Hamad bin Khalifa al-Tsani

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani (Arabic: حمد بن خليفة آل ثاني) (born 1950 in Doha, Qatar) is the current Emir of Qatar. He came from Al-Thani.


He graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (UK) in 1971. He staged a coup in 1995 when his father, Emir Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani) in Geneva (Switzerland) to begin the process of modernization in his country.


He is known by the western world because it is often helpful financial television network Al Jazeera. Time to call the midwife the birth of Al-Jazeera. In the mid-1990s, when the BBC World broadcasts in Arabic, funded a number of investors in Saudi Arabia having problems with the local news censorship. After the closure of BBC Arabic, he brought a number of Arab journalists to cross into the bay.


With funding of U.S. $ 150 million, he founded the Arab-language television station. He also hired top cousin, Sheikh Hamad bin Thamir al-Thani to lead. He does require the media to bring winds of change in the country. Al-Jazeera prestige of becoming known after the attacks of 11 September 2001 and became the only electronic media in the world to broadcast footage of Osama bin Laden's statement.


Therefore, Hamad often criticized the U.S. government to assist the enemy when the war in Iraq and the Palestinian intifada.

Sheikh Hamad is nevertheless an important ally of the United States in the Middle East. Qatar is also referred to as campus universities in the Middle East the United States in a project of Qatar Foundation, called Education City that is run by the wife of the Emir, Syaikha bint Nassir al-Muzah Missnad. The man who became the successor of the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad is Hamad al-Thani, fourth son.