The terrorism-sponsoring government of Qatar and a terror-tied Qatari organization recently sealed several agreements with prominent U.S. institutions including NASA, the Smithsonian Institute and the State Department’s Fulbright Scholarship program.
The agreements were signed last month at a summit where the Qatari deputy prime minister, Qatari foreign minister and U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo agreed to declare 2021 the “U.S.-Qatar Year of Culture.”
Left unsaid was exactly how the U.S. is supposed to celebrate Qatari culture, given that the Qatari regime sponsors Islamist terrorism and hate, including antisemitism, radicalization of children and Wahhabism, an extremist form of Islam. It also denies freedom to its citizens and supports other human rights abuses, including slavery.
Also present at the summit was a representative of the Qatar Foundation, an organization with ties to terrorists and extremists that functions essentially as an arm of the Qatari regime.
The Qatar Foundation was present to finalize a Memorandum of Understanding with the Smithsonian Institute.
In addition, the Qatar Foundation’s representative—the president of the King Hamad bin Khalifa University—announced that his school was signing an agreement for cooperation with NASA.
NASA will work the university’s Energy and Environment Research Institute.
The Qatar Foundation’s involvement in Islamist extremism was laid bare with the establishment of its Al-Qaradawi Research Center in 2008 under the direction of the foundation’s chairman and the Qatari emir.
The stated objective of the center, named after the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yousef al-Qaradawi, is the promotion of Qaradawi’s ideology.
The Qatar Foundation also runs a mosque, which is a stage for other radical clerics, including one who took joy in the terrorist attack on the headquarters of the Charlie Hebdo magazine in France, describing it as “the sequel to the comedy film of 9/11.” Others have openly praised Osama Bin Laden. Yet another lamented that Hitler didn’t succeed in exterminating every last Jew.
In announcing the agreements, a Qatar news site stated, “By partnering with the Smithsonian Institution, QF [Qatar Foundation] and the U.S. organization will combine to building [sic] knowledge and skills, and share experiences, in innovation and STEM education at K-12 level… explore opportunities to co-develop and deliver digital education, and look at forming sustainability-focused research collaborations.”
The chief executive of Qatar Museums, which is also party to the agreement with the Smithsonian, said it “paves the way for Qatar and the United States to strengthen their ties and collaborate in the fields of arts and culture.”
The collaboration is part of Qatar’s public relations and efforts to expand its international soft power.
“The collaboration will create exceptional opportunities for knowledge transfer and exchange … as Qatar Museums works to promote Qatar’s national heritage beyond its borders and nurture a thriving cultural landscape for an engaged society,” the executive said.
It was also announced that Qatar will host two U.S. Fulbright Scholars for a semester to contribute to research into medicine, hydrology and artificial intelligence. While the agreement sounds innocuous, similar partnerships involving Communist China have resulted in arrests in recent months.
The Qatar Foundation also made it clear that it is hoping to influence U.S. students and academia. A foundation representative said:
“This agreement coincides perfectly with our commitment to exploring and establishing joint degree programs with U.S. institutions, not to mention enhancing student exchange and mobility…
“We would like to host more U.S. students at Qatar Foundation, and enable more Qatari students and scholars from Qatar Foundation to study in the U.S.”
The funding from Qatar Foundation needs to be understood in the context of Qatar’s broader campaign to use its wealth for nefarious ends.
Qatar’s influence campaign against the U.S. includes spending lavishly on lobbyists from both political parties, funding prominent think-tanks, sponsoring online progressive media like AJ+ and, especially, donating to U.S. universities.
An exclusive Clarion Project study of U.S. universities and colleges’ declarations of foreign funding discovered that over $10 billion in foreign funding had flowed to American academia since 2012.
Qatar alone was responsible for about $1.5 billion in foreign funding to 28 universities—but those figures relied solely on what the schools’ willingly declared.
As news of the Department of Education’s investigation into the funding came out, the schools belatedly declared donations they had previously failed to disclose (in violation of existing laws).
By examining the latest round of disclosures, Clarion Project found that a dozen schools failed to disclose a cumulative total of about $1 billion from Qatar between 2014 and 2019.
The question that needs to be asked is: What has the money gone toward?
In the case of Northwestern University, Clarion discovered a stunning and arguably traitorous partnership that the university had made with the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera, the biggest Islamist extremist propaganda network in the world. Qatar’s funding of Northwestern University was used for the sake of improving Al-Jazeera’s operations – by enlisting the help of Northwestern’s students.
The Clarion Project also discovered that the Qatar Foundation had awarded over $1.3 million in grants to a radical professor at Northwestern who made inflammatory anti-American comments on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“Happy 9/11 more than 8,441 civilians died in Yemen this year helped by US arms dealt to Saudi Arabia & UAE. The US is complicit in far more terror than it has ever suffered,” the professor tweeted.
As is often the case, the grants to Northwestern University from the Qatar Foundation were not publicly disclosed as required. Thus, students (who pay tuition to Northwest University) and learn from this professor had no way to know that he was being sponsored by a terrorism-linked organization tied to the Qatari government, itself a state sponsor of terrorism and Islamist hate.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Qatar’s efforts to influence powerful U.S. institutions.
Any doubt about the success of Qatar’s efforts should be erased by this single headline: “U.S. Hopes to Name Qatar as Major Non-NATO Ally, Official Says.”
“We’re going to move ahead, we hope, with designating Qatar a major non-NATO ally,” Timothy Lenderking, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Arabian Gulf affairs, is quoted as saying.
If this happens, Qatar will join 17 other countries whose friendship with the U.S. has been rewarded with “Major Non-NATO Ally” status, giving them increased access to U.S. military equipment and training, among other special benefits.
In fact, last month’s summit included an announcement about increased U.S.-Qatari military cooperation, including a $26 billion “Foreign Military Sales” program to help build up the Qatar Armed Forces.
State sponsors of terrorism like Qatar are essentially waging war on the United States and the West—but money talks. The sad truth is that the dollar bill has more value than facts, common sense and principle.
To learn more about how our adversaries are targeting U.S. schools, watch Clarion Project’s new documentary, “Covert Cash: What U.S. Universities Don’t Want You to Know About Their Foreign Funding“:
