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development (QF), 4, 23, 203, 236, 260n9, 263n3; Moza chairing, 37, 87, 265n35 Qatari males: aggressive driving by, 34–35; arranged marriages for, 169–70, 286n50; inside smoking by, 47; marriage legal age for, 169, 286nn45–47; shopping malls and chatting, 125; sports for, 278n73; SUVs of, 93–94, 203, 274n5; thobes and ghutrahs worn by, 2, 9, 125–26, 261n34; visa canceling by, 45. See also Qataris Qatar Investment Authority, 2–3 Qataris: air conditioning paid for, 197; alignment, approximation, and distancing of, 206–7; Arabs from Gulf after, 41; arranged marriages for, 169–70, 286n50; comedians on, 51–53; Doha and strangers as, 129; domestic help for, 14, 49, 71, 212, 289n19; education and self-segregating, 201; entitlements for, 37–39; expatriate clothing policed by, 130–33; expatriate insulation for, 19; on expatriate lifestyle, 197; expatriate professionals on, 220; as expatriates, 129; expatriates rejected by, 205; expatriates treatment by, 218–20; foreign labor insulated from, 18–19; foreign labor responsibility by, 211, 215–16, 290n39; foreign labor treatment by, 6–7, 213, 218–20, 261n27; hierarchical power of, 45, 53; invented traditions reinforcing, 101–2; Iran lineage downplayed by, 208–9; MENAs and hierarchy of, 41; modern traditionalism failing, 230–32; modern traditionalism used by, 226; national identity and, 40, 58, 194, 198, 207–8; noncitizen interactions with, 35, 201, 289n19; non-Qatari differences with, 238–39; non-Qatari

marriage with, 187–89, 289n98; nonQataris and, 194; in north or west Doha, 198; in Olympics museum, 102; for population growth, 169, 285n44; power of students and, 202; soccer not attended by, 102–3, 110–12, 276n41, 277n62; social media use by, 284n20; in sports, 104–7, 277n52; as strangers in Qatar, 129; tolerance among, 234–35; on tradition loss and fear, 10, 100; traditions desire by, 237–38; variation among, 40, 265n44; visa cancel threat by, 45; Wahhabi Islam for, 26, 79, 263n8; World Cup opposition and support by, 99–100, 274n2. See also Qatari males; Qatari women Qatari women: a’aib versus haram for, 141–42, 282n47; abaya and shayla required for, 9, 138–41, 261n34, 282n42, 282n46; arranged marriages for, 169–70, 286n50; black shaylas for, 154; hijab legal requirement and, 134, 280n26; hijab micropractices by, 18, 141–47, 149–50, 154; hijab rejected by, 135; hijab wearing path by, 134, 138–41, 280n18, 280n20, 282n46, 282nn41–42; improved conditions for, 234; international practices for, 149; Islam identity retained by, 150; majlis reception rooms for, 147; marriage essential for, 163–64, 284n23; marriage legal age for, 169, 286nn45–47; on Moza, 156; muhajababes as, 140–41; national uniform constraining, 130; no hijab judgment on, 144, 282n49; obesity and, 107; Olympics and, 10; reputation importance for, 113–16, 121–22, 140, 142–44, 160, 163–64, 166, 175, 277nn66–67, 278n70, 278n76; shabka jewelry for, 174; shopping malls and, 124; socioeconomic restrictions for, 155; sports team recruitment and, 112, 278n65; status as, 122–23; Twitter

