David Beckham's Qatar chickens coming home to roost after his ‘interpreter’ slams homosexuality
David Beckham has been facing a lot of criticism ever since he accepted a £150 million ($166 million) deal to become the ambassador of Qatar for over a decade. The business agreement has also reportedly made him the face of the 2022 World Cup and with that, the English former footballer has recently been seen interacting with a lot of influential people of the Middle Eastern nation.
Earlier this week, Beckham reportedly met Madam Shams Al-Qassabi, who supplies spices to the country’s royal family, embassies and five-star hotels. The businesswoman was accompanied by her daughter, Eman, as well for the meeting. Before this meeting, they also shot a promotional video together but David Jones for The Daily Mail wrote, “Just the sort of cross-cultural bonding that Beckham presumably envisaged when he said he hoped this World Cup would be ‘a force for good’. But I shudder to imagine what the Beckhams’ liberal-minded friends would have made of the conversation I had this week with Madam Shams’ daughter, Eman.”
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In his article, Jones described Eman as a 35-year-old highly educated woman, who “appears prominently in Beckham’s promo video, acting as his interpreter.” The writer also noted, “She seemed to epitomise a new generation of enlightened Qataris: just the type of woman the emir and his clan purport to admire. But when I asked if her liberal views extended to the LGBTQ community, whose state-sanctioned persecution is but one reason why Qatar is widely considered unfit to host the World Cup, Eman erupted.”
According to Jones, Madam Shams’ daughter stated, “No, that is not acceptable! It [homosexuality] goes against human nature, it goes against science and it goes against our culture! We are not animals here! God has differentiated us from animals. God has created us as men and women. This only happens because people have been sexually abused (as children) and this has made them afraid of people of their own gender.”
The reporter claimed that he “was lost for words." "Yet there was more: she claimed Western countries such as Britain were out to tarnish Qatar. She then listed other nations that refuse to tolerate homosexuality — bizarrely naming Germany,” he said, before adding. “Her nauseating and deeply confused outburst reinforced the message from human rights groups: that gay football fans should steer clear of this World Cup, despite signals emanating from the emir’s palace that, for the tournament at least, there will be a degree of tolerance.”
This comes after Qatar’s first openly gay man, Dr Nas Mohamed, wrote an open letter to Beckham after he chose to represent the conservative country. As per The Independent, he said, “You are stamping out hope for the LGBT community in Qatar. You show up, take money and look the other way. Furthermore, you send a message that there is truly no chance for us to escape our current persecution and live freely.”
“This whitewashing of the persecution of the LGBT community in Qatar does not just erase the pain of those suffering from it, but also undermines their pleas for asylum when they do escape. After all, if David Beckham describes Qatar as ‘perfection’, how bad could it really be? Qatar’s LGBT+ community lives in fear for their lives. LGBT individuals in Qatar are at an increased risk of social rejection, honour killings, ‘conversion therapy’ and so much more. I am asking you [Beckham] to use your platform to amplify our voices and highlight that we are not OK,” the doctor added.