a sad part of me can't get away from the uncomfortable and distasteful suspicion that there's an element of racism involved when people are criticising the Saudi regime, whereas they don't seem to have the same distaste for the laws, for example, in Singapore (where a woman was executed this week).
Well, like others... I think that's rubbish, mate. However, I would remind you that although most general football forums are in English... a number of posters critical of the Saudi and Qatar regimes are not just 'Westerners' with some sort of racist agenda against Qatar, Saudi, Arabs, the Gulf or Islam
(or anything like that)... but people from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and African countries who have first hand knowledge, experience and have suffered whilst working for such regimes. Also, along with their friends , families, countrymen (and women) etc.
The PR playbook for the 2022 Qatari World Cup was to accuse those criticising Qatar of racism... "the West did this", you are "Islamophobic", "Western Colonialism", "Western values" the "US and allies...", or "the UK did this... " and it backfired spectacularly when those criticising pointed out they were from these counties listed above - or from Qatari exiles themselves.
Or the many people from South America, and Central America, Oceania, and Asia, also critical of Qatar too.
And other muslins criticising the treatment of others by those in charge of Qatar
(and now Saudi).
Not to mention a number of people actually from the US, UK, and Europe pointing out the whataboutery of the Qatari defenders - to which there was little effective comeback from the PR companies and pro-Qatar 'fans'.
Those expensive PR firms
(hello Portland) were not bafflingly unprepared for that - had no prepared 'plan B' or fallback - and looked like the highly overpriced, self-important, arrogant idiots they are. A quick look in the various Sportwashing threads, and the 2020 Qatar World Cup threads on here demonstrate this throughout, as well as reddits, and other social media platforms. Even the PR-organised belated block 'downvoting' of anyone who spoke out against Qatar only really served to magnify what was going on.
So no, there is likely far less perceived 'racism' than you may believe there to be... when you see others speaking out online vs Saudi and Qatar etc.