Welcome to Sports Politika, a media venture founded by investigative journalist and researcher Karim Zidan that strives to help you understand how sports and politics shape the world around us. Our mission is to offer an independent platform for accessible journalism that raises awareness and empowers understanding.
If you share this vision, please consider supporting us by joining our community and becoming a paid subscriber. We are currently running a special offer whereby you can secure a subscription at a fixed, discounted price.
In the moment that Norwegian investigative journalist Andreas Selliaas snapped the photo capturing Abdullah Ibhais and I in a moment of joy, Abdullah had just finished telling me that I look like a communist.
“What do you mean I look like a communist?” I asked, taken by surprise.
“The ponytail, the clothes, the beard—you just have that look,” he replied in his soft-spoken voice.
The interaction, which had us laughing long enough for Andreas to take the photo, came at the tail end of a busy week in the picturesque Norwegian capital of Oslo. The three of us had spent the past few days taking in the city between sessions at the Oslo Freedom Forum, the annual flagship conference for the New York-based Human Rights Foundation.
As the organization’s Sports & Dictators fellow, I had been contracted to help launch and grow a unique program exploring the intersection of sports and authoritarianism from a human rights perspective. Abdullah—arrested and jailed on trumped-up charges after refusing to cover up migrant abuses ahead of the 2022 World Cup in his role as media manager for Qatar’s Supreme Committee—became a pivotal part of our plans once we learned of his release just a month before the conference. We introduced him on the main stage of the conference, where he received a standing ovation, and slotted him into the Sports & Dictators panel discussion that included the likes of journalist and author Miguel Delaney and Rwandan genocide survivor Anaïse Kanimba.
Then, on the final day of the conference—just hours before the above picture was taken—I hosted a fireside chat with Abdullah, where he delved into the entire affair in detail. During our 45-minute sit down, Abdullah delved into his role as a media manager for Qatar’s Supreme Organizing Committee, the incidents that made him realize that Qatar was hiding migrant abuses, and the series of events that led to him languishing in prison while Qatar put on one of the “greatest World Cups of all time.”
While Abdullah’s bravery was undeniable, it was his poise and brutal honesty that I found most admirable. Despite enduring more suffering in three years than most people face in a lifetime, he carried himself with quiet grace, reflecting more on the meaning of his experience than on retribution. As an Egyptian, I felt an immediate kinship with Abdullah. We were both outsiders in the modern Arab world—lonely contrarians pushing back against the rise of Gulf state supremacy, both feeling unmoored in a region that no longer seemed to have a place for us.
That is why I am proud to share this intimate and poignant fireside chat with Sports Politika readers today, recorded live during the 2025 Oslo Freedom Forum. I hope it resonates with you and offers you new perspective on the dangers of the Gulf’s growing influence, as well as the hypocrisy of FIFA’s claims that football can unify the world.
Sports Politika is a media platform dedicated to the intersection of sports, power and politics. If you like what you see, upgrade to a paid subscription ( or gift a subscription if you already have your own). We would appreciate if you could also like the post and let us know what you think in the comment section below.
Share this post