Journeys to the ‘Other’: England fans’,Orientalism and the 2022 World Cup

Abstract

This article examines how England football fans made sense of Muslims, Islam and the Arabian Peninsula in the context of the 2022 FIFA Men's World Cup in Qatar. Drawing on Edward Said's (2003 [1978]) theory of Orientalism, it investigates whether Orientalist discourses were maintained, (re)produced or challenged through fans’ lived experiences in the first World Cup staged in an Islamic society. It applies Said's framework through a bottom-up analysis of how Orientalism manifests in practice. Methodologically, this article employs a longitudinal ‘pre-during-post’ approach, following four England fans through semi-structured interviews, audio-visual diaries and photo-elicitation interviews. The findings demonstrate the complexities and contradictions of the fans’ attitudes and experiences; they simultaneously challenged and reinforced Orientalist assumptions through discourses of authenticity that maintained control over the Other. The World Cup functioned as a ‘bubble’, enabling fans to encounter the ‘exotic’ from comfort and security. When experiences aligned with their preconceptions (wearing themed thawbs), fans accepted them as authentic, but when they challenged their imaginaries (encountering modernity), they dismissed them as ‘inauthentic’ or ‘Westernised’. Both Orientalist discourse and self-Orientalist strategies shaped cultural exchanges. These findings highlight how sporting events in the Arabian Peninsula may perpetuate rather than challenge Orientalist frameworks.

Keywords

England football fandom practical Orientalism Qatar World Cup self-Orientalism sport and the Arabian Peninsula

Introduction

In 2022, a reported 4000 England football fans made the journey to the small, prosperous Arab state of Qatar (Robinson, 2022) to experience the first FIFA Men's World Cup held in an Islamic society. I observed fans navigating the alleyways of Souq Waqif, sipping Arabic tea, wearing country-themed thawbs, observing the call to prayer from nearby mosques, and experiencing heavily restricted access to alcohol. This was an event far removed from the alcohol-fuelled street drinking and fountain dipping traditions of England fan culture. However, despite the historic significance and distinctiveness of a World Cup in Qatar, research has yet to explore how the fans themselves made sense of the region, its culture, religion and its people. This represents a significant gap in the sociology of sport, as existing scholarship has predominantly focused on top-down processes such as soft power and nation branding (Taylor et al., 2023) rather than examining how mega-events challenge or reinforce racialised and religious stereotypes. Emerging studies on fans remain limited to the phenomenon of the World Cup itself and do not consider whether attendance led to broader shifts in cultural perceptions towards Muslims, Islam and the region (Acheampong et al., 2023; Carvache-Franco et al., 2024).

The 2022 tournament unfolded against a backdrop of criticism from Western media commentators, politicians and fans over Qatar's human rights record, accusations of bribery and corruption, and the state's treatment of migrant workers and minority groups (Brannagan and Reiche, 2022; Hassan and Wang, 2024). While these critiques represented legitimate concerns, Western media commentary, notably in Britain, frequently (re)produced essentialist representations of Qatar and its culture, often entangled with Orientalist frameworks that presented the region as a threatening yet ‘exotic’ ‘Other’ (Al Naimi and James, 2025; Ben Labidi and Al Zo’by, 2025; Daoudi et al., 2025; Griffin, 2017).

Such portrayals reflect Edward Said's (2003) theory of Orientalism – Western representations of Arab societies through reductive binaries that position them as an exotic, inferior ‘Other’. However, Said's (2003) framework focused primarily on top-down discourses rather than examining how audiences interpret or respond to these frameworks in everyday cultural encounters. Sport sociology has yet to examine how these discourses are interpreted and potentially challenged through fans’ lived experiences at sports mega-events in Islamic societies.

This empirical gap is significant given that Muslim communities in the UK are routinely treated with suspicion, framed as incompatible with British values and ways of life (Selod et al., 2024; Taylor, 2025), and identified as the ‘second least’ liked group in society during the year of the 2022 World Cup (Jones and Unsworth, 2022). Against this backdrop, the World Cup provided a distinctive lens in which historic racial and religious anxieties played out within the global sporting arena. For England fans, many visiting the region for the first time, they occupied a unique position: they arrived as both consumers of pejorative Oriental discourses and as temporary visitors in an Islamic society. Their journeys presented a novel opportunity to explore both their direct experiences and their evolving perceptions of Muslims and Islam. The World Cup thus provides a critical case study for examining what Haldrup et al. (2006) termed ‘practical Orientalism’ – the everyday reproduction of Orientalist assumptions through embodied encounters and cultural consumption.

This article responds to that opportunity by examining how England fans made sense of Muslims, Islam and the Arabian Peninsula within the context of the 2022 World Cup. Using a pre-during-post longitudinal methodology following four fans’ journeys through semi-structured interviews, audio-visual diaries, and photo-elicitation interviews, this article applies Orientalism through a bottom-up analysis. Based on the findings of this study, I argue that Orientalism manifests through discourses of authenticity in practice. That is, authenticity permits fans to maintain epistemic control over their embodied encounters by affirming experiences that confirm their Oriental stereotypes while dismissing those that challenge them as ‘inauthentic’ or ‘Westernised’. In doing so, the findings contribute to understanding how Orientalist frameworks manifest in practice within sports mega-events, while adding to the critically underexplored literature on the relationship between football fan cultures, Muslims, Islam and anti-Muslim sentiment (see, for exceptions, Alrababa’h et al., 2021; Millward, 2008).

