He was born with half a body.. Who is the young Qatari who opened the World Cup with a Quranic verse?

The Qatari young man, Ghanim Al-Muftah, started the opening ceremony of the 2022 World Cup by reciting a Quranic verse, after he appeared alongside the famous American actor Morgan Freeman on the grounds of the Al-Bayt stadium.

In the past six months, the name of the young Qatari Ghanem Al-Moftah has emerged as one of the inspiring and influential names in Qatar and the world, despite the fact that he was born with half a body.

Al-Miftah was born on May 5, 2002 in the Qatari capital, Doha. Since birth, he has suffered from a disease called “caudal retraction” syndrome, also known as “caudal regression” or “sacral dysgenesis”, which is a rare congenital disorder that occurs as a result of the lower part of the spine not forming properly. complete before birth.

This disease affects one person out of 25,000 cases in the world, and accordingly, the Qatari Ghanem Al-Muftah lived his life with half a body after losing a large part of his bones, due to this disease.

reconcile with his body.
Without lower limbs, Al-Muftah continued his life, moving using his hands and in a wheelchair. He studied, worked hard and learned, until he became one of the active people in the Qatari society, and then the world. Al-Ghanim said in one of the videos: “Since I was young, I learned to reconcile with myself, and with things that I cannot change, so I reconciled with my body, I reconciled with my appearance.” And he added: “By the grace of God, I have reached the conviction that God – Glory be to Him – created me in the best form, and that my pains and pains were healed with patience, praise and supplication.”
Al-Ghanim explained: “Reconciliation with things that we cannot change is strength and not weakness, happiness and not misery, hope and not pain. I have accepted my body and thank God for it.”

World Cup ambassador
And in the first days of April 2022, the Supreme Committee of the Qatar World Cup announced the appointment of Al-Muftah as an official ambassador for the tournament, which is being held for the first time in the Arab world.

Al-Muftah did not hide his extreme joy and pride in this choice, by publishing a short tweet on his official account on the social networking site “Twitter”.

Ghanem Al-Muftah strived a lot to motivate his peers with disabilities and difficulties, so he authored several books and published several related publications. The most important of Al-Muftah’s books is the book “Ghanim is Always the Winner”, which was sponsored by the Supreme Council for Family Affairs in Qatar. The number of 20-year-old Al-Ghanem’s followers on the social networking site “Instagram” has exceeded the three million mark.

Muftah Al-Ghanim served as a goodwill ambassador for the Reach Out to Asia Foundation in 2015, and he also participated in the United Nations Youth Forum.