Index

clothes campaign by, 132–33; wedding ceremonies for, 176–77; on Western assessments, 155; Western clothes for, 147, 283n56 Qatarization policies, 37–39 Qatar National Vision 2030: on Arab and Islam, 82, 272n112; for citizens, 14, 232; development and culture in, 11–12, 229–30; on expatriate workers, 213; modernization and preservation in, 82; petrofamilies responsibility for, 14; petroleum wealth and, 3; on tribes, 83, 273n114; US, China, Europe, Russia, India connections and, 235; view ahead, 235–37; for women, 86, 88 Qatar Olympics Committee (QOC), 95 Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), 275n15 Qatar University (QU), 161–62, 166–67, 284nn16–17, 285nn32–33 Qatar Women’s Sports Committee (QWSC), 106 QDC. See Qatar Distribution Company QF. See Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development QOC. See Qatar Olympics Committee QSI. See Qatar Sports Investments QSUC. See Qatar Stand-Up Comedy QU. See Qatar University Quran, 134, 280n20 QWSC. See Qatar Women’s Sports Committee Ramadan: expatriates during, 52, 277n64; modern traditionalism and, 121; religious holiday of, 26; sports and, 110–11, 121, 277nn63–64 rapid transit system, 97, 275n20 resistance, 156–57, 204, 226, 283n68 Saudi Arabia: on clothes, 280n7; hijab and, 134; labor regulations of, 266n50; monarchy of, 59, 266n3; Qatar

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embargoed by, 1; Qatar protected by, 270n69; as Wahhabi Islam, 60; women treatment by, 26, 263n7 scarves (shaylas), 133–37, 153–54, 281n28, 281n37; Qatari women requirement as, 9, 138–41, 261n34, 282n42, 282n46. See also abayas semipublic reception rooms (majlis), 147 settled villagers (hadar), 59, 267n7 sex workers, 76–77 shabka (bridal jewelry), 174 shaikhly dynasties, 2, 70–71, 81, 270n64 shameful (a’aib), 141–42, 282n47 sharia law, 26, 135–36, 259n1, 263n56, 269n49 shaylas (scarves): as black, 154; expatriates avoiding, 133; hair and looseness of, 153–54; MENA bans and, 134–35, 281n28; as modern reinvention, 136, 281n37; online shopping for, 137–38; Qatari women requirement as, 9, 138–41, 261n34, 282n42, 282n46; shopping malls for wearing, 137–38. See also abayas sheikhs, 62 shopping malls: abayas and shaylas in, 137–38; air conditioning in, 6, 19, 124, 217, 279n3; Family Day and workers at, 217–18; family-only, 218, 291n64; fire in, 220–24; hijab stores in, 140–41, 145, 283n52; National as, 216–17; Qatari males in, 125; Qatari women and, 124; Villagio Mall as, 124–25 sinful (haram), 91, 141–42, 152, 282n47 slavery, 64–65, 68, 268n32 soccer: introduction of, 93; Qataris not attending, 102–3, 110–12, 276n41, 277n62; QF for, 23, 263n3; women and family for, 113–16, 121–22, 277nn66–67, 278n70, 278n76 social capital (wasta), 105 social disorder (fitna), 159 social media, 162–64, 284n20

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Souq Waqif: as Arab tradition, 56–58, 57, 58; as “themed” district, 266n51; for tourists, 57, 57–58, 58 South Africa, 21, 39–40 South Asia: foreign labor from, 195–96, 210–13; terrorism for labor and, 271n74 sponsorship system (kafala), 42, 45–46, 266n50, 266n55 sports: air conditioning for, 97; Asian Cup (2011) and, 95, 102; Asian Games (2006) and, 95; Aspire district for, 95, 109, 266n51; attendance, 102–3, 110–12, 276n41, 277n62; camel racing in, 98, 100–101, 101, 276n32, 276n34; citizenship not in, 17, 103–4; culture invented, 100–104; diplomacy through, 236; Doha life without, 102–3, 276n39, 276n41; Doha mascot in, 95; economy diversified with, 17, 94–95, 275n15; exhibition matches and, 95, 275n15; falconry, sailing as, 100; fan safety criticism and, 98–99, 275n29; foreign labor and teams of, 103–4; gender segregation in, 111–12, 121, 278n78, 279n79; Al Janoub Stadium for, 98, 275nn24–25; Al Jazeera for Qatar and, 276n39; male-coding of, 278n73; marriage and women in, 116–17, 278n77; Ministry of Education on women and, 116; modern traditionalism and, 121–22, 230–31; passports for, 104; Qataris in, 104–7, 277n52; Qatari women obesity and, 107; Ramadan and, 110–11, 121, 277nn63–64; recruitment for team, 112, 278n65; social capital and recruitment into, 105; stadium construction for, 94, 97–98, 275n19, 275nn22–23; stadiums not for women, 276n41; travel and clothes for, 150; women and Islam segregated, 118–21, 278n78, 279nn79–81; women basketball in, 107–10, 117–21, 277n60, 278n78; women in, 17, 104–7, 277n53; women religious practices and, 113–16,

