Muslims ‘dehumanised’ says Qatar’s Shaikha Mouza

Shaikha Mouza Bint Nasser, chairperson of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), has warned that the application of double standards and dodging collective responsibility are dehumanising Muslims.
“Why do Muslim lives matter less than the lives of others, if they matter at all?” Shaikha Mouza, the mother of Qatar’s emir, Shaikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, asked as she delivered a keynote speech at the opening of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College Oxford, touching on the current relationship between the Middle East and Europe.
She added that “Muslim-phobia” had devalued the lives of Muslims in Europe and America and highlighted a double standard in applying principles of free of speech, human rights and dignity.
She also referred to the growing “fear of real, living Muslims” in Europe and contrasted it with Europe’s curiosity and “respect for the vast and rich architectural, philosophical and historical traditions” of Islam, the Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.
“A Muslim is first and foremost identified as a Muslim, rather than simply a human being. Whether they are Pakistani, Malaysian, Senegalese, or even British-born, their multiple identities are levelled under a constructed monolith of Islam,” she said.
“Let me remind you, however, that Islam has never been monolithical, but has from the start been a vast container for diverse cultures and ethnicities.
The homogenisation of Muslims into a fearful and unknowable ‘other’, separate from the beauty and nobility of Islam and its civilisation, is at the root of Muslim-phobia.”
Referring to the use of language in analysing the rise of militancy, Shaikha Mouza highlighted a blatant discrepancy.
“The word ‘medieval’ is appearing more and more to describe the actions of radicals. But why do we insinuate that somehow those who are perpetuating certain acts of violence do not belong to our age?
That somehow they are not ‘modern’? It is a naive refusal to accept our collective responsibility. Daesh is as modern as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. They are all products of our age,” she said.
One of the most influential and high-profile women in the Arab world, Shaikha Mouza gave fresh examples of the double standards contributing to the dehumanisation of Muslims.
“Why is it that world leaders gathered to march in defence of Charlie Hebdo, while the Chapel Hill murders were shrugged off as a parking dispute?” she asked, referring to the fatal shooting of three Muslim students, Deah Barakat, Yusr Mohammad Abu Salha, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu Salhaby, by their neighbour in North Carolina in February.
“At the same time we are confronted with double standards. Why is it that apologies are offered when Europeans are mistakenly killed by drones, but only silence follows when innocent Yemeni and Muslim children and civilians are killed by the same drones?
Why do Muslim lives seem to matter less than the lives of others? If they matter at all. I believe this dehumanisation is cultivated through a process of Muslim-phobia.”
However, Shaikha Mouza’s diagnosis was not directed only toward the growth of Muslim-phobia in Europe but also toward Muslim countries that practice a type of “Islamophobia from within” by creating fear and suspicion of all things Islamic; in order “to solidify the existing grip on power.”
She connected this “Islamophobia from within” to the vestiges of colonisation and the suppression of the Arab spring.