Exclusive: The exiled sheikh seeking to make Qatar 'a moderate country'

While the world’s attention is fixed on Tehran, a neighbouring Gulf state with a similar history of sponsoring terror is also facing a challenge to its ruling order.

An exiled former insider says he is quietly building a government‑in‑waiting for tiny Qatar, envisioning a very different role for Doha at home and abroad.

Sheikh Khalid Al-Hail, the president of the Qatari National Democratic Party, and self-proclaimed opposition leader, wants to lead his country, end the state’s terror-sponsoring, and provide goodwill overtures to Israel.

“We will be a moderate country,” he said of his aspirations of the Connecticut-sized state, in an exclusive Canadian interview with National Post.

Al-Hail once benefited from, and then split with, Qatar’s power structure, and since 2014 has lived in exile in the U.K.

“I have a genuine fear of prosecution from the Qatari government. And I’ve faced a lot of issues being outside Qatar,” he said, adding that there is a “high cost” for his security detail. “If they have the chance to get me, they will get me. And that’s basically what I fear.”

While formally a U.S. ally, Qatari’s ruling elite shelters and bankrolls Islamist movements including Hamas, Taliban elements, al‑Qaeda affiliates, and Muslim Brotherhood networks, making Doha one of the world’s key state enablers of jihadist terrorism, according to the Counter Extremism Project think tank. Its state-owned media arm, notably Al Jazeera, which is barred in 10 Arab countries, amplifies Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas narratives, shaping opinion across the Arab world and the West.

Al-Hail, a former associate of Qatar’s former prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim, once moved within the ruling elite’s inner circle, before breaking with the regime.

His party started in 2010 as Qatari Youth Rescue Movement, with a goal to “reform the system in Qatar.”

That very year he appeared on Qatar’s national television and spoke to local newspapers to issue a stark warning: about 6,200 companies were, in his view, on the brink of bankruptcy. He blamed this looming wave of failures on what he called “a corrupt financial system,” which he said was propped up by political favouritism and patronage from the emir of Qatar.

A wealthy, well-known businessman, Al-Hail served as chairman of the board of more than 30 companies in Qatar and had numerous large-scale ventures across the country.  In 2013 he left for London to become chairman and CEO of Qatar Investment and Development Company. A year later, vast political differences between himself and newly minted Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani caused him to become persona non grata in Qatar.

In March 2014, however, Al-Hail and Al Thani shared what appeared to be a cordial phone call, he recalled, with the emir expressing his warmth for Al-Hail’s return.

“You are welcomed back. We are family, we are brothers,” Al-Hail recalled hearing.

It was a trap. Upon arriving back to Qatar, Al-Hail was swiftly taken to a “national security detention,” accused of attempting a regime change. “I was surprised and shocked,” he said. For 22 days he was tortured: bright lights shone in his face for hours, hands bound, 20 hours a day of interrogations, seven days a week. He said he escaped because “my people managed to smuggle me outside,” but to this day he bears cigarette burn scars on his body from the torture.

Later in 2014, after fleeing to Egypt, Al-Hail told a press conference he had more than 9,000 documents, obtained via intelligence sources, which revealed Qatari officials’ corruption – including a plot to overthrow Saudi Arabia’s rulers.

Seeking to develop his international bona fides, Al-Hail organized the Qatar Global Security and Stability Conference in London in 2017. Foreign policy experts from the U.S., U.K. and Gulf convened to discuss Qatar’s support of terrorism, human rights abuses, and its troubled relationships with its neighbours. “I support peace with Israel and I definitely have opened the diplomatic channels with Israel,” he said, noting that a visit is in the works, and as Qatar’s leader he would open an embassy in Israel.

He noted Israel’s then-prime minister, Shimon Peres, made a landmark visit to the country in 1996, which Al Hail said “the Qatari people welcomed.” The trip came amid the Oslo peace process and followed earlier steps such as Qatar’s participation in the Madrid Conference on Middle East peace.

Qatar “turned on Israel” in stages, he says: first by cutting formal ties under regional pressure in light of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, then by becoming the main external patron of Hamas, and host of its leaders.

Under his leadership, Qatar would “absolutely never” bankroll designated terror groups, he told the National Post. “That’s one of the main things that a lot of Qatari people actually want. Because Hamas should not be existing in Qatar. Al-Qaeda should not be in Doha. Taliban shouldn’t be in Qatar. Governments and regimes like Syria shouldn’t be propped and supported by the government of Qatar,” he insisted — referring to the Syrian‑Qatari Holding Company, co-owned by Assad-era Syria and Qatar, with billions of dollars of Qatari investment, with a vast portfolio across Syria’s economy.

“We should not pay the salaries of Hamas leaders. We should not pay the salaries of all these terror groups. Al Jazeera should be a channel that focuses first on our local Qatari people, yet, it specifically helps Hamas.”

In his first act as leader, Al-Hail promised Qatari-based members of both the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas would be put on a plane and “sent to Israel to face justice.”

He said “the Qatari propaganda machine” has pumped out messages that equated Israeli military with terrorists.  “But the fact is, I’ve seen some of the footage [of the Nova festival attacks]. These were normal people, normal young people.”

He envisions Qatar governed by a constitutional monarchy, with a “normal parliament, house of commons, house of lords – democracy is key. We believe in freedom of speech and freedom of faith.” The sitting rulers, a coterie of family members, are “a gang and a mafia, that control our country and our wealth, and that’s not acceptable,” he said.

“The majority of Qatari people are moderate. What you face [governmentally] in Qatar is actually the policy makers, most of them Muslim Brotherhood, and pro-Hamas. Qatari people have nothing to do with Muslim Brotherhood, even ideologically.”

Al-Hail argues that Qatar’s influence and the Muslim Brotherhood’s networks reach deep into Canada and other Western democracies.

Qatar is the single largest foreign funder of American higher education, routing US$6.6 billion into major U.S. universities, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s January report. Critics say this is designed to buy influence. Over the past two decades, Qatar has spent billions of dollars in U.S. governmental institutions and policy‑shaping ecosystems that feed into the policy process, according to Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and a Wall Street Journal report. From January 2021 to June 2025, Qatar’s foreign agents held 627 in‑person meetings with political contacts in the United States — more meetings than any other country in the world, reports the Quincy Institute think tank.

Al-Hail warned the Carney government’s recent announcement to increase ties with Qatar – in defence, trade and high tech – would further ensnare Canada, which currently has $300-plus million bilateral trade, and blind Ottawa to the threats of Qatari-aligned groups in Canada.

“The Canadian government has given tens and tens of millions of dollars to Muslim-Brotherhood aligned groups, for Islamophobia file projects,” he said. (Public‑accounts data compiled by the watchdog MB Watch and Focus on Western Islam allege similarly, based on government disclosure and charity filings.)

“For you to be Liberal is not an issue; but for you to be stupid, that’s the problem.”

Al-Hail said Qatar’s ruling elite looks to outsiders like “they are a very stable regime,” but insists the general populace isn’t aligned with its decisions. He claims his party has support from Qatari “founder’s families” who feel “isolated and played with” as well as “tribes that have been put on the side by the current regime.”

Two successful coups in the past half century – one in 1972 and another in 1995 – have demonstrated to him regime change is possible, he said.

His party is now “preparing a government in exile” and liaising with diplomats.

“The government of Qatar is not willing to compromise, so we’ve taken the fight (to an) international level.”