Marjorie in Qatar

Starting May 1, it's going to get a whole lot more difficult to visit Qatar.

Until now, tourists from "affluent countries" could just fly to Qatar and buy a tourist visa on the spot. Now, Qatar will only issue you a visa on arrival if YOUR country issues QATARIS visas on arrival. So, starting May 1 (happily, three days after my in-laws arrive), Westerners will have to send their passports in to the Qatari embassy in their home country before they can fly here.

This is part of Qatar's new "reciprocity" kick. A few months ago they switched to a reciprocity system for driver's licenses: American licenses can't be automatically converted to Qatari ones, because the US doesn't automatically convert Qatari licenses. However, having to retake a driving exam is a pretty minor inconvenience that only affects people moving her long-term. But requiring all tourists to get a visa in advance? That just seems like a good way to ensure that no Westerner will ever visit Qatar.

I actually entered Qatar on a tourist visa once. When I moved here, my visa and other permanent residency documents were all issued under an incorrect name. For three years nobody cared, but then one day, as I was flying home from Gabon, an immigration officer noticed. She invalidated my visa on the spot, and I had to buy a tourist visa and then go through the entire immigration process over again. It's alarming to think that if something like that happened after May 1, I would be stranded in the Doha airport.

I'll be interested to see if they actually implement this new law, and if so how long it stays in place. This seems so self-evidently counter to Qatar's own national interests, it's hard to believe they'll really follow through with it.

Then again, it is part of a definite trend: customs has started scrutinizing books being imported, I've heard a few stories in the last year of women being officially told off for wearing provocative clothes, etc. Are conservative forces starting to exert more influence on Qatari politics? Is a move to limit European/American tourism actually intentional? Or is this just a bit of political grandstanding with unintended side effects?

UPDATE: The Qatari government web portal has just been updated to show that citizens of the 33 "affluent" countries can now request tourist visas ONLINE before they travel, and have them approved/rejected on the spot. So, this is much, much less of an inconvenience than the Gulf Times article suggested.

I suspect everyone reading this already supports health care reform. But in case you don't, you should read underpope's blog entry about how the health care decisions he was forced to make while uninsured have damaged his long-term health.

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — President Barack Obama on Tuesday chose an Arabic satellite TV network for his first formal television interview as president, delivering a message to the Muslim world that "Americans are not your enemy."

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- ... The president also has pledged to address the Muslim world from a Muslim capital in the first 100 days of his administration. No location has been announced.

PLEASE BE DOHA PLEASE BE DOHA PLEASE BE DOHA.

"And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world -- our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand."

I was very pleased to hear from a coworker that the speech was as eloquent and moving in Arabic as in English. I hope many people hear it!

(Update: College friends in Zimbabwe put it well: "It’s like everybody just simultaneously won the World Cup.")

نعم سنستطيع (Yes we can!)

McCain supporter: "I can't trust Obama. I have read about him, and he's not, he's not, he's, uh, um, he's an Arab."
McCain: "No ma'am, no ma'am, he's a decent family man citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on, on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about."

We've all read about this exchange since it happened a couple weeks ago, but a conversation in the ARC yesterday made me reflect that I should post about it from the vantage point of Qatar.

I'm glad McCain confronted this ignorant woman and tried to set a respectful tone, even if his other actions (both before and since) give the lie to this supposed respect. But think about that exchange from the point of an Arab American, or an Arab here in the Middle East:

"He's an Arab."
"No ma'am, no ma'am, he's a decent family man citizen."

On what planet is "decent family man citizen" (let's pretend that really is a noun) an antonym for "Arab"? What does it tell us about McCain that he thinks that the statement "he's a decent man" is a cogent counterargument to the statement "he's an Arab"?

I am saddened by the picture of the U.S. that emerges from this election. I'm sad that our students hear the ignorance of Americans claiming Obama's an Arab and/or a Muslim, but even more sad that they hear the fear those claims engender. I'm sad they hear the candidates denying the veracity of those claims without addressing the underlying fear. I'm embarrassed that my African coworker has to learn what the Bradley effect is, and has to read quotes from Pennsylvania voters calling Obama a nigger.

As Colin Powell just said, "Those kinds of images going out on al Jazeera are killing us around the world." It's not a metaphor. Since 9/11 the U.S. seems to be doing everything it possibly can to convince people around the world that we hate and fear those with different skin color and religious beliefs. It makes me ashamed of America. And it makes us not just less respected in the world, but less safe as well.

