Hamad: A diplomatic maestro with a mission

Amagnificent new grand central mosque able to accommodate 10,000 worshippers was opened in Qatar on Dec. 16 and dedicated to the “great reformer and a renowned reviler” Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab.

Wahhab is better known in the West as the 18th- century Muslim fundamentalist teacher who advocated a return to “pure Islam.”

He is most notorious for providing the religious justification for the alQaida terrorist network, and for Taliban fanatics to throw acid in the faces of schoolgirls and employed women, and for the use of medieval judicial punishments such as amputations and stoning to death.

In the tumult of the Arab Spring, the West has tended to focus on the young, middle- class, urban, social networkers gathering in the main squares of Arab cities and clamouring for reform.

But thus far it is Wahhab who inspires the victors of the revolution. Across the Middle East and North Africa they appear intent on imposing political systems based on the supremacy of Shariah religious law.

Abdul Wahhab inspired the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which controls parliament as presidential elections approach. These will trigger the timetable for the military to hand over power.

The Brotherhood and the teachings of Wahhab have spread out all over the Arab world.

They are the foundation of the Ennahda party, which has taken power in post- revolutionary Tunisia.

They propel many of the militias in Libya which are in an increasingly violent struggle for power with the interim transitional government that took over after the killing of Moammar Gadhafi.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the main and increasingly irritable opposition to the monarchy in Jordan.

It is more and more evident that the uprising in Syria against Bashar Assad is at its core inspired by Wahhabist sentiments.

Now, the dedication of a mosque in the small Persian Gulf state of Qatar — population 1.7 million of whom 1.4 million are foreign workers — would not ring alarm bells but for a couple of considerations.

The main one is that the man lavishing praise on Wahhab, saying that the old imam “guides people to the right path,” and “removes confusion from the minds and deviations that confounded souls” was Qatar’s ruler and emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al- Thani.

That might not matter much either except that Sheik Hamad has made himself the West’s go- to guy in the Arab Middle East and beyond.

Cash always buys influence and position. The emir rules the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.

The International Monetary Fund says the per capita gross domestic product of Qatar’s 300,000 people — average annual income, if you prefer — is $ 84,000, nearly twice that of the U. S.

Seeing his passion for the diplomatic game, supporters of the emir call him “the Arab Henry Kissinger.” Less bowled- over commentators, such as the U. K.- based Economist magazine, call him “the ever- emollient emir.”

Sheik Hamad’s beguiling manner did not extend to his own father, whom he deposed and sent into exile in 1995, but he certainly knows how to soothe the West’s itches.

When Saudi Arabia demanded in 2003 that U. S. bases in the country be closed, Qatar welcomed the Americans with open arms.

Need a couple of hundred million dollars or so to set up, run and house an Arab news network, Al Jazeera? Sheik Hamad’s your man.

Want a back channel to see if there’s any room for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians? The Qatari capital, Doha, where until recently the Israelis had a trade office, is just the spot.

On the same line, think a unity agreement between the two Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, would enhance peace prospects? Arms twisted by Sheik Hamad never feel the pain.

Think Sudan’s leader Omar alBashar and the African southern rebels need their heads knocked together to facilitate the inevitable secession of the south? Then invite al- Bashar to Qatar.

But, by the way, don’t expect the emir to abide by the demand of the International Criminal Court that al- Bashar be sent to The Hague to face war- crimes charges.

Want to sort out postelection chaos in Lebanon? The emir’s the man to lean on all sides until they do a deal.

Think it’s time to talk to the Taliban about a political settlement in Afghanistan? They can set up an office in Doha where the Americans can come to chat any time they like.

Want to put some spine into the Arab League to back NATO intervention in Libya or back a United Nations resolution against Assad in Syria? Sheik Hamad’s the man for the mission.

But he’s also the man who put up the money for the guns for the rebel militias in Libya and the armaments already going to the insurgents in Syria.

The U. S., Europe and Israel seem blinkered by Iran, its nuclear weapons program, and Tehran’s support for fellow Muslims of the Shiite sect, such as Assad in Syria and the Hezbollah terrorist group which now dominates the government of Lebanon.

Maintaining the pacts with Sheik Hamad and the heartland of the Sunni Muslim mainstream sect, Saudi Arabia, seems to offer security guarantees and the hope that the regimes that emerge from the Arab Spring will not be antagonistic toward the West. That may be wishful thinking. The emir seems to have his own agenda and as he said at the ceremony in December, the opening of the new mosque in Qatar provides a platform for worship and teaching “away from fads and fancies” of the 21st century.