Then, Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, Qatar, are regularly demonized by members of the Islamic State. On the one hand, because these two countries are accused by the jihadist group to be the main donors of their enemies, including rebel brigades fighting themilitant jihadi movement in Syria. On the other hand, in the ideological vision of the caliphate of Al Baghdadi, all Arab regimes are doomed to disappear, especially those of the Gulf. Considered as apostates and Americans political servants, the Gulf monarchies are in the viewfinder of the Islamic state since its creation. By the way, the Islamic State propaganda "Dabiq" magazine publicly criticized Qatari politicians, accusing them of being "America's lapdog”, as reported Romain Caillet – specialist in the matter of Jihadist movement - on his Twitter account, but also in an interview he had given to the Observatory of Qatar.

Romain Caillet’s tweet : 

“The one who will tell again that ISIS is financed by Qatar will have to translate into French the 6^th issue of ISIS magazine #Dabiq”

Furthermore, according to several experts, the income of ISIS are mainly from the sale of oil, the juicy business of hostage-taking, the smuggling of all kinds and the huge taxes collected at the territories it controls. These sources provide "95% of revenues of the group". Thus, again, those elements make us wonder how Qatar could support a group which its main mission is to wipe it off its map.

In addition, official statements by French officials reinforce the answer to the present question. Indeed, in a recent interview, Laurent Fabius said: "We have made the necessary checks in this respect". He added: "I mean by ‘the necessary checks’, ‘all the services we have’. And these accusations, for what was the period during which our government was in office, are therefore unfounded." It is relevant to add that such surveys go back over a period of many years. In fact, in 2012, Qatar was the subject of rumors about a supposed financing of jihadist groups in northern Mali. These accusations which were given a lot of publicity, in particular by Le Canard Enchaîné, had been denied by the DGSE, France’s external intelligence agency. In a press report of October 2012 from Le Figaro, French journalist Georges Malbrunot noted that "the French secret service assured the Government that Qatar had not sent any agents under humanitarian cover to jihadists, who control the north of Mali”. The article went on: " after the publication of updated information in this regard in the press, the DGSE officers investigated and found no trace of Qatari envoys came to help Islamic extremists in northern Mali.”

Finally, it must be added that the whole of the Qatari state apparatus has mobilized to wage war against the ideas defended by the Islamic state. Whether official statements of the Emir or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as religious institutions based in the emirate, all speak with one voice to blame the betrayal of the message of Islam made by the jihadist group, guilty of many atrocities against Christians but also against Muslims. Thus, World Union of Muslim Ulema, which is the association, composed of most of the religious leaders in the Arab world, headed by the cleric Yusuf Al Qaradawi. By the way, last summer, he criticized the fact that the Islamic state claims to monopolize the floor in the Muslim world via the new caliphate. In Paris, Ambassador Mishaal bin Hamad Al Thani reiterated in a written statement that his country had "taken drastic measures so that no Qatari citizen could privately finance these groups," adding: "We must be clear; Qatar has never supported and will never support terrorist organizations”. 

2 / How to read the latest report of the US Department of the Treasury, which seems to reveal that Qatari personalities were under the spotlight for direct financing of terrorist organizations?

One has to separate things by reading precisely what is in the report of the US Department of the Treasury. In a note put online on 24 September, it reports that several personalities (two Qatari nationals and others who stayed in the emirate) would have raised funds for jihadist groups. Those two Qatari nationales are Khalifa Muhammad Turki al-Subaiy and Abdul Rahman bin Umayr al-Nuaymi, reported by some media as "businessmen close to the famous Qatari elite".