This article begins by outlining the theoretical framework, with particular attention to how Orientalism is understood and how it manifests in practice. It then presents the methodological approach before critically examining three key themes that emerged from data analysis: (a) England Fans’ Pre-Event Perceptions of Muslims and Islam, (b) Consuming the Other: Self-Orientalism and Authenticity, and (c) Nando's and Shawarma: Contesting Authenticity.

Theoretical framework

Drawing on Orientalism, this article takes a critical approach to power relations and representational practices that shape Western constructions of Muslims and Islam. Sociologically, this situates the England fans’ perceptions and experiences within a wider socio-historical and ideological context, which Haldrup and Larsen (2010) described as the ‘plastic material’ through which Orientalist imaginaries are sustained and adapted. This permits an exploration of the power dynamics that inform, and to some extent, shape fans’ perceptions and how they engage with Muslims, Islam and the Arabian Peninsula. Critically, this analysis begins to shift the focus away from top-down processes, such as media representations and political discourses, to explore the lived, everyday encounters in which these dominant processes are consumed, contested and (re)negotiated. As such, football fan cultures become a key site through which Orientalist assumptions are reproduced and potentially challenged. To understand how Orientalism operates in practice, it is essential to examine the theoretical foundations from which these everyday encounters emerge.

These foundations lie in Said's formative theory of Orientalism, which serves as a durable analytical tool for understanding how the West engages with the ‘Orient’. The Orient is used to refer to somewhere East from the viewpoint of the West, although Said (2003) particularly focused on Arabic societies and later expanded his analysis to Muslims and Islam (Said, 1997). Notably in Orientalism, Said critiqued the historical processes through which Britain and the Western world constructed knowledge of and represented the Orient as a homogenous entity. Thereby reducing millions of different people, places and cultures into a single entity. However, for Said (2003: 57), the constructs of the Orient as a homogenous group had little ontological stability and existed as an ‘imaginative geography’.

Orientalism encompassed three overlapping and interdependent dimensions, which revealed the scope and reach of the Orientalist endeavour. These are: (a) as a comprehensive Western discourse, (b) as an academic discipline devoted to Oriental studies, and (c) as a corporate institution. The former two dimensions embody the textual and visual representation of the Orient, which served to establish and essentialise Muslims and Islam, while the latter illustrates how Orientalist discourse was used to legitimise political and cultural domination, particularly through colonialism (Kumar, 2021). One of the key theoretical characteristics of Orientalism, then, is the relationship between power and knowledge (Said, 2003). This system of knowledge produced an entire way of thinking within Britain and the West that assumed a binary distinction wherein Muslims/Islam were positioned as exotic, backwards and inferior, while Britain/the West positioned itself as morally, intellectually and culturally superior (Kumar, 2021; Saha, 2021; Said, 2003; Selod et al., 2024). Thus, the West defined itself in opposition to an ‘Other’. This is critical because Orientalism manifests in a way that Britain and the West, as producers of knowledge, claim authority over and speak from a position of ‘knowing’ without ever ttsetting foot in the Orient (Selod et al., 2024).

Applied to this study, Said's (2003) theory of Orientalism, especially the relationship between power/knowledge and binary thinking, permits an examination into how England fans perceived Muslims and Islam and made sense of their lived cultural encounters. This framework is significant for revealing how England fans’ perceptions of Muslims and Islam, even in sporting contexts, reproduce colonial power structures through encounters that both challenge and reinforce Orientalist binaries, creating spaces where epistemic control is contested and negotiated, yet ultimately reinforced. I argue Orientalism is thus significant for this study, as it allows me to illustrate how the fans’ perceptions and experiences did not exist in a vacuum but rather were predisposed within a broader socio-political and ideological context that, to an extent, dictated how they engaged with and navigated their cultural encounters.

However, while Orientalism provides a valuable framework, it has been critiqued for essentialising Western thought (Irwin, 2006) and underplaying the agency, voices, resistance and subjectivities of those being represented (Abdul Wahad, 2025; Dabashi, 2011). While these critiques do not undermine Western representations of Muslims and Islam, they require a critical application of Orientalism. As argued, Orientalism illustrates how knowledge of the Orient is not neutral. However, my point of departure from Said is to go beyond Orientalism's institutional starting point to examine how it manifests in everyday life from the macro to the micro level. Drawing on the concept of practical Orientalism, this study investigates the mechanisms through which macro-level Orientalist discourse becomes embedded in micro-level cultural encounters (Haldrup et al., 2006). Although the focus of this article remains on Said's original theory, this approach examines how Orientalist assumptions manifest through what Haldrup et al. (2006) term embodied sensuous encounters. This reveals how Orientalism does not simply function at a textual level but is experienced through embodied practices such as seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and moving through unfamiliar spaces.

This approach permits an examination of how England fans’ experiences at the 2022 World Cup served as spaces where Orientalist knowledge derived from dominant textual media and political and public representations became meaningful through their encounters. Thus, bridging the analytical gap between institutional discourses and lived experiences. As noted, the context of the World Cup is particularly significant as fans navigated and negotiated embodied encounters with Qatar's variant of Islamic culture while their pre-existing beliefs remained shaped by their Oriental imaginaries that positioned them as authoritative knowers of the Other.

