It can be hard to distinguish the cultural claims of right and left. Just look at Qatar
Kenan Malik/The Guardian:
Everyone has their beliefs and cultures. We welcome and respect that. All we ask is that other people do the same for us.” So insists Yasir al-Jamal, deputy general secretary of the Qatar 2022 supreme committee for delivery and legacy for the World Cup.
The torrent of criticism that has poured down on Qatar at the start of the World Cup, particularly over its treatment of women, gay people and migrant workers, has also created a pushback, both from supporters of the Qatari regime and those who see in the criticism only western “performative moral outrage”, “colonial myths” and “orientalist stereotypes”.
Certainly, there is hypocrisy and racism woven into the discussion of Qatar. That should not, however, be a shield to protect Qatar or elicit “respect” for its culture and mores.
What al-Jamal considers to be Qatari cultural beliefs to be welcomed and respected by the rest of the world are rejected by many Qataris themselves. Qatari gay, lesbian and trans people live in fear of imprisonment, even death, because their own beliefs and cultural ways are not just not respected by the authorities but brutally repressed.
Many thousands of Qatari women do not “welcome and respect” the denial of equal rights. Nor do tens of thousands of migrant workers facing brutal treatment in a country that bans trade unions.
It is not western liberals who first raised these issues, but oppressed Qataris themselves and workers across the global south forced to toil there. These are the people we betray if we “respect” Qatari culture as defined by the Qatari authorities.Cultures are not fixed, homogenous entities, but porous and contested from within. Much of today’s discussion about cultural respect ignores the diversity and conflict within cultures and has become a means of allowing those in power to impose their vision of an “authentic” culture. Beyond the immediate debate over Qatar lies a deeper clash between “universalists” and “cultural relativists”. On the one side are those who insist that there are certain universal norms, such as equality, democracy, tolerance, to which all societies should adhere; on the other, those who argue that every culture has its own set of values and mores that should be respected in its own terms and who view universalism as an ethnocentrically European outlook.It is a debate far more complex than often presented by either side. A historical perspective shows us, ironically, that the concept of universalism, far from being merely a European outlook, was developed and enlarged through struggles against European rule, while many of the ideas of cultural relativism find their roots in European Romanticism. It was through the Enlightenment in the 18th century that the ideas of equality and of universal rights became a central feature of European thinking. This was also, though, the age of slavery and colonialism. Many Enlightenment philosophers combined a defence of equality and universalism with racist attitudes and an acceptance of, even support for, slavery. Universalism became also a weapon of colonialism through the insistence that European nations had to rule the non-European world to civilise it. The cynicism with which European – and, more broadly, western – authorities have exploited the concept of universalism should not, however, detract from its significance to any progressive view of the world. In the debate over the Enlightenment, supporters and critics both present it as a uniquely European phenomenon. For the one, it is a demonstration of the greatness of Europe; for the other, a reminder that its ideals are tainted by racism and colonialism. Both miss the importance of the non-European world in helping to shape many of those ideals.