However, this presentation is not really accurate. Actually,  Abd Al Rahman Ibn Umayr al-Nuaymi (see photo below) - that the author of these lines met in 2005 during his university research in Qatar as part of his Master's thesis-, has never been close to the Qatari elite. But even worse, that man has always been considered an opponent of the regime and was even imprisoned between 1998 and 2001. After his release, he was reinstated at the University of Qatar and founded in the mid-2000s a small study center (The Arab Center for Studies and Research) on the outskirts of Doha. He also became known for having launched the “Global Anti-Aggression Campaign” (al hamla al 'Alaamiya li mukafahat al' adwan). This campaign launched in Doha February 23, 2005 was explicitly designed to resist Western domination by providing ideological justification for the actions of "resistance" of Iraqis fighting the American Expeditionary Force. Recognized by dozens of leading religious figures in the Gulf (Saudi cleric Safar al-Hawali was its president and Al Nuaimy, the secretary general), among its members well-respected religious clerics throughout the Muslim world such as the Saudi Salman Al Awda or the Egyptian-Qatari Yousef Al Qaradawi. With such a profile, we understand why the US Treasury called him a personality supporting terrorism; in view of the criticism that the person has constantly made against American power, which he disapproved the harmful influence into Qatari soil. Regarding Khalifa Muhammad Turki al-Subaiy, the website Doha News reminded last SeptemberDoha News reminded last September that he was sentenced in absentia by a court in Bahrain in 2008, and then arrested and imprisoned in Qatar.

Finally, the difficulty of defining "terrorism" has become particularly though since Syria’s downward spiral. Plus, groups of the Syrian opposition -not jihadist but with a deep-seated religious practices-are in the Western collective unconscious, often viewed as "sectarian" or "jihadist". This evaluation is far from corresponding to that adopted by a large part of public opinion in the Arab world regarding the fringes of the Syrian opposition. An opinion that distinguishes between those that actually are from jihadist trend from those -although religious- do not propagate terror. An article in the New York Times issued 7 September illustrates this difficulty of evaluating the Syrian crisis. The author, journalist David Kirkpatrick, seemed to affirm that Qatar was playing a double game against extremist organizations and that questionable behavior began to undermine the confidence of its allies. The text referred to the visits of several preachers who have raised funds in Doha for the radical factions in Syria and Iraq. To confirm his words, the journalist evoked a talk held in Qatar in the presence of a Kuwaiti preacher, Hajjaj Al-Ajmi, (see photo below) known as one of the main leaders going through the Gulf to fund jihad in Syria. The problem is that the reporter did not mention the date of the event. This discussion had been going on for two years (June 2012), or at a time when the repression of the Syrian revolt reached dramatic proportions, and it engendered a great wave of emotion in Gulf public opinion. 

The preaching on religious duty to support the Syrian people at that time was not only in line with the political orientation of the Gulf regimes (but with the calls of Western states to end the barbarism of the Assad regime). It was also part of the context of the Syrian revolution that had not yet been swallowed up by the nebula of the Islamic State. The current use of this video -to demonstrate, retroactively, the current collusion of Qatari authorities in welcoming personalities close to the Islamic State or financing jihadist movements- cannot be advanced. Especially as when the Qatari authorities noticed sectarian aberration about the Kuwaiti preacher, they have prohibited him from holding new speeches in the mosques of the country.

3 / Did Qatar finance the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas?

Yes, it does, but one has to highlight the following points :

Since the outbreak of the Arab Spring, Qatar has realized that the Arab world was entering a new era and that the age of repressive regimes was over. Involving its TV channel, Al Jazeera, the emirate has accompanied -for the time being- this new momentum that allowed him (in the sequence 2011 - 2013) to take the leadership of the Arab world. Faced with Saudi Arabia paralyzed by popular breath that threatened to spill over its borders and the withdrawal of Egypt in full revolutionary transition, Doha has identified this power vacuum as an opportunity to expand its influence. The first democratic elections in Tunisia and Egypt have led to the coming political groupings from the matrix of the Muslim Brotherhood. By the way, Qatar had hosted many leaders from this organization in the previous decade. Benefiting from finance stemming from its huge gas reserves, Qatar has supported democratic transitions that enabled the Arab world to live, for the first time since independence, free and transparent democratic process.

