Qatar’s Al-Jazeera: Official sponsor of the suspicious Kuala Lumpur summit

Nora Bandari

In early December 2019, Brotherhood channels supported by Turkey and Qatar began promoting a mini-summit in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur that included Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey and Qatar.

The Brotherhood channels claimed that this summit is aimed at establishing an “Islamic Union” along the lines of the “European Union” and then advancing the Islamic world and solving the problems of Muslims around the world, according to the vision of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

The organizers of the controversial summit could not find any better than the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera to cover it and publish its propaganda. The channel selectively chose what emerged from the summit to align with what the organizers wanted, not showing the failure of the summit that lacked the participation of the Islamic world’s most important countries.

Over the past years, Al-Jazeera has been known for painting a positive picture of Qatar and turning a blind eye to any violations carried out by Doha against the peoples of other countries.

Al-Jazeera has avoided covering violations of the rights of foreign workers, and this policy is followed in dealing with all issues that serve the interests of Qatar, as well as the interests of countries that have relations with it, such as Turkey and Malaysia.

Al-Jazeera standards

Many analysts have confirmed that the reason for choosing Al-Jazeera for any event that brings together Brotherhood leaders is due to the channel’s politics. Egyptian media expert Yasser Abdelaziz previously explained that Al-Jazeera is only a political tool to implement Doha’s projects in the region, adding that the channel deals with the Arab political issue with great selectivity. When Qatar’s relations were good with the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain before the Arab boycott, Al-Jazeera was publishing good news, but with the beginning of tensions, the channel turned into a poisonous dagger.

Bahraini writer Intisar al-Bina explained in an article published in the Bahraini newspaper Al-Watan on August 4 that Al-Jazeera is a tool for managing political disputes between the Qatari regime and the rest of the Arab governments, adding that the Qatari regime controls Al-Jazeera’s news reports and does not allow opposition.

Kuala Lumpur summit

In the same context, Zaid Al-Ayoubi” a Palestinian political analyst specializing in Gulf affairs, explained that the Kuala Lumpur summit called for by Mahathir Mohamad was aborted before it started after the selection of Al-Jazeera to be the sponsor. This indicates that this summit is with the Brotherhood par excellence and seeks to send clear regional messages that the summit is an incubator for the Brotherhood trend that has wreaked havoc in the Arab world with the support of the Qatari regime and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The countries that will meet at the Kuala Lumpur summit are regionally, Islamicly and Arably isolated countries, Ayoubi stressed in a statement to the Reference, adding that the summit is nothing but a kind of hollow media display by Al-Jazeera, which will not affect the collective Islamic and Arab position led by Saudi Arabia.

Ayoubi called on the media not to give this alleged summit any media attention and to always strive to defend the unity of the Muslim community and reject any activity aimed at dispelling the efforts of Arabs and Muslims and diverting them from their central issues, especially the Palestinian issue.