Between Two Republics
In the brief lull created by the FIFA World Cup, I arrived in Washington, D.C., as though the world itself had paused to catch its breath. The previous tournament had been held in Qatar; this one unfolds across the United States, just as America marks the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence.
Yet politics knows no final whistle.
As I was arriving in Washington, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was leaving the NATO Summit for Jeddah on the first visit by a Canadian prime minister to Saudi Arabia in twenty-six years. He came not merely to discuss trade, investment, energy, critical minerals, artificial intelligence and education, but to explore a new pattern of trade among the world’s middle powers—relationships no longer compelled to pass through a single global centre.
From Washington, Jeddah appeared to me as a quiet witness to the emergence of a new variable geometry: a world not rising upon the ruins of the old order, but taking shape through its fractures.
Then came the news of the passing of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, followed shortly by that of Senator Lindsey Graham.
Washington was celebrating one republic.
The world, quietly, was bidding farewell to another: the post-Cold War order that believed free trade, development, law and international institutions could ultimately discipline power.
In 1995, the World Trade Organization was born. Sheikh Hamad assumed power in Qatar. Lindsey Graham entered the U.S. Congress. They belonged, each in his own way, to the same historical moment.
Then came September 11. America’s relationship with the Islamic world changed profoundly. It was during those years that I began my own work in Washington at the U.S.–Islamic World Forum, trying, with many others, to keep dialogue alive while the doors of war continued to open. Iraq followed, the region fragmented, and law increasingly found itself serving power rather than restraining it.
Graham became one of the defining American voices of that era. Sheikh Hamad chose another path. He governed at a moment when liquefied natural gas became an instrument of foreign policy; media became an expression of sovereignty; education and healthcare became investments in national resilience; and constitutional reform became a new covenant between state and society—even as Washington was redefining its engagement with the Islamic world through the prism of counterterrorism.
Sheikh Hamad united revolution with prosperity: bold enough to challenge the limits of what seemed possible, wise enough to transform wealth into institutions, institutions into influence, and influence into a presence far greater than the size of the state itself.
Watching his funeral at the Imam Mohammed bin Abdulwahab Mosque, I found myself remembering the Qatar Law Forum, where he entrusted me with laying a small stone in the Global Commitment to the Rule of Law. It was never about the victory of one side over another, but about establishing a rule that all sides would willingly embrace. Yet the missiles crossing Doha’s skies on the very day of his passing seemed the cruellest commentary on the project to which his generation had devoted so much of its life.
For that reason, condolences alone did not seem enough.
It seemed equally right simply to say:
Thank you, Sheikh Hamad.
Before leaving Washington, I walked through the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. What remained with me was not the statue itself, but the passage carved between two great stones. Perhaps nations cross history the same way—not through a single leap, but through passages carved by the fractures of the past, until the threshold of hope itself becomes the beginning of a new road.
May God grant Sheikh Hamad His mercy, bless the leaders of the Gulf, unite them in wisdom and purpose, and guide them as they inherit not merely the legacy of great men, but the responsibility of carrying their nations across the next threshold.
Discipline begins in Atturaif…
and in the world it is tested.
Prof. Dr. Malik Ãl-Dahlan
Professor of Law and specialist in international law; International Mediator.
Honorary Professor, University of St Andrews;
Emeritus Professor of International Law and Public Policy, Queen Mary University of London, and;
Member, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge.