The Western media’s World Cup coverage has put its anti-Muslim bias on full display 

By Khaled A. Beydoun

As the world turned its attention to Tuesday’s match between the U.S. and Iran at the World Cup in Qatar, not everyone watching was focused on soccer. With the U.S. team temporarily posting an image of the Iranian flag without the country’s official “Allah” emblem on social media and the Iranian team refusing to sing its country’s national anthem during its opening match, many watched with a close political eye.

Whatever the players decide to do for the rest of the tournament, the politicking at World Cup goes far beyond the teams themselves. Nowhere is that clearer than how Western media, particularly western European media, are covering the tournament.

The 2022 World Cup kicked off in Qatar on Nov. 20, marking the first time an Arab and Muslim nation has hosted the world’s biggest sporting event. The historic moment was met with an opening ceremony that showcased the beauty of Arab culture and the words of the Quran, centering two native identities that have long been demonized in the West.

That bias was on full display on opening day. For the first time, the BBC refused to televise the opening ceremony, instead opting to air a British women’s soccer match followed by a pre-packaged segment on Qatar’s human rights record and the controversy surrounding the tournament. Another major public British media outlet, ITV, also chose not to air the opening ceremony.

That any media outlet would call attention to the poor labor conditions in Qatar leading up to the cup and the country’s record on journalistic freedom, among other concerns, is legitimate and important. But the degree of negative coverage illustrates the hypocrisy of Western media coverage. According to an analysis of seven major British outlets, of the approximately 685 articles covering Qatar and the World Cup since the country won the bid to host in 2010, a whopping 66% were critical, 29% were neutral and just 5% were positive. Much of that coverage was related to worker rights and human rights. 

But despite what Western media coverage suggests, Qatar does not hold a sporting monopoly on human rights violations. In February, China hosted the Winter Olympics while carrying forward a genocide against the Uyghur Muslim population in its disputed northwest region. The BBC and ITV both televised the opening ceremony despite the existence of concentration camps in the Communist nation and calls for global boycotts against China’s staging of the Winter Olympics.

While British outlets, including the BBC, aired programming highlighting the Uyghur persecution leading up to the Winter Olympics, human rights reporting from Western outlets largely slowed once the games began and in some cases halted altogether. 

In 2018, during the last World Cup, host nation Russia was actively arming the Assad regime in Syria with a limitless arsenal to kill Syrian civilians en masse. But Russia’s involvement only garnered a fraction of coverage from the chorus of media outlets slamming Qatar. As with the Winter Olympics in China, Western media reporting on the nefarious human rights record of Vladimir Putin stalled at the start of the opening ceremony in Moscow, which also aired on British television outlets.

The striking difference in coverage begs the question: Is this unprecedented Western rage genuinely inspired by Qatar’s human rights record or Western bias against Qatar’s Arab and Muslim identity?

The otherwise righteous concern for human rights in Qatar is tainted by the Islamophobic coloring of European news coverage. As MSNBC journalist  Ayman Mohyeldin wrote, “What has played out over the past several years and intensified in the final few months before the World Cup’s Sunday premiere, reveals the depths of Western prejudice, performative moral outrage and, perhaps most significantly, gross double standards.”

Western journalists keen on performing their human rights act during this year’s World Cup have found an irresistible stage. However, when it comes to sites where Muslims are the victims of human rights violations instead of the perpetrators, the self-righteous acts are sparse or nowhere to be found.

Qatar must reckon with its checkered labor standards, its regulation of journalists and its record on LGBTQ+ rights — just as many other countries should. And the media should bring light to injustices perpetrated by those in power. But that focus should be distributed evenly, not selectively. A surefire way to tarnish concern for human rights is to use it as a cover for bias and racism. While that may not be the intent for all or most of the coverage, much of Western media reporting is doing just that.

The World Cup, at its best, is compelling sporting and political theater, staging the sublime feats of the world’s best soccer players and the turbulent contexts in which they must perform. Western media outlets should strive to show the entire play as it unfolds. Not only from their vantage point but from the eyes of people who have long been denied the right to stage and tell their own stories. 

Khaled A. Beydoun is a law professor and author of the forthcoming book, “The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims.”