Spanish football giants Barcelona are coming under increasing pressure to cancel their lucrative 170 million euro shirt sponsorship contract with the Qatar Foundation, following claims that the “charitable trust” finances Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. In addition, the Spanish El Mundo newspaper has revealed that the Qatar Foundation has been providing funding to extremist cleric Yusuf al Qaradawi - an advocate of terrorism, wife beating and murderous anti-Semitism.
Now based in Qatar, the prominent Islamic cleric has called upon Muslims to murder pregnant Jewish women in order to prevent the creation of additional ''Zionist soldiers.'' The Egyptian-born al Qaradawi has been calling openly for the murder of Jews and for suicide bombings against civilians in Israel, while also routinely denying the Holocaust. Due to his extreme views and preaching of violence, al Qaradawi has been barred entry to the U.S. and the U.K.
Al Qaradawi’s hate precludes any dialogue with Jews. On 28 November 2010, in his regularly scheduled "Shari'a and Life" program on al-Jazeera television, he fielded a question from a Muslim woman about dialogue with other religions. According to Qaradawi, he has participated in various Islamic-Christian dialogues in Qatar, until the Qatari authorities announced that they would be inviting Jews to the next conference, The 8th Annual Doha Conference on Interfaith Dialogue. After this, al Qaradawi announced that he would never attend any of these conferences while Jews were there. Al Qaradawi said, “So why should we dialogue with the Jews, who… shed blood, and violated the sanctities, and burned farms, and destroyed homes… .. to sit with them on a single platform?”
Qatar has recently won the bidding to host the Fifa World Cup in 2022. It is now planning to pour in an estimated $75 Billion in infrastructure projects to construct facilities for the games. Qatar’s leaders are also reportedly eager to spend billions of dollars on improving the country’s overall image, and especially on enhancing its football (soccer) reputation – hence the deal with world-famous club Barcelona, which involves an immense sum to be paid out in order to have Qatar’s brand promoted on the shirts of the European club’s players.
Spain has seen rising levels of anti-Semitism in recent years, including a resurrection of age-old anti-Semitic stereotypes, and with appalling views against Jews now being expressed openly by intellectuals and government officials under the guise of “criticism of Israel”.