Adopting such a framework is particularly relevant given the limited attention to the relationship between football fan cultures, Muslims, Islam and the Arabian Peninsula. Existing scholarship has focused on the identities, belonging and practices of fans in Western contexts, while studies engaging with Muslims and Islam have typically centred on incidents of anti-Muslim sentiment and Islamophobia in English football and the ways such prejudice can be mitigated (Alrababa’h et al., 2021; Millward, 2008; Taylor, 2025). More recently, scholarship has sought to understand fan perceptions of Arabian Peninsula states’ ownership of professional European football clubs (Jones et al., 2024), yet little is known about how supporters experience and interpret encounters with Islamic host societies. By applying Orientalism to fan experiences and perceptions, this study addresses these gaps by positioning football fan cultures as sites where broader ideological frameworks are reproduced and contested through embodied encounters in non-Western contexts.

Methodology

This study employed a qualitative longitudinal approach to explore how England fans made sense of Muslims, Islam and the Arabian Peninsula during the 2022 World Cup. Situated within an interpretivist paradigm, the research sought to examine how broader ideological frameworks shaped and were shaped by fans’ perceptions and experiences. Rather than treating the tournament as an isolated event, the analysis grounds fan experiences within wider patterns of everyday life and personal histories. This enabled an investigation into whether Orientalist discourses were mobilised, negotiated, challenged or reproduced from below – the everyday practices of fandom.

I recruited participants through purposive sampling, focusing on England football fans who were travelling to and experiencing the 2022 World Cup first-hand. This was significant, as the fans could provide a ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973) of their experiences compared to those following the event remotely. Following ethical approval, I recruited participants through social media and the official England Supporters Travel Club forum. However, with no prior access to England fan networks, I joined the official England Supporters Travel Club as a paid member. This enabled me to access private Facebook groups and the official England supporters’ forum, where I was able to post recruitment material. In total, 14 England fans participated in the study; 13 identified as white and male, and one identified as white and female. While this reflects established patterns in England fan demographics, although Perryman (2008) has noted the changing composition of England supporters, the relative homogeneity of the sample reflects an analytical limitation, as the study can only offer a partial and exploratory lens into fans’ experiences and perceptions.

Rather than examining all 14 supporters, this paper focuses on the journeys of four England fans. The rationale for this focus was guided by several methodological considerations aimed at enhancing analytical depth. First, these participants provided the most comprehensive and detailed accounts across all three phases of data, unlike other supporters who did not take part in every phase. Although Sarah did not complete audio-visual diaries, she was the only female participant, enabling a more diverse exploration of fan experiences. Second, the supporters varied in duration of stay, accommodation choice, and geographic location, reflecting a range of experiences and perspectives: Ian stayed in Dubai, Todd and Sarah spent more than 20 days in Doha staying in multiple forms of accommodation, and Stephen spent 12 days in Qatar. Focusing on these four participants enhanced analytical depth by illuminating their individual journeys and evolving perceptions across all phases of the study. Analysing fewer cases in greater detail permitted a detailed analysis of the nuances and contradictions in their accounts that might have been obscured if the full sample had been included.

As a passionate white male and English football fan, who travelled to the 2022 World Cup, I occupied what Hills (2002) termed the ‘fan-scholar’ position. This is where a scholar's authentic fan identity can facilitate access and help to develop rapport with participants while maintaining the analytical distance necessary for academic inquiry. I was able to maintain distance as a casual England fan outside of their established community, although participants often assumed I belonged due to my football knowledge and cultural capital. Moreover, my interest in understanding people's perceptions and experiences towards Muslims and Islam, notably how encounters might reduce prejudices and stereotypes, informed my analytical approach.

To explore the evolving nature of fans’ attitudes and experiences, the study employed a ‘pre-during-post’ research design, collecting data across three phases: (1) pre-event semi-structured interviews, (2) audio-visual diaries and field observations during the event, and (3) post-event semi-structured interviews with photo-elicitation. The pre-event interviews were conducted between September 2022 and October 2022, prior to participants travelling to the region in November and December 2022 to attend the World Cup. Three took place on Microsoft Teams and one in person. While online methods can present challenges in building rapport (Hennink et al., 2020), they proved to be fruitful in my study, for, as Keen et al. (2022) argue, in a post-COVID society, participants are increasingly comfortable with interacting online. Semi-structured interviews were selected for two main aims: first, to elicit rich biographical narratives that contextualised fans’ views and experiences, and second, to establish rapport and trust, which was essential for sustaining participant engagement throughout the longitudinal study.

The second phase of the study took place during the World Cup itself. Participants were invited to keep audio-visual diaries on their smartphones, documenting their lived experiences, encounters, behaviours, and leisure activities while in Qatar and the Arabian Peninsula. In addition, I undertook a short period of fieldwork at the World Cup (21 November–1 December 2022), recording field notes to contextualise the fans’ accounts and enrich a reflexive discussion during the post-event phase. The rationale for using audio-visual diaries was two-fold: first, to capture the evolving and situated nature of fan perceptions in real time (see, for example, Bartlett and Milligan, 2020); and second, to address the limited attention within Oriental scholarship on everyday, mundane discourses.

While methodologically valuable, audio-visual diaries posed challenges. Not all participants completed diaries; Sarah, for example, became ill during the tournament with the ‘Red Lion flu’,¹ while others contributed sporadically and were short in length. As Bartlett and Milligan (2020) suggest, this could be a result of participant fatigue, as participants become tired or too busy to record frequent in-depth records. This reflected a further limitation of the study by reducing the depth and consistency of the fans’ in-situ reflections, with the longitudinal nature of the study not realised across all the supporters who took part in pre-event interviews. Nonetheless, diaries still permitted a rich, often illuminating insight into the fans’ experiences.

