YUSUF ZAMAN - Football is the most popu lar sport on the planet and transcends the borders andunites the Earth’s 8 billion inhabitants under one umbrella. With roughly 250 million active players in over 200 countries, football is viewed as a symbol of unity, equality, impartiality and fairness. This sport is played all over the world from stadiums to deserts to streets. It truly deserves the title of ‘Global Sport’. Unfortunately, this great sport too has been subjugated by heartless politics that uses it as conduit for agenda driven narratives for attaining vested interests. Given the latest media glare and agenda driven controversies, the ongoing sporting event seems a vessel for settling scores, imposing cultural imperialism, hitting religious beliefs by religious supremacists and neo-racists. Unfortunately, all this seems to be flowing from the West. The FIFA World Cup is the most watched sporting event in the World. The latest edition is being hosted by Qatar, the first Muslim country to do so since the inception of the tournament that has spent roughly $200billion in preparations of the tournament with the bulk of the budget being spent on infrastructure for fans and players. The World Cup is underway but has been bombarded with hate being propagated by western media. Qatar was first criticized for extreme working conditions imposed on its workforce. This disease of maltreatment of workers does exist across the world. Poor masses from the developing countries do travel to developed states for employment to meet both ends. Qatar laws are being labeled as conservative in nature as they restrict drinking in public and forbid same-sex relations. Funded NGOs are leading the onslaught. Qatar is a Muslim state and terming the laws derived from their faith as conservative is an abuse to entire Muslim world and a clear hypocrisy to say the least. Head of Security for the World Cup in Qatar has rightly stated that ‘Qatar cannot change the religion and its culture for 28 days of World Cup’. Credit must be given to FIFA President Gianni Infantino as he has defended Qatar and its laws. He took the western media to the cleaners with this statement, ‘For what we Europeans have been doing in the last 3,000 years around the world we should be apologizing for [the] next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons.’ Unfortunately, the bashing is still on in western media. Given the expanding spectrum and bandwidth of media, efforts of imposing cultural imperialism and religious supremacism won’t meet any success. Rather it would create more disharmony and hatred. It would lead to Islamophobia, thus serving the colonial and zionist mindset around the world. Sports must be divorced from politics. Tiny political elites must be snubbed to allow sports to remain a source of harmony, love and respect. Grounds must be for sports, not for clash of civilizations, cultural imperialism and religious zionism. -The writer is from School of Law, Quaid-e-Azam University