An American Ally’s Grand Mosque of Hate

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Al Ateeq, who was on his sixth visit to the state-supervised Grand Mosque since 2013, reserved his most bellicose remarks for the part of the sermon called the du’aa, when the preacher encourages the faithful to join in guided prayer.

Within minutes, Qatar’s Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs promoted al Ateeq’s remarks on Twitter. And the sermon was broadcast on several local television channels, including Qatar TV, the official state channel, signaling another stamp of approval, according to analysts Oren Adaki and David Andrew Weinberg of the U.S.-based think tank the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), who unearthed the video of al Ateeq’s sermon.

“This is another example showing that Qatar’s commitment to the war on terror is ambiguous,” argues Weinberg. “The emirate shows one face to the international community projecting a desire to help in the fight against terrorist organizations, while providing a platform for the preaching in their own backyard of the same kind of hate-filled extremism of ISIS.”
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