Mirth has never been high on the agenda of the troubled Middle East but here's a line which raised a laugh when I was there last week: People in Qatar, Dubai and Kuwait don't get the Flinstones on TV. But those in Abu Dhabi do.

Boom boom!

This may be a pretty corny way to focus on this fascinating part of the world but it is no joke to say that the Middle East is becoming a very big player indeed in international sport. And it did not take the recent staging of the Laureus World Sports Awards in the seven-star sumptuousness of Abu Dhabi's Emirates Palace to remind us that we have seen nothing yet.

Abu Dhabi's Laureus bash exceeded, in sheer lavishness, all the glitz and glamour that had gone before in  Monte Carlo, Lisbon, Barcelona and St Petersburg in these annual sporting Oscars.

It truly was an Arabian night to behold

The was the latest global spectacular to be staged in citadels that have become such profitable oases in sport's desert song.

Numerous golf classics, tennis played on the rooftop of the world's most luxurious hotel in Dubai, a Formula One Grand Prix, the world's richest horse race, showpiece cricket, world athletics championships, world rugby sevens- and even a UK Premiership rugby match.

And now, of course the real biggie, the football World Cup itself to be held in the sultry heat of Qatar in 2022.

Next stop the Olympic Games? Don't bet against the old five-ringed circus rolling up in Dubai, Doha or even Abu Dhabi within the next couple of decades. Yet can anyone name a single sporting superstar from the Middle East?

No matter. For there seem no sport that these oil-rich nations can't buy or bankroll, thus giving sport the proverbial sheikh-up.

We have seen back home how that Middle East influence is  permeating our domestic sport too. Not just on the Turf but with rival sponsoring airlines flags of Emirates (Dubai) and Etihad (Abu Dhabi) flying over Arsenal and Manchester City respectively. And now there have been rumours of a Manchester United take-over from Qatar.

That influence is growing not only in the hosting of major sporting gigs but in sport's corridors of power, notably the IOC where Middle Eastern royalty and riches are big players in the movement.

The latest recruit is Jordan's Prince Feisal, a good guy and genuine sports lover who looks set to be a rising star in the Movement, while his younger brother Prince Ali was elected as FIFA vice-president last month and could be an eventual successor to Sepp Blatter. Their sister  Princess Haya - married to Dubai ruler and racing  potentate Sheikh Maktoum, heads FEI, the international equestrian governing body.



Jordan is one of the more enlightened Arab nations, but at least sport has brought increasing liberalism - hopefully not just superficially - to the Gulf States.

Alas, however, one Middle East nation remains desperately out of touch in this respect. Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis have the stadia and the financial wherewithal to stage both the Olympics and the World Cup. But they never will. Not will they ever host any significant global event unless they change their feudal ways.

Because in Saudi Arabia women are not only forbidden to play sport in public, they are actually forbidden to watch it.

Five years ago I went to Mecca. No, not a sudden religious conversion  by this incorrigible infidel - I was invited there to attend the first Islamic Games.

A total of 7,000 athletes from 54 Islamic countries competing in 13 sports over a fortnight. Other than the Olympics themselves, they claimed no bigger multi-sports extravaganza has ever been staged.

They promised us "something unique, something different". Well, it is certainly that.  No booze, of course – and not a woman in sight.  Surely this was the nearest a sports event has been to the days of the original Olympics in Ancient Greece, where females were also barred from playing and peeping.

The stadium had loos in abundance, but significantly none were marked "Ladies".

For some of us old enough to remember, a Friday night at Mecca years ago meant smooching around the local ballroom to the strains of Joe Loss. Here, another sort of song and dance was going on, a mind-boggling piece of Arabesque. As the searing sun dipped behind the dunes, and the all-male athletes grouped behind their banners, more than 3,000 students re-enacted the religious, romantic and oft-times violent history of Mecca. All it lacked was a woman's touch.

Saudi remains the only such chauvinistic bastion left in the Olympic Movement, much to their frustration of some strident female IOC  voices, among them the world's foremost Muslim woman Olympian, Nawal el Moutawakel, the Moroccan who so bravely leapt the hurdles in her homeland.

And the American lawyer Anita DeFranz  who has said: "We keep asking them why not?"  But the Saudis decline to answer.

While in was in Saudi I was told that  IOC president Jacques Rogge, had written to their NOC warning that by 2012 he expected to see some movement towards female sports participation in one of the world's wealthiest sporting nations.

Obviously this yellow card has not been heeded. Saudi women remain excluded from sport. "It is our culture," shrug Saudi's rulers, burying their heads in the copious sand of their land.

South Africa were once expelled from the Olympic movement for their racial discrimination. So why are the Saudis allowed to practice their own sexist brand of apartheid?

This is a land where females still cannot drive on the roads, let alone off the first tee. Yet, as we indicated before, the Saudis, with all their resources, could probably stage the Olympics at the drop of a burqua.

As things stand they are set to be the only major participating nation not to include women in their Olympic team for 2012 but I hear that their no-girls-allowed team will face protests from equal rights and women's groups which threaten to disrupt the Games.

So is it not time for FIFA, with President Blatter making such public play for increasing women's roles in football, the feet-dragging IOC and other international sporting bodies to tell Saudi Arabia that unless they put their house in order – and that doesn't mean just getting the women to tidy it – they are  no longer welcome in world sport?

Alan  Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.