Qatar’s Insidious Influence on the Brookings Institution
Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism has for years been at the forefront of alerting America to the threat from Jihad. Their latest work is an absolute must-read. In an ongoing investigation, IPT’s investigators have exposed a troubling alliance between Qatar, a foreign country with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, ISIS and other Jihadists, and an American left-of-center think tank…
Qatar’s Insidious Influence on the Brookings Institution
A Four Part Investigative Series: Brookings Sells Soul to Qatar’s Terror Agenda by Steven Emerson, John Rossomando and Dave Yonkman
IPT News October 28, 2014
Part 1 of a 4-part series.
The Brookings Institution bills itself as “the most influential, most quoted and most trusted think tank in the world,” but should it be?
Brookings’ long-term relationship with the Qatari government – a notorious supporter of terror in the Middle East – casts a dark cloud over such a lofty claim to credibility.
A September New York Times exposé revealed Qatar’s status as the single largest foreign donor to the Brookings Institution. Qatar gave Brookings $14.8 million in 2013, $100,000 in 2012 and $2.9 million in 2011. In 2002, Qatar started subsidizing the Brookings outreach program to the Muslim World which has continues today. Between 2002 and 2010, Brookings never disclosed the annual amount of funds provided by the Government of Qatar.
Sources of funding should not automatically discredit an organization, but critical facts and claims about Brookings should be examined in light of them, starting with a harsh indictment by a former scholar.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism has reviewed the proceedings of 12 annual conferences co-sponsored by Brookings and the government of Qatar comprising more than 125 speeches, interviews, lectures and symposia; a dozen Brookings-based programs that were linked to the Qatari financed outreach to the Muslim world; and analyzed 27 papers sponsored and issued by the Brookings Institution and scholars based in Washington and at the Brookings Doha Center since 2002.
Our review, which will be detailed in a four-part series beginning with this story, finds an organization that routinely hosts Islamists who justify terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and American troops, who advocate blasphemy laws which would criminalize criticism of Islam, and which never scrutinizes or criticizes the government of Qatar, its largest benefactor.