121–22, 277nn66–67, 278n70, 278n76; World Cup stadiums for, 94, 97–98, 275n19, 275nn22–23. See also soccer Sports City, 77 stadium construction: Al Janoub Stadium in, 98, 275nn24–25; for World Cup, 94, 97–98, 275n19, 275nn22–23 Suez Canal, 68, 269n50 Al-Sulaimi farm, 190–93 surveillance, 31, 264n26 SUVs: auto wraps for, 93, 274n5; camel robots controlled from, 100–101, 101; of male Qataris, 93–94, 203; traffic of, 33–34, 264n29 Syria, 135 taxes, 68, 268n24, 269n49 terrorism, 2, 79, 227, 259n2, 271n74 Al Thani, Abdullah, 74–75 Al Thani, Hamad bin Khalifa, 2, 74–75 Al Thani, Muhammad, 64, 68, 268n30, 269n49 Al Thani, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin, 2, 100, 259n6, 276n32 Al Thani, Sheikh Khalid, 190–93 Al Thani, Tamim bin Hamad, 1–2, 81, 227, 229 Al Thani family: Al Khalifas connections with, 270n57; conflicts balanced by, 82; Al Maktoums versus, 76; modern traditionalism for, 225; national uniform supporting, 157; as omnipotent fathers, 2, 70–71, 81, 270n64; as tribes, 65–66 thobes (cloaks), 17, 50–51, 91–92; citizenship shown by, 125–28, 279n5; ghutrahs with, 2, 9, 51, 122, 125–26, 192, 261n34; Qatari males wearing, 2, 9, 125–26, 261n34; tradition enforced with, 126–27 tourism: for Bahrain, 61; Dubai with, 61, 76; National Council for, 77; Qatar, 5–7, 13, 61; QOC on, 95; Souq Waqif for, 56–58, 57, 58; UAE treatment of, 272n97

Index

traditions: architecture emphasizing, 57, 58, 75, 84, 86, 90; black hijab for, 151; consanguineous marriages as, 170–71, 181–83, 286nn53–54, 286nn56, 287n57, 287n59, 288n87; desire for, 12, 29, 57, 82, 89–90; falconry, sailing, camel racing as, 100; hijab and taboo in, 135; hijab micropractices on, 145–46; invention of, 86, 93–123; loss and fear over, 10, 100; modern traditionalism failing, 230–32; Qatari desire for, 237–38; schoolchildren protecting, 127; shaikhly dynasties in, 2, 70–71, 81, 270n64; Souq Waqif as Arab, 56–58, 57, 58; Al Thani, T., and conservative, 229 traffic: comedians on, 32–34; death from, 34, 265n32; gasoline cost and, 33, 265n30; licenses issued and, 33–34, 264n29; Qatari males in, 34–35; World Cup announcement and, 93–94, 274n5 transportation, 59 travel exit-visa, 44–45 “tribal autocracies,” 266n3 tribes: alliances and, 73–74, 271n81; Al Thani as, 65–66; Arab Gulf formation of, 61–62, 267n12; Arabian Gulf controlled by, 271n76; badu as nomadic, 59, 267n7, 267n14; Bedouin tribes, 13, 18, 40, 56, 59, 61–62, 83, 98, 100, 171–72, 176, 178, 265n44, 266n50, 267n7, 268n41, 276n34, 277n64; consanguineous marriages and, 170–71, 181–83, 286nn53–54, 286nn56, 287n57, 287n59, 288n87; El Guindi on, 272n108; Gulf and marriages in, 188; leadership contest in, 62; marriage and discrimination among, 172, 287n65; marriages within, 171–72, 287n60, 287n62; modern traditionalism on, 83, 273n113; modern traditionalism reducing, 225–26; national identity overtaking, 102; as nomadic, 59, 267n7, 267n14; petrofamilies versus rural, 14–15; Qatar