Following on from the previous two phases, post-event semi-structured interviews with photo-elicitation were conducted between March 2023 and November 2023. As in the pre-event phase, three interviews were conducted via Microsoft Teams and one in-person. Participants were encouraged to take photographs or collect artefacts, such as match programmes, to support their diary entries and enhance their sense of agency in the research process (Garcia et al., 2016). This method enabled deeper exploration of their experiences, allowing participants to elaborate on the meanings behind their diary entries and offer a more visual and reflective account. Photo-elicitation also fostered participant-led reflection and helped facilitate a more intimate, dynamic conversation. I argue that each phase of the research complements the others, with the methods working in synergy. This longitudinal design was significant not only for its temporal coverage, but also for revealing the nuances, complexities and processes through which fans construct their perceptions and experiences.

All interviews and audio-visual diaries were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed using Jones’ (2022) five-stage approach to qualitative data analysis. After developing familiarity with the data through transcription, and following Saldana (2021), I employed ‘descriptive’ and ‘In-Vivo’ coding strategies, working chronologically through pre-event interviews, audio-visual diaries, and post-event interviews to identify key themes. Initial codes were then cross-referenced across all three phases using reflexive memos. For instance, participant comments about wanting ‘authentic food’ evolved from initial ‘cuisine’ codes into the broader theme of ‘contesting authenticity’. These themes underpin the subsequent analysis. All participants provided informed consent and consented to the use of their real names, with anonymity offered as an option.

Findings and discussion

The findings and discussion section begins by exploring the four England fans’ pre-event perceptions of Muslims, Islam and the Arabian Peninsula. This grounds the supporters’ attitudes and begins to illustrate how their Oriental imaginaries influenced the meanings they applied to their cultural encounters. Following this, I analyse how the fans made sense of their lived experiences, and in doing so, reveal how they drew on authenticity frameworks alongside some forms of cultural understanding to facilitate and reinforce Orientalist thought.

England fans’ pre-event perceptions of Muslims and Islam

This theme explores how the four England fans constructed perceptions of Muslims, Islam and the Arabian Peninsula before travelling to the 2022 World Cup. While the fans expressed varying levels of knowledge, their accounts reflected what Modood (2005) described as a ‘common sense, folk typology’, characterised by a set of taken-for-granted assumptions that often reproduced Orientalist binaries (Said, 2003). However, their perceptions were simultaneously complex and contradictory and at times sought to challenge dominant frameworks, revealing the ambivalent nature of Orientalist thinking. Todd exemplified this, as he claimed to have a limited understanding of Muslims and Islam while confidently describing Islamic culture:

I don’t know too much [about Muslims and Islam], so I’m kind of ignorant … it's just, you know, the meat they eat, and you know their more conservative, and just the relationship between the men and women … but in terms of Muslim culture, I don’t really know a lot.

Despite claiming to be ignorant, Todd proceeded to identify Muslims and Islamic culture as ‘more conservative’ and male-dominated in terms of gender relations. His language also suggests he made sense of Muslims and Islam through an essentialist framework, referring to Muslims as ‘they’ while identifying a singular ‘Muslim culture’. This contradiction demonstrates how the fans claimed to ‘know’ the Other through their constructions, despite acknowledging a limited understanding. Sarah's account illustrated similar dynamics through constructing her sense of Self in opposition to a perceived cultural Other and justifying her indifference through liberal notions of multiculturalism:

We have a very multicultural society here [UK]. In my job, we deal with a lot of different cultures, and we do get a lot of Islams [sic] in, well, everyone really. Now the culture: I think everyone's got their own culture. [pause] I don’t necessarily agree with a lot of things.

In both Todd and Sarah's accounts, a sense of ambivalence obscures deeper assumptions grounded in cultural essentialism. While Sarah expressed support for multiculturalism, she simultaneously positioned Muslims (‘Islams’) as inherently different. Drawing on her nursing experience, she later claimed that: ‘women are very much controlled [in Islamic cultures]’, contrasting this with her own sense of freedom: ‘I’m a women living in a free culture, and I know what it's like to have rights’. As Saha (2018) argues, such discourses are grounded in a form of ‘cultural racism’, where Muslims are racialised not just by the colour of their skin but also through assumptions about culture.

Stephen focused on the religious aspects of Islam as a key source of difference, as he explained:

I don’t really know a great deal about it [Islam] … The Muslims I’ve met are nice, reasonable people … People say it's the religion of peace, but they say it ironically. Every religion has got it's absolute nuttas.

Like Sarah and other England supporters interviewed, Stephen adopted an apparently tolerant position but simultaneously reproduced problematic discourses and contradictions. Despite denying prejudice, his comment about Islam and peace implies a sense of scepticism, as he implicitly suggests associations between Islam and violence. This position exemplifies what Kumar (2021) argued about sustaining the ‘myth’ of the Other – an implicit belief that Islam is linked to violence – that allows stereotypes to persist. Furthermore, Stephen's secular/non-secular framing suggests the fans’ perceptions of the tournament were shaped by assumptions about Islam's role in organising Qatari social life. Ian's travel decision explicitly demonstrated this:

I’m ambivalent when it comes to all religions … Islam has different strains … the issue in Qatar is that the strain of Islam [pause] are they Sunni or Shia? … That would dictate certain laws and policies on alcohol, and women, things like that. That's why we’re going to Dubai because it is a different strain of Islam to Qatar.

