Hamad bin Khalifa

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (born in 1950 in Doha, Qatar) is the current Emir of Qatar.

He graduated in 1971 from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in United Kingdom. While his father, Emir Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani was staying in Geneva, Switzerland, he overthrew him in a bloodless coup in 1995 and started modernizing the country.

He is best known in the West for providing a home to and funding the popular Al Jazeera television news network. Because of this, Hamad has often been criticized by the United States government for allegedly "taking sides" in the war in Iraq and the Palestinian intifada. However, Sheikh Hamad is the staunchest ally of the United States in the Middle East and Qatar is home to campuses of American universities in the Middle East in a path-breaking project of the Qatar Foundation called Education City run by the Emir's wife Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned , a visionary leader in her own right. The Heir Apparent is currently Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani.

See also

• List of national leaders
• List of emirs of Qatar

External links

• official site of His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani
• official site of Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned