In addition Total’s oil and Porsche’s cars, the Emir of Qatar is very interested in Western culture. That’s why he financed the creation of a Qatari section at the Bloomsbury publishing house, the “Doha Debates” program aired on the BBC and hosts the Brooking's Institute. Now the Western universities have come into the Islamic Emirate’s sight.

This past summer, Qatar signed an agreement with the Sorbonne in Paris for the enrollment of hundreds of immigrants from the Middle East. Now it has decided that it is shopping time in the best American faculties. The Washington Post explained the project in detail; it involves some of the Ivy League institutions, which Doha is funding so they open university departments in the Arabian desert.


Northwestern University teaches “Journalism and Communication” in the Emirate, a difficult task for a country that knows no freedom of speech and information. Lectures must be really interesting.
The renowned Northwestern University teaches “Journalism and Communication” in the Emirate, a difficult task for a country that knows no freedom of speech and information. Lectures must be really interesting.

Universities such as Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Texas A & M and Virginia Commonwealth have all signed agreements with the Emir Tamim bin Hamad al Thani. Each will receive 320 million dollars a year. Harry R. Lewis, former dean of Harvard College, has summed up the venture delicately: “It is like planting a French winery in Idaho. It could work, but soil conditions are different.”

When Michel Obama visited the Al Udeid Air Base outside Doha in November to encourage American troops, the first lady met with the leaders of this project which goes under the name of “Education City” and with Mozah bint Nasser, the mother of Emir Thani.

These American universities are authentic oases in the desert, Western secular cathedrals stuck in the Islamic world.

But there is something left untold by these Western relativists. The Qatari foundation that oversees the project regularly invites imams and Islamic preachers who demonize Jews, Christians and Westerners in their talks at these "oases." These are Sunni clerics whose views would not be out of place in Mosul or Raqqa under the control of the Islamic State.

Imam Saleh al Moghamsy for example believes that Osama bin Laden has more honor in the eyes of Allah than any Jew, Christian, Zoroastrian, atheist or apostate. Or Salman al Audah, a Saudi preacher who says that Jews use “human blood” to make matza for Passover. Another imam, Abdulaziz to Fawzaan, called on Muslims to “hate” Christians and said the Asian tsunami is a punishment “for sexual perversion”.

Students of American Universities based in Doha are also invited to attend the sermons of Imam Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the mentor of the Muslim Brotherhood known for his hate-ridden fatwas. Like the one that justifies terrorist attacks against Israel. Like the one in which he says that secularism is nothing but “denial of Islam” and that Rome has to be “taken”.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called it “outrageous” for Cornell University to decide to open a campus in Doha while the kingdom funds Hamas’ war against Israel.

The emir of Qatar is building bridges through the fragile Western pluralism. And in order to collect the money, the West is prepared, as the French did in their high schools of the Middle East, to obscure the exposed breasts of the woman in the painting by Delacroix , whose motif is freedom leading us to a better future and is titled “The freedom leading the people.”

Imam Qaradawi and these Western relativists have much in common.  They all agree that “Freedom should serve Islam.”