Ian's decision to stay in Dubai rather than Qatar during the tournament was based on his perception that Dubai is governed by a ‘less stringent’ version of Islam. Despite acknowledging uncertainty about the different denominations, this distinction confidently shaped his World Cup plans. This illustrates what Haldrup et al. (2006) identified as the embodied dimension of practical Orientalism, as Ian's decision was based on an imagined and anticipated sensory experience (alcohol availability) rather than actual cultural knowledge. Here, the Other is not merely an abstraction but is transformed into a meaningful presence that actively informs behaviour, and where cultural difference influences everyday decision-making.

These accounts all reproduce broader ideological frameworks of Orientalism (Said, 2003). However, while their perceptions implicitly reflect stereotypical assumptions, they are not entirely one-dimensional. For example, both Ian and Sarah challenged some media and wider social portrayals of Muslims and Islam:

The media tends to portray Islam as a rigid idea and concept and doesn’t explain that there's freedoms within the different types of Islam … It's like one idea, one concept. You are either Muslim, or you are not. And of course, that's not the case.

You’ve got bad people in every country … that's not Islam, and I think that's where it comes from, like Al-Qaeda and the rest of it. So, every Islams dusted with the same brush which is wrong.

Their accounts are not as binary as classical Orientalist frameworks; instead, they are marked by nuance and complexity. This lends weight to Jackman's (1994) argument that everyday relations, particularly within unequal societies, where systems of domination and subordination, such as those perpetuated through Orientalist ideologies, are characterised by emotional complexity and ambivalence. On the one hand, Ian and Sarah challenge dominant discourses – albeit from a position of authority – but on the other, they reproduce particular stereotypes of Muslims and Islam. This illustrates how fans selectively accept or reject dominant representations from a position of epistemic control as they decide what is and what is not tolerable (Hage, 2001; Said, 2003). This suggests that fans are not passive receivers of Oriental discourses; their views are fluid, mobile, and shaped by a complex interplay of personal histories, media influence and cultural assumptions. However, as indicated by Ian, their preconceptions and sense of authority do not exist solely as textual representations; they manifest in practice, as the following section introduces.

Consuming the Other: Self-Orientalism and authenticity

All England supporters in this study reported enjoying their World Cup experiences, with Stephen noting in his first and second diary entries: ‘the place [Qatar] is absolutely brilliant, [and] my opinion of the place seems to be getting better and better’. This enjoyment was shaped by a tournament environment that alleviated the fans’ initial anxieties around cultural differences whilst simultaneously providing a space where their Oriental imaginaries could temporarily be invoked through manufactured sensory encounters with an ‘authentic’ Islamic culture.

The (limited) availability of alcohol, the ‘amazing transportation system’, an army of international volunteers and the familiar organisation of the tournament, shaped by what Cohen (1972) coined an ‘environmental bubble’, permitted fans to engage with the Other from a position of security and control. Within this ‘bubble’, visible cultural markers provided supporters with an opportunity to consume Islamic culture symbolically. Fans drew on discourses of authenticity shaped by their pre-existing Oriental imaginaries as psychological mechanisms to determine which experiences were authentically Islamic and thereby ‘authentic’, revealing how practical Orientalism manifests through everyday cultural encounters. For instance, fans embraced certain experiences as representing what they understood Islamic culture to be, particularly those that confirmed or aligned with their pre-existing expectations and beliefs of Islamic cultures. Thus, some selective engagement appeared to challenge Oriental frameworks while reinforcing underlying perceptions of Muslims and Islam. Ian's reflection of a day trip to the Emirate of Sharjah illustrated this:

We went to Sharjah one day, which is one of the Emirates just north of Dubai. Sharjah is completely dry [no alcohol]. There's nowhere where you can get a drink.

A day trip to Sharjah represented a place of difference, and one that closely aligned with Ian's Oriental (and authentic) imagery of Islamic societies, evidenced by its Islamic conservatism. However, Ian's decision to stay in Dubai was grounded in his belief that it was not a typical ‘authentic’ Islamic destination, yet simultaneously he still expected to encounter ‘strangeness’ (visiting Sharjah). Here, the Other becomes something to be observed from a safe distance rather than engaged with meaningfully. It is a place characterised as culturally distinct and timeless. This reveals a central mechanism of how Orientalism manifests in practice, with Ian selectively engaging with what he perceives as Islamic culture on his own terms based on pre-existing interpretative frameworks of authenticity.

This selective and contradictory engagement was complicated by other cultural encounters in which the host – Qatar – actively sought to engage fans in consuming culture. Stephen's reflection of a photograph of him sitting in a traditional Bedouin tent exemplified this:

I imagine it was there on purpose because it was in a sort of metropolitan area where you usually wouldn’t find that sort of thing. So, it's probably symbolic of the culture, encouraging people to get involved with the culture and trying to make it a bit more authentic.

Stephen acknowledged the manufactured nature of the Bedouin tent, yet, for him, it still represented something more ‘authentic’ amongst the surrounding modernity of Doha. This juxtaposition of the interplay between traditional symbols and modern skyscrapers provided the fans with a stylised, accessible version of authenticity that invited them to engage with culture in a way that was consumable and comfortable. When understood against the backdrop of practical Orientalism, Stephen's physical presence and act of taking a photograph inside the tent transformed his Oriental imaginary into a lived sensuous experience (Haldrup et al., 2006).

