The campaign against Qatar’s plans to host the World Cup is racist and Islamophobic, according to the former prime minister of the oil-rich absolute monarchy where Indian workers are treated like serfs and leaving Islam is punishable by death. Maybe worker health and safety is just a Eurocentric construct and there are no objective truths about how many people die on building sites?
Momentum is building against Qatar, with pressure on the corporate sponsors to pull out, and for UEFA to lead a European boycott. The case against Russia is also pretty strong, too, but at least Russia can physically hold the tournament in summer.
One of the main political problems with doing something about it is that these international bodies are easy prey for anti-western feeling and it would be politically tricky to take away the World Cup from a Muslim country and hand it to, say, England or Australia.
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