QATAR: Christian Migrants Build Stadiums for World Cup

Source: World Watch Monitor, February 20, 2017

Ten white plastic chairs are arranged in a circle on the roof terrace of a four-story apartment block housing hundreds of Asian laborers. This is a part of Qatar where tourists never come—Doha’s Industrial Zone, where all the hard groundwork is done to maintain Qatar’s image as a modern state. The roads here in some areas are bad, there are no streetlights, and the air is filled with fumes.

Although it is officially illegal to meet outside of government-approved areas, tonight a group of Christians will meet here together to read the Bible and pray.

Most visitors will see only grand, extravagant palaces, brightly illuminated skyscrapers, and futuristically designed mosques in Doha, the capital. Within a few years, a dozen new architectural accomplishments are going to join those landmark buildings—state-of-the-art football stadiums for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which are said to be costing the country $500m a week.

But the FIFA PR show cannot hide the other side of Qatar—a profoundly intolerant country for non-Muslims. There is a deep division between the extremely rich Qatari nationals, who are now a tiny minority in their own country, and the hundreds of thousands of often exploited laborers, mostly from Asian countries. Reports from charities such as Open Doors suggest there are serious dangers for those not part of Qatar’s Muslim elite. Qatar is ranked 20th on Open Doors’ 2017 World Watch List of countries in which it is most difficult to be a Christian.

» Read full story. A related article describes Christianity in the Arabian Peninsula.

» Also check out Qatar Needs to Stop “Playing the Victim Card,” in which a Qatari author touches on domestic worker abuse (Doha News).

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