However, it also illustrates a broader performative dynamic, as Stephen believed Qatar was actively constructing a specific image to meet Western expectations. This serves as an example of the role of self-Orientalism – how the Other consciously presents themselves in ways that reinforce dominant Western stereotypes, but from a position of agency and control (Bryce, 2007) – in how different actors with varying degrees of local knowledge and cultural authority negotiate cultural experiences. Unlike Orientalism, which assumes power is concentrated by the West, the Bedouin tent demonstrated how Qatar actively highlighted particular elements of their heritage to not only satisfy fans but to dictate the nature of cultural encounters in specific spaces where opportunities for spontaneity, miscommunication, or negative encounters could be mitigated.

The commodification of customised thawbs – long white garments traditionally worn by men across the Arabian Peninsula – further exemplified self-Orientalism and the embodiedness of Orientalism. As I observed in Qatar, fans from different nationalities could be seen wearing this form of clothing in stadiums, fan parks, and throughout the city, with each thawb decorated with the flag of a competing national team on the back. These garments are the most visible way in which Qataris assert their national identity (Fromherz, 2012) and enable fans to symbolically align themselves with local customs while expressing their own national identity, as Todd and Sarah explained:

It's cool. Your kind of fitting in, but you’re still representing your own country … I found a bodysuit [thawb] but I had to barter with the guy.

I loved it [the thawbs] … no one seemed to be really bothered [by fans wearing them], you know because they’re making money.

The themed thawbs became a salient expression of Qatar's attempt to reshape the relationship between host and fan on its own cultural terms, while also revealing how discourses of authenticity rely on both the fans’ imaginaries and the hosts’ reproduction of them. This permitted Qatar to profit from the fans’ stereotypes while controlling which aspects of their culture were visible and consumable. For Todd and Sarah, these garments were perceived as representative of an ‘authentic’ Islamic culture, and their visibility helped determine the level of engagement fans were willing to pursue. The fans were happy to observe, and in some cases actively indulge in, this form of cultural exchange, grounded in the hosts’ preferred framework of representation, even though it was a more performative act.

These self-Orientalist strategies reduced a particular iteration of Islamic culture to a commodity for Western consumption, with the cultural and religious nuances of how people dress overlooked, while simultaneously creating a limited opportunity for cultural understanding. Sarah, for instance, inadvertently developed a more grounded understanding of local dress alongside her pre-existing beliefs, noting that thawbs were worn because ‘there very cooling’ and stop people from ‘sweating straight away’ in the Doha heat. Authenticity discourses, then, as a manifestation of Orientalism, can operate alongside forms of cultural learning. Ian's purchase of a Keffiyeh, crystallised the embodied nature of cultural engagement most clearly:

I bought one of the Arab head things in Dubai [proceeds to show me an image on his phone] … this was an authentic, proper one … which is a piece of traditional Arabic clothing.

Despite demonstrating little cultural knowledge, evidenced by the irony of his comment, Ian's decision to wear the Keffiyeh enabled him to temporarily participate in what he perceived to be Islamic culture. Thus, permitting him to embody cultural difference, while simultaneously speaking from a position of authority over Islamic authenticity and tradition. The act of wearing a Keffiyeh became more symbolic than developing an actual understanding of the cultural significance of the garment for those who wear it.

Collectively, these cultural encounters often maintained symbolic boundaries framing the West as modern and the East as traditional, while rarely disrupting dominant Oriental assumptions (Said, 2003). The fans’ consumption of cultural symbols, often through self-Orientalist strategies, served to reinforce existing imaginaries. It was evident that the fans were both observers and active participants in this process, as they consumed cultural products while simultaneously deciding what was and was not authentically Islamic – a key mechanism in how Orientalism manifests in practice. This mechanism became even more apparent through other embodied experiences that sought to challenge their pre-existing beliefs and expectations.

Nando's and Shawarma: contesting authenticity

However, a clear paradox emerged within the fans’ accounts: while accepting some commodified experiences as authentic cultural encounters and developing limited knowledge, the supporters also questioned and contested other experiences as inauthentic. This contradiction illustrates the process of how fans maintained a sense of authority throughout their experiences as they made sense of Qatar against simplistic ideas of what an ‘authentic’ Islamic society should look like. To illustrate this process most clearly, it is worth briefly introducing another England fan, Ken, who stayed in both Dubai and Doha at different stages of the tournament. His reflection captured the complexity of this dynamic:

The impression I got was that this looks okay. It wasn’t as Arabic – or what I thought Arabic was in my head. If you know what I mean. Because I thought it might be more Arabic.

Ken's honest acknowledgement that he did not know what to expect, nor could he articulate his expectation, nevertheless conveyed his desire to encounter difference based on his perception of what ‘Arabic’ culture should be. Thus, inadvertently, not only does he believe an ‘Arabic’ culture exists as a single entity that can be experienced, consumed and understood, but he also highlights the contested nature of ‘authenticity’. Even when his experiences sought to challenge his assumptions, he was reluctant to accept new information, preferring to dismiss his experiences as ‘Western-oriented’. This suggests discourses of authenticity coincide with, rather than completely replace, participants’ ability for self-learning and reflection, as Ken questioned his pre-existing beliefs while using it to dismiss his experiences as ‘not as authentic’.

The four main participants that this article focuses on similarly made sense of their experiences through preconceived ideas, as they described Qatar and Dubai as ‘Westernised’ and insufficiently Islamic. Consequently, it was evident the fans felt a sense of dissatisfaction with their experiences, with Ian reflecting:

There's a big shopping culture there and a lot of well-to-do people in Dubai who were very Westernised … you could have been anywhere … it was all very staged managed there was no authenticity … [and] it lacked the verve and joy [of previous World Cup destinations].

