Book Review: Popular Culture and Political Identity in the Arab Gulf States by Alanoud Alsharekh and Robert Springborg (eds). London: Saqi, 2008.
By Samer Abboud
The premise of this collection of essays edited by Alanoud Alsharekh and Robert Springborg is a simple one: indigenous Gulf[1] culture remains peripheralized in the broader study of popular culture in the Arab World. Indeed, this is not merely an academic bias, but one that is reflected in the relative lack of Gulf cultural penetration of the region. This marginalization of Gulf culture tends to be reinforced by two contradictory stereotypes of the region. First, that it is a backwards region defined by tribalism, and second, that cosmopolitanism has undermined traditional culture (9-10). This collection of essays aims at confronting these stereotypes and engaging key questions of identity and culture in the contemporary Gulf. To do so, the contributions are framed by four overarching themes: the historicization of contemporary Gulf identity that links the region with its pre-oil past; how states foster collective memories of shared pasts; contemporary cultural expressions; and, finally, the implications of a dynamic regional popular culture on political cohesion, identity and authority.
Lawson and Naboodah begin the collection with an engaging chapter on the attempts by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government to preserve and display its cultural heritage. The authors detail a series of exhibits, symposiums and historical projects that they claim reflects a nascent nationalism in the UAE. Nadia Rahman discusses an oral history project, which is a part of these government efforts. Her contribution offers personal stories of elderly citizens of the UAE. The narratives of this older generation suggest both nostalgia for the simplicity of the past, and a pride in contemporary realities, including rapid economic development, growth and modernization.
Similarly, Khalaf’s contribution on Kuwait’s pearl diving heritage details Kuwaiti government attempts to (re)construct and (re)invent Kuwaiti identity through the annual Festival for the Commemoration of Pearl Diving and the celebration of the Kuwaiti Seaman’s Day. Through illustrations and personal narratives, Khalaf argues for the importance of these events in constructing a contemporary Kuwaiti identity. Mohammed Alkhozai provides another example of government led efforts at fostering collective identity. His chapter focuses on the cultural restoration efforts of the Bahraini government. Alkhozai uses before and after images to describe the restoration projects of five monuments: the Portugese Fort, Arad Faort, Riffa’ Forty, Sheikh Isa’s House and Aljasra House. These projects, he argues, have been central to Bahraini cultural development. Rich with visual aids, these three contributions are highly successful in demonstrating how government sponsored projects attempt to wed past and present, and in turn, how these are used to construct a contemporary national identity.
While the previous chapters stress the importance of the past in the construction of modern Gulf identities, the next grouping of essays deal with indigenous Gulf cultural expressions. An attempt is made by