I'll close on a more positive note, with more of Colin Powell's words as he endorsed Obama:

I’m also troubled by what members of the party say, and is permitted to be said, such things as, 'Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well, the correct answer is, 'He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian, he’s always been a Christian.'

But the really right answer is, 'What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?'

The answer’s 'No, that’s not America.'"

In case you are living under a rock, the investigatory panel in Alaska concluded that Sarah Palin did abuse her power to try to get her brother-in-law fired, and that she broke state ethics laws to boot. Maverick reformer my ass.

The best part of this story is a quote from Alaskan state senator Gary Stevens (R), who said: "I think there are some problems in this report. I would encourage people to be very cautious, to look at this with a jaundiced eye."

I think Stevens meant to say "with a critical eye" or perhaps "with a skeptical eye." Looking at things with a jaundiced eye doesn't mean taking with them with a grain of salt; it means seeing them through the lens of your own prejudice instead of seeing them as they really are.

Or then again, maybe he did mean "with a jaundiced eye."

Sometimes, as an ex-pat, I kind of romanticize the U.S., and particularly American democracy. So I'm glad I read today's Tribune-Review over breakfast, to remind myself that I live in an ivory tower.

The first article I read quoted the webmaster of clintons4mccain.com as saying that she would never vote for Obama, because he has never conclusively proved that he isn't secretly a Muslim. The very next article alleged that Obama has -- are you ready for this? -- secret ties to the Communist party.

I then finished breakfast and left the paper behind, but I have to imagine that the next article would have uncovered the shocking truth that Obama is a secret Nazi.

On the plane on the way home, I read a riveting book called Inside the Jihad. This is the memoir of an anonymous Muslim who, according to the book, was involved with the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armé, became an informant for the French secret service, and ultimately trained at Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in the 90s.

The book reads like a spy thriller, and I don't imagine there's any way to verify how true it is, but it was a really worthwhile read. I was fascinated by the author's ambivalence: on the one hand, he is seeking to destroy these jihadist groups because he believes their tactics are un-Islamic and wrong. On the other hand, it's clear that his sympathies are with them, and indeed if Al Qaeda had asked him to go make his jihad in Chechnya, he would have gone. Reading about a European Muslim's love/hate relationship with armed jihad made for fascinating reading.

Equally fascinating was the jihadists' rhetoric. As the introduction points out, none of the mujahidin in the book "hate us for our freedom." Our freedoms pass entirely unmentioned, as do even the moral depravities the Muslim world tends to find most off-putting about the West. Rather, the mujahidin's rationale is entirely that specific foreign policies of the Western countries (US support of Israel, Russian domination of Chechnya, widespread lack of concern about Bosnia, etc.) add up to an outright assault on Islam, thus warranting a defensive jihad. This isn't news, of course, but it's interesting to hear that rhetoric in a first-person account.

Related to this is a sentiment I've heard even here in Doha: a deep-seated sense of humiliation that the Muslim umma, which used to be and ought to be the preeminent civilization on Earth, has fallen into such a state of decay that it can be bullied by infidels. The author's sense of shame that the mujahidin need to use their enemies' weapons (Uzis) is palpable. And this feeds into the rhetoric above: Muslim civilization ought to be the finest on earth, but it has been robbed of its rightful place by enemies without and within. This helped me understand how the mujahidin -- who obviously know the Qur'an well enough to know that an offensive war cannot be Islamic -- can come to believe that they are protecting the Muslim homeland from what amounts to one more in an endless series of crusades to stamp out the true faith.

A final fascinating point is that the author trained under Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, whose intelligence (extracted by torture) was what convinced the U.S. government that Saddam Hussein supported Al Qaeda. The author's accounts of al-Libi's views on Saddam and Iraq provide a lot of insight into what might have motivated him to spread that disinformation.

Obama! He won the Democrats Abroad primary by a 2:1 margin. Yay! Intriguingly, since our delegates only get half votes, that means he gained 2.5 delegates to Clinton's 2. I love that there are half votes.

Over here you can see the breakdown of votes by country. Here in Qatar, a whopping 13 Democrats voted. That's not as bad as it sounds, since presumably a lot voted in their states' primaries. It could be worse, though: only one person each voted in Oman and Yemen, and better yet, they cancelled each other out. Over in Saudi, 4% of the vote (that's one person) went to Kucinich! Strange to think of Kucinich gaining votes in Saudi.

( Political quiz )

Not too surprising.