Despite earlier describing his Keffiyeh purchase as a representation of an ‘authentic’ culture experience, praising the infrastructure of Dubai and Doha throughout the interview, and deciding to stay in Dubai instead of Doha because he perceived it as ‘less’ Islamic, Ian suggested his overall experience was unsatisfactory. Sarah simply noted: ‘It's not the sort of place I’d rush back to [Qatar]’. The perceived modernity of both Dubai and Doha contributed to a sense of dissatisfaction, not because of an absence of culture, but because the complexity and modernity of these places challenged their predisposed beliefs about the Other.

The fans’ interpretation of local cuisine further challenged their perceptions of the host and revealed how authenticity manifests to actively reconstruct Orientalist thought as opposed to simply confirming existing stereotypes. Stephen's culinary disappointment captured this:

The food was absolutely spot on, I thought. I had a lot of shawarma … we went to a couple of places in the mall, which probably weren’t like authentic. We went to Qatari Pizza Hut and McDonald's so all the traditional Qatari food [sarcastic laugh].

He further added:

There wasn’t a lot advertised in terms of what Qatari food even is … it was all your franchised … even Nando's … it was a bit too Americanised to really get an authentic experience.

Although broadly satisfied with the food options, and his consumption of shawarmas suggests he developed some understanding of local cuisine, Stephen ultimately described it as lacking authenticity. This disappointment, however, was not because of the absence of local cuisine, but rather because he did not actively seek it out or understand what it actually was. Stephen critiqued the prevalence of global brands, whilst seemingly making little effort to seek local cuisine beyond what was immediately advertised to him. This expectation highlights how Orientalist assumptions shape cultural encounters in practice. Stephen expected the host culture to present itself in an easily consumable fashion, rather than through interpretive effort, while simultaneously revealing how discourses of authenticity actively reconstruct Orientalist thought when sensory expectations are not met, for example, his account suggests shawarmas were not exotic enough.

Ian's critique of a Saudi fan zone exemplified similar expectations:

We went to the Saudi Arabia fan park … we asked if we could order some Arabic coffee, and they said no, we’ve only got flat white … you were going there for the authentic thing, and it wasn’t like that.

Here, Ian critiqued the offerings as inauthentic, despite actively seeking out a simplified ‘authentic’ experience he could easily consume, like purchasing an Arabic coffee from a fan zone designed to simulate cultural attraction. This contradiction reveals how authenticity discourses function, as fans expected to encounter ‘strangeness’ on their own terms, in a way that was visible, accessible and easily consumable, yet they became dissatisfied when their lived reality did not conform to those expectations. The Other should be exotic, traditional and distinct, with any experiences deviating from this rendered illegitimate.

The fans’ culinary disappointment reveals the olfactory dimension of practical Orientalism identified by Haldrup et al. (2006), while also demonstrating how their embodied experiences did not meet their expectations of encountering ‘strangeness’. Yet rather than disrupting their imaginaries, discourses of authenticity served to reconstruct Oriental logic, as they assumed a ‘strangeness’ was just out of reach and exists elsewhere. Stephen, for instance, suggested that he felt ‘cocooned’ in the World Cup environment and that it was not ‘sort of authentic Qatar’. The World Cup environment for some fans, but not all, seemingly represented a barrier to cultural exploration and understanding, while acting as a mechanism that enabled fans like Stephen to selectively engage with cultural markers like the Bedouin tent, or eating shawarmas and dismiss unsatisfactory experiences as a product of the constraints of the tournament.

Collectively, the England fans’ experiences reveal how authenticity acts as a manifestation of Orientalism during cultural encounters. For instance, when the supporters’ embodied experiences sought to challenge their Oriental imaginaries, they chose to question and contest the encounters as ‘inauthentic’. This permitted them to maintain a sense of epistemic control over defining what Islamic culture is and is not, rendering the Orient powerless by denying complexity and modernity (Said, 2003). Accordingly, their Oriental imaginaries remained mostly unchanged. However, this was not an all-encompassing process, as the analysis revealed; some fans (Sarah) developed a limited cultural understanding alongside authenticity discourses, demonstrating the complexity of cultural encounters.

Despite some fans suggesting that the World Cup environment shielded them from everyday Qatari life, few made a meaningful effort to engage more deeply, as Todd noted, ‘that's my fault because it was not a balanced schedule, it was football heavy and pub heavy’. Critically, through their experiences, their understanding of Muslims and Islam remained unchanged. Stephen's final diary admitted: ‘my opinion of Muslims hasn’t changed in a negative way at all.’’ Although seemingly positive, this reveals how even when fans encounter different people, places and cultures, dominant Oriental frameworks are rarely disrupted. For these England supporters, the 2022 World Cup was limited in fostering transformative socio-cultural impacts beyond the event setting itself. This raises critical questions about what forms of cultural encounters could meaningfully disrupt Oriental imaginaries. Transformative experiences would likely require sustained engagement with local Muslims and Islamic culture, such as guided tours, participatory community events or homestays. Such encounters could enable fans to move beyond superficial interpretations and negotiate complexity and nuance, as Sarah's understanding of thawbs began to illustrate, potentially disrupting Oriental imaginaries and leaving lasting impressions on supporters.