The difficulty in large parts of Western elites is to consider the Muslim Brotherhood as a legitimate movement. Often described as "fundamentalist" and even harboring "terrorists" fringes, the Muslim Brotherhood is hardly appreciated for what they really are: a political body with popular and historical roots which, as recalled university researcher François Burgat, constitutes in many Arab countries a real ‘oppositional dynamics spine’. Composed of different trends within which liberals and conservatives are opposed, the Brotherhood has almost always defended the legalistic option of a non-armed confrontation with the authorities, even if they deployed an intense repression against them as in Egypt. Thus, the Western-centric reading of Qatar's support for the Brotherhood is dependent on this analysis scheme which is different from the Arab perception of this movement that has existed nearly a century. In other words, when the Qatar supports the Brotherhood, he gives its support to a political body that, not only has a real popular legitimacy, but was also the only movement capable of coming to power through a free and pluralistic electoral process. Finally, it is worth recalling that in 2011, the political branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (the Freedom and Justice Party) appointed a Christian as vice president...

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Qatar had established diplomatic and trade relations with Israel from 1996. These relations have been broken off since the Israeli bloody military operation in Gaza in winter 2008. Since then, Qatar is one of the main financial, diplomatic and media support of the Palestinian movement. Considering the Palestinian resistance as legitimate and denouncing the Israeli terrorism (especially in summer 2014 during the unstoppable Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip), Doha has gradually become the bane of Israeli authorities. For several months, Israel senior officials have accused Qatar of supporting "terrorism", called for closing Al Jazeera and even encouraged a campaign of demonization of the emirate –on an international scale- to withdraw the football world cup 2022. This strategic posture of Qatar in support of the Palestinian movement, despite Israeli anger, allowed it to improve its image in the Arab world and strengthen a major strategic focus with another Muslim country adopting the same position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict : Turkey.

Assuredly, we must remember that even if Hamas is recognized as a "terrorist organization" by several Western states, it is not qualified as such by a large part of the other countries in the world, namely Brazil, India, China, Norway, South Africa, the Muslim world, almost all of the countries of the African continent as well as some Western philosophers (like the late Stéphane Hessel). All of them consider Hamas a legitimate recognized interlocutor of the Palestinian people.

4 / Have the Qatari authorities put in place a legal framework to control the flow of funds transferred abroad?

The names cited by the US Department of Treasury of people involved in terrorist activities took place before the introduction of new rules implemented by the authorities with the aim of making remittances abroad more difficult by charities. In September 2014, the government adopted an anti-terrorism law that strengthens the previous legislation (Qatar had adopted an anti-terrorism law in 2004 and a law against money laundering and financing terrorist activities in 2010). This new legislation was particularly welcomed by British Prime Minister David Cameron. It is also interesting to note that it is this law respects the FATF standards (Financial Action Task Force), the world reference point for the implementation to effectively fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.

Since September 2014, charities must now obtain special permission before sending funds to foreign-based organizations and the authorities must also provide details of transactions. Moreover, the authorities will work closely with the banking sector in order to detect suspicious transactions.

Besides, another relevant point is the fact that Qatar is committed to improving upfront the questionable financial transactions. The Basel Institute on Governance recently released its annual report in which it is noted that Qatar has made efforts in the fight against money laundering, transparency of the financial system as well as the detection of suspicious transactions. The country is also ranked 126th (of 162 countries) in front of other countries such as Australia (124th) - France is ranked 133rd. Qatar and most Western countries (including the US) have obtained a "medium risk" classification.

Lastly, the United States consider Qatar as a key ally in the fight against the Islamic state. As a matter of facts, the recent visit of a delegation of US congressmen led by Senator John McCain to Doha, as part of a regional tour focused on Syrian rebels training, allows  Qatar get rid of the cloud of financing suspicions on it. It is useful to remember that they are fighting not only the army of Bashar al-Assad but also the organization of the Islamic state...

5 / Who could gain from criticizing Qatar today in France?