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National Vision 2030 on, 83, 273n114; settled villagers and, 59, 267n7; “tribal autocracies” in, 266n3; women sports with, 113–16, 121–22, 277nn66–67, 278n70, 278n76 Trump, Donald, 235, 259n1 Twitter, 31, 264n26 UAE. See United Arab Emirates UCLQ. See University College of London Qatar United Arab Emirates (UAE): Abu Dhabi of, 70, 77; Britain and independence by, 72, 270n69; Dubai of, 76; monarchies of, 59, 266n3, 267n8; pearl trade of, 63–64, 268n24; port cities of, 62–63; Qatar embargoed by, 1; tourist treatment by, 272n97; women treatment by, 26 United States (US): as ally, 235; Doha and military base of, 73, 271n74; FIFA World Cup (2022) reaction by, 94, 274n7, 274n9; Operation Desert Shield and Storm by, 72–73; Qatar oil purchased by, 72; Qatar with military base and, 4–5 University College of London Qatar (UCLQ), 229–30 urbanization, 72, 75–76 US. See United States Villagio Mall, 124–25, 220–24 Wahhabi Islam: Al Ateeq and, 78–79; Qataris subscribing to, 26, 79, 263n8; Saudi Arabia and Qatar as, 60 wasta (social capital), 105 weddings: bridal jewelry and, 174; contracts at, 173, 287n67; costs of, 176–81, 288n82; gender segregation of, 18, 148, 164, 178–80; hijab at, 148–49, 283n57; popular months for, 148, 283n58; Qatari bride pressure at, 176–77

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Index

West Bay, 34, 43, 198–99, 199, 200 Western influences: clothes of, 147, 283n56; comedy under, 50; consanguineous marriages contrasted with, 182–86; Education City with, 4, 260n11; expatriate professionals with, 195; hierarchy and white or nonwhite, 41; hijab and negative reactions in, 149–50; London different from, 150; Qatar influencing, 238; Qatar women on assessments and, 155; unwelcome courtship, 164 women: basketball team of, 107–10, 117–21, 277n60, 278n78; boyahs as lesbian, 166–67, 285nn32–33; clothing modesty for, 131–32; comedians as, 48–49; conservatism versus empowerment of, 87; covering decision by, 134, 138–41, 153–54, 280n18, 280n20, 282n46, 282nn41–42; empowerment of, 86, 154–55; “faceless Facebook” for, 164; gains for, 234; gender segregation of, 146–48, 163–64, 280n18; hijab comfort for, 143–44, 282n48; Iran, UAE treatment of, 26; Islam and sports segregation by, 118–21,

278n78, 279nn79–81; majlis reception rooms for, 147; marriage on sports and, 116–17, 278n77; men ratio to, 60; MIA on, 85; Ministry of Education on sports and, 116; modern traditionalism failing, 231; Qatar challenged by, 122; on Qatar culture, 10–12, 261n40; on Qatari status, 122–23; Qatar National Vision 2030 on, 86, 88; QWSC for, 106; reputation concerns for, 113–16, 121–22, 140, 142–44, 160, 163–64, 166, 175, 277nn66–67, 278n70, 278n76; Saudi Arabia on attire and, 280n7; Saudi Arabia treatment of, 26, 263n7; schools with, 86–87; sphere for, 9; in sports, 17, 104–7, 277n53; sports stadiums not for, 276n41; treatment of, 7–8, 10; as working, 87, 273n128 working conditions: milca on wife and, 172–73, 287n66; for Qataris, 37–39; short-term contracts influencing, 205–6; women and, 87, 273n128 Zubarah: as archeological site, 67, 69, 268n41; pearl trade of, 66–67, 268n39, 268n41; Qatar awarded, 67, 69

About the Author

Geoff Harkness is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rhode Island College.

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