NEW YORK ¨C So, last week wasn¡¯t the best week for Al Jazeera, the television network owned by Qatar¡¯s despotic ruling family, for the same reason that it wasn¡¯t a great week for the despotic ruling family itself: the ouster of Egypt¡¯s president, Mohamed Morsi, the bumpkin fundamentalist.
Qatar pumped a lot of money into Morsi¡¯s Muslim Brotherhood government, and for what? The Qatari royal family should sue the Brotherhood for malfeasance.
So much hope was riding on Morsi¡¯s experiment in political Islam. Although Qatar spreads the risk around a bit ¡ª it has provided millions of dollars to Islamists in Syria and to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas (now there¡¯s an investment in the future) ¡ª Morsi represented its main chance to advance the cause of Islamic fundamentalism. And to add insult to financial injury, Saudi Arabia just promised post-Morsi Egypt $5 billion, and the United Arab Emirates, another of Qatar¡¯s main rivals, has kicked in $3 billion.
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