Qatar is obviously not free from heavy criticism. The plight of Asian migrant workers, confinement of the poet Muhammad al-Ajami or exuberant ecological footprint of Qataris are obviously critical sources that anyone -conscious of the human rights and the environment- must condemn. Nevertheless, it is important to figure out the reasoned judgment and the obsessive load which sometimes meets unacknowledged plans.

As recalled Alain Juillet, former head of the DGSE, "be careful with what is said and make sense of things," adding that "other countries have an interest in destabilizing Qatar and designate it as scapegoat". Without using doublespeak, it is indeed useful to identify three types of actors for whom it is profitable to blacken the image of Qatar among the French public opinion.

First, the National Front is at the top of those who regularly criticize Qatar and its foreign policy. From the involvement of Doha in the economic fabric to the French politician’s visits to the emirate, extreme right-wing Party never misses any opportunity to slay the activity of the country. This obsessive fixation even took a farcical turn when, for the launch of the Arabic version of the PSG website, the FN had identified a new index of communitarianism that the emirate is slowly spreading. Beyond Marine Le Pen’s diatribes, (to sever diplomatic relations is one of those regular), it is interesting to note that she remains strangely silent on other Arab regimes gaps. Worse, bowing repeatedly the policy of the UAE, praising the new Egyptian regime of a military coup, Marine Le Pen seems to settle her scores with a country whose diplomacy is antagonistic with foreign FN support. Very close to the new Egyptian torturer whose FN welcomed the visit to Paris last November, the extreme right is also closely linked with the regime of Bashar al-Assad that a recent survey showed it as "one of its great paymasters”. Among the inner circle of Marine Le Pen, there is in fact Frédéric Chatillon who worked for advertising agencies of the Syrian embassy in Paris and is one of his confidants. In these circumstances, it is understandable why the National Front party regularly sounds the charge against Doha. This company is similar in many respects to a service controlled by those who have an interest in settling their accounts with Doha.

Then, the other actor that criticized Qatar is represented by the CRIF, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France. Regularly, its president, Roger Cukierman, heavily criticizes the emirate, and particularly its dubious diplomacy and economic involvement in France. Here too, this trial could be done on Israel's behalf, some agencies have offered to lead international demonization campaigns of Qatar's image. Moreover, the I-24 news channel based in Tel Aviv and detained by Israeli capital is often over misleading information, such as attempted rumored coup that took place in Qatar in November 2014. Presented from the outset as a rival of Al Jazeera, I-24 news regularly gives voice to "intellectual counterfeiters" which is part of this vast media war that ties in the background, facts that one must be aware to perceive. It is indeed important to remember that often the information presented as "neutral" are ultimately the biased coverage of non-acknowledged interests.

To conclude, we could not do without a geopolitical vision of this smear campaign against Qatar, often called "Qatar-bashing". In an article published on October 13, the website orientxxi.info mentioned that "while many criticisms can be correctly made in Qatar, it is also to ask why and who is behind these campaigns". He added that "disreputable countries finance Qatar bashing and orchestrate thus more or less savvy opinion leaders”disreputable countries finance Qatar bashing and orchestrate thus more or less savvy opinion leaders”. To be more precise, there is no doubt that the government of the UAE is a leader in this device to scratch the image of a political rival. Everyone knows that for many years, a dull "cold Gulf conflict" opposed Doha to its neighbors. The author of the above article rightly found that, "according to the New York Times, several countries are conducting intense lobbying against Qatar with, at their head, the United Arab Emirates". And they have not skimped on the means. Indeed, in 2013, they have been "topped the list of lobbying expenditure incurred by a foreign country to the United States ($ 14 million)". With this flow of money that has been poured from some communication agencies, Abu Dhabi has managed to get to a broad section of public opinion and American elites the idea that Qatar “directly or indirectly finances terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria but also in Libya". From here it is but a short step to believing that the same strategy was deployed in France and other European countries…