It is the founder, bankroller and controller of al-Jazeera, which is playing such a pivotal role in inspiring the Arab Spring. Yet its fabulously wealthy ruling family led by the Emir, the Sandhurst-trained Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, 59, is as autocratic and non-democratic as any of the Middle Eastern despots the broadcaster is viewed as having helped overthrow or place under siege.
In country after country, al-Jazeera's widely admired reporting is seen to stir revolution in the Arab world.
At the same time, that has not stopped the conundrum that Qatar is coming to the aid of other autocratic regimes.
When demands for freedom and democracy led to an uprising against the ruling al-Khalifa family in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia sent forces to prop up the regime, Qatar joined in. It despatched 500 soldiers to suppress the mainly Shia demonstrators, even though the anti-government forces had backing from Iran, with which Qatar has close relations.
Conversely, when the uprising started against Muammar Gaddafi's brutal dictatorship in Libya, little Qatar became the first Arab state to join the NATO-led coalition, sending six French Mirage attack aircraft to assist it and recognising the Benghazi-based rebels as the legitimate government, outraging Gaddafi.
The "bundle of contradictions" doesn't end there: Qatar has friendly relations with Israel, yet is regarded as an honest broker by Iran's two regional catspaws, Hamas and Hezbollah. And while US officials have described Qatar's counter-terrorism co-operation as significant, go back a little further to the report of the official 9/11 Commission and there are claims Qataris, including members of the ruling family, gave support to al-Qa'ida that included a safe haven for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in the 1990s and financial assistance.
So, what to make of Qatar, the subject of so much controversy about alleged bribery and corruption surrounding the award of the 2022 FIFA World Cup? Can this small country just 160km long and 90km wide, with a population of 1.6 million, only about 350,000 of them native Qataris, remain untouched by the winds of change sweeping the Middle East?
The answer matters, and not just because of the power being wielded by Qatar's al-Jazeera network from its headquarters in Doha. For just south of the capital at al-Udeid the US maintains one of its biggest and most important bases, one vital to the conflict in Afghanistan and the largest pre-positioning facility in the world for US military equipment.
Qatar's wealth from its vast natural gas resources also mean it's the world's second-richest country in GDP per capita terms - $88,000 compared with Australia in 26th position on $36,700, making it a major player in global finance. Officials talk of having $130 billion to invest over the next five years. A former British protectorate, it has bought such icons as Harrods in London and about a quarter of the London Stock Exchange.
Besides the World Cup controversy it is al-Jazeera that has given Qatar the profile it has. Last December it was the broadcaster that focused on the self-immolation of the Tunisian street trader whose suicide was to lead to the overthrow of the Tunisian and then the Egyptian regimes and spark uprisings across the Arab world.
To what extent al-Jazeera's reporting of the Arab Spring reflects the influence exercised by Sheikh Hamad and his family is not obvious. Employees of al-Jazeera insist it is an independent broadcaster. They deny al-Jazeera has become a vehicle for propagating rapidly expanding Qatari influence across the Arab world and beyond.
Few believe that. Arab leaders complain bitterly about the broadcaster. The Iranians are furious, warning that it could threaten relations. George Bush is said to have been so incensed he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera's headquarters.
Not surprisingly, al-Jazeera, while it focuses closely on dissidence and uprisings in other countries, keeps away from reporting much about Qatar. It's a subject largely off limits. As much as that results from concern not to upset the ruling family, it is also a reflection of the reality that in Qatar there is little political rivalry.
One analyst has described Qatar as having "no politics". That, it seems, is the way the wily Sheikh Hamad likes things. Autocratic and absolute though he has been since seizing power from his father in a bloodless coup in 1995, he is, however, no brutal despot of the Tunisian Ben Ali or Egyptian Mubarak mould. Far from it.
In a UN speech in 1996, he presciently argued the case for political liberalisation, berating fellow Arab leaders for using the Israeli-Palestine conflict as an excuse to delay reform.
Within Qatar he has carried out a program of cautious liberalisation that, while not in any sense democratic, has, for example, allowed full rights to women and permitted limited political representation at a municipal level. Power, however, rests almost exclusively in the hands of the Emir.
Thus far, despite al-Jazeera's role in firing up the Arab Spring elsewhere, there appears to be no challenge to his authority and that of the ruling family. Perhaps that's not as much of a paradox as it seems, given the extraordinary wealth that most Qataris enjoy.
Remarkably, none of the ferment and fury that has become al-Jazeera's daily staple has yet touched Qatar, and nor does it seem likely to do so. The broadcaster hasn't had to turn its reporting skills to events at home. And that is as much a relief to Sheikh Hamad as it is to FIFA.
