From many faces, Al Jazeera spreads hate

In the years since the Arab Spring’s eruption, Qatari news network Al Jazeera has successfully positioned itself as an authoritative news source on Muslim world matters. It has thus become a primary conduit for Qatar to disseminate Muslim Brotherhood messaging.

Qatar’s support for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is well-established. It is unsurprising, then, that Al Jazeera, owned and funded by Qatari former Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, is an Islamist mouthpiece. Al Jazeera uses its three separate outlets — the original Arabic-language division, the BBC-style English branch and the Millennials-focused online-only platform, AJ+ — to spread anti-Western propaganda across the globe.

Al Jazeera’s most vitriolic language is reserved for Arabic-language content focusing on Jews and the United States. One longstanding component of Al Jazeera’s Arabic division is the broadcasts of Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al Qaradawi. For more than 15 years, while living comfortably in Qatar, the Islamist cleric has spread some of the network’s worst rhetoric. In one sermon, Qaradawi asserted: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them, even though they exaggerated this issue, he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”

Other Al Jazeera broadcasts have featured interviews with prominent Islamist clerics from all over the Arab and Muslim world who incite violence against Jews and Americans.

In 2006, in an interview broadcast in Qatar, Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Al-Baghdadi insisted that “we will conquer the world, so that ‘There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah’ will be triumphant over the domes of Moscow, Washington, and Paris … we will annihilate America.”

Al Jazeera’s English-language broadcasts, directed towards Western audiences, are not as overt or virulent in their Brotherhood-inspired propaganda. Instead, as Qatar and Al Jazeera have long portrayed themselves as defenders of the Palestinian cause, much of Al Jazeera English’s anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism is disguised as anti-Zionism or anti-imperialism — rhetoric carefully selected to chime with progressive activism in the West.

For example, Al Jazeera English mostly avoids its Arabic counterpart’s fascination with “Jewish power,” preferring to discuss “Zionist influence” instead. One recent Al Jazeera English article argues that “every American administration over the past three or four decades was subject to major Zionist influence.” Such wordplay is a thin smokescreen for socially acceptable anti-Semitism, in which motifs about secretive Jewish control continue to appear but are passed off as — in Al Jazeera columnist Avi Shlaim’s words — “legitimate criticism of Israeli policies.”

Case in point: In early 2017, Al Jazeera released a four-part documentary film series called The Lobby, a name that harkens to the widely discredited and anti-Semitic text by professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer (The Israel Lobby), in which the authors recycle the Jewish-power conspiracy. Al Jazeera’s documentary, centered on Jewish influence on British politics, does the same; a second version of the series, filmed in the United States, so harped on Jewish power that its episodes were republished by the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer.

Finally, AJ+ takes care to spread its ideology with an “anti-racist” slant. One AJ+ video is titled “Why White Feminism Is Racist.” In the clip, a pink-haired journalist named Zab Mustefa claims that white feminism’s racism is exemplified by outspoken feminist Israeli actress Gal Gadot. Mustefa contends that Gadot’s feminism — and indeed, Gadot herself — is racist because she “supports the Israeli army, which oppresses Palestinian women on a daily basis.”

Mustefa does not elaborate on how the Israel Defense Forces oppresses Palestinians, or on how Gadot’s support of her own nation’s army indicates racism. Instead, the clip then shifts into an interview with Women’s March coordinator Tamika Mallory, whose association with the notoriously bigoted Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has recently made headlines.

As a mouthpiece for Qatari Islamist ideals, Al Jazeera’s strength lies it in its adaptability; each branch displays a unique approach to distorting news, disseminating propaganda, and boosting anti-Semitic and anti-American feeling.

While Al Jazeera Arabic appeals to the Islamist hard right, Al Jazeera English encourages reasonable center-left viewers in the West to adopt anti-Semitic and anti-American ideas. Meanwhile, AJ+ gives momentum to anti-Jewish, anti-American extremism within the growing, influential far left in the United States.

Despite its many distortions, Al Jazeera has succeeded in branding itself as a hard-hitting example of “real news.” It is crucial that this facade be exposed, and that the network — and its Qatari benefactors — is held accountable for the Islamist bigotry it promotes.

Samantha Rose Mandeles is the coordinator of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.