Conclusion

This article reveals how England fans made sense of Muslims and Islam during the 2022 World Cup, finding that their perceptions and understanding remained largely unchanged despite embodied experiences in an Islamic society. Through a longitudinal ‘pre-during-post’ methodology that followed the journeys of four fans, this article demonstrates how Orientalist frameworks are both reproduced and contested within a sports mega-event staged in an Islamic society, highlighting how fans simultaneously challenged and reproduced dominant assumptions in contradictory ways. For example, they drew on particular stereotypes while also challenging them. Evidently, this further demonstrates how Orientalism functions in practice, what Haldrup et al. (2006) termed ‘practical Orientalism’.

Critically, the findings reveal a central paradox. The fans were ultimately disappointed by their socio-cultural ‘Islamic’ experiences, not because of an absence of culture, but because of the disjuncture between their predispositions and the complex realities of modern, globalised Islamic societies. As illustrated throughout, discourses of authenticity maintained the fans’ sense of epistemic control over their cultural encounters as they sought to define what was and was not ‘authentic’ Islamic culture. This shows authenticity as a key mechanism through which Orientalist frameworks manifest in practice, as fans’ embodied encounters with an Islamic society reinforced rather than disrupted existing power relations and imaginaries.

The World Cup functioned as a ‘bubble’ that permitted the fans to experience ‘strangeness’ from a position of familiarity and security (Cohen, 1972). However, this ‘bubble’ served to reinforce rather than challenge their Orientalist imaginaries. When fans engaged with local culture through commodified, self-Orientalist encounters such as wearing themed thawbs that aligned with their pre-existing beliefs, these limited and superficial exchanges confirmed rather than disrupted their preconceptions. Conversely, when other experiences challenged their Orientalist imaginaries, they dismissed them as ‘inauthentic’ rather than accept the new information. Their dissatisfaction simultaneously stemmed from encountering modernity and complexity when they expected to see the ‘exotic’ and, in some instances, not actively seeking out local culture or heritage. This demonstrates how Orientalist thought not only predisposed how the fans engaged with Qatar and the region but also provided a framework that shaped how they made sense of their experiences when their perceptions were challenged.

Theoretically, this is the first study to apply Said's (2003) Orientalism in a sporting context through a bottom-up analysis of fans’ lived experiences, shifting the focus away from top-down processes. By examining ‘practical Orientalism’, this paper makes an original contribution to knowledge by revealing how dominant ideological frameworks manifest within the everyday practices of football fandom through authenticity discourses. The analysis complicates Said's (2003) dichotomy by highlighting how fans’ perceptions of Muslims and Islam are complex, contradictory and transient. This further illustrates how Orientalist assumptions can operate through an apparent liberal tolerance of multicultural narratives.

The longitudinal ‘pre-during-post’ methodological approach underpins these contributions by providing original insight into how Orientalism operates in practice. As noted earlier, while participant ‘fatigue’ occurred with audio-visual diaries during the event, limiting the temporal depth of in-situ reflections, this demonstrated the flexibility of the multiple methods approach rather than constituting a limitation, as it still permitted a detailed lens into fans’ lived experiences. Furthermore, the methodology permitted a holistic temporal insight into fans’ perceptions and reflections, while grounding Orientalism in their own language rather than serving as an abstraction. I argue that future scholarship on sports mega-events, Muslims, Islam and the Arabian Peninsula would benefit from methodological approaches that capture in-situ experiences, particularly building upon the utilisation of audio-visual diaries. This methodology could integrate more situated knowledge across temporary sporting events in the region, unearthing further issues of power, politics and positionalities.

Beyond the theoretical and methodological contributions of this study, and as acknowledged throughout, there are limitations of this study. First, the decision to focus on four fans inevitably narrows the scope and breadth of England fan experiences captured in Qatar and the wider Arabian Peninsula. Second, the demographic homogeneity of the supporters means the findings reflect a specific case study rather than offering insights that can be generalised to the wider population of England supporters or other national fan groups. These limitations position this study as exploratory in nature – one that signposts theoretical and empirical questions while also establishing a methodological foundation for future studies.

As Arabian Peninsula states will likely exhibit greater authority within the international sporting arena, with events like the 2034 FIFA Men's World Cup in Saudi Arabia (Taylor et al., 2023), the mobility of sports fans and other actors to the region will likely continue. However, given the paucity of academic scholarship on football supporters’ perceptions and experiences in this context, there is scope for further research. In particular, building upon this article's findings, notably on the persistence of Orientalist discourses within sporting events and the role of authenticity discourses in maintaining control, future scholarship should focus on the role of self-Orientalism in different sporting contexts, as well as exploring whether alternative forms of engagement via different sporting events staged in the region (like the Formula 1 Grand Prix) might challenge rather than reproduce dominant narratives when Western fans encounter Islamic societies. Such approaches could deepen our understanding of how sports events might function as sites where anti-Muslim sentiment is negotiated, reproduced, and potentially challenged from below.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the England fans who took part in this study for generously sharing their experiences, perceptions, and time. I am extremely grateful for their trust and thoughtful contributions. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr Daniel Burdsey and Dr Nigel Jarvis for their valuable feedback on an earlier version of this article.

Author’s note

The researcher has moved to a new institute since completing this research: Dr Tom Taylor, School of Health, Life Sciences and Education, University College Birmingham, United Kingdom.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the University of Brighton's Tier 2 Ethics Committee (REF: 2022-9013-Taylor) on 5 May 2022.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Informed consent

All participants provided written informed consent prior to enrolment in the study, using electronic forms for the majority and one paper-based signed form.

ORCID iD

Tom Taylor

Notes

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