Last week, OutSmart introduced Dr. Nas Mohamed and his Love Is the Goal campaign, launched to spotlight queer visibility during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Now, Mohamed turns to symbolism and fashion to tell a more personal chapter of that story.
This is the second story in OutSmart’s coverage of Dr. Nas Mohamed’s Love Is the Goal campaign at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Read the first story here.
When Dr. Nasser “Nas” Mohamed attended Qatar’s World Cup match in San Francisco on June 13, 2026, he wasn’t simply showing up as a soccer fan. He was showing up as a queer Arab determined to reclaim a symbol that many people in his home region have been taught to fear.
For Mohamed, one of the most meaningful elements of his World Cup appearance was an Arabian bisht that he designed himself, woven with threads inspired by the rainbow flag. “The story of the rainbow hasn’t reached us,” Mohamed points out. “It’s like a shadow. Is it reassuring or is it scary? It depends on the story of the shadow.”
That idea became central to his Love Is the Goal campaign, which uses the 2026 FIFA World Cup as a platform for LGBTQ+ visibility and human connection. Around the world, the rainbow flag has become a widely recognized symbol of queer identity. But Mohamed says that for many people in Arab countries, the symbol often arrives stripped of context. “When they see the rainbow, it’s foreign,” he explains. “The words associated with it are foreign. The bodies that carry it are foreign.”
His goal is to change that narrative. “I have woven threads of that rainbow into my Arabian bisht, the garment that I put on,” Mohamed recounts. The symbolism is both deeply personal and universally accessible. “I told them that a stranger, where I stand, put my Arabian bisht back on my shoulders after many years and took me to the stadium to watch my team play. And that is the story of the rainbow.”
The metaphor of the rainbow extends beyond sexuality. “When a beam of light hits a drop of rain, fractures, and turns into all the different colors you see, you need to not panic when you see them and remember that each shade is light,” he adds.
For Mohamed, that message is ultimately about belonging. “So from that day on, when people remember and see a rainbow, they’re not going to say it’s an invasion of ideas and a foreign concept,” he adds. “It is the story of Nas from Qatar.”
And perhaps, he hopes, it can become the story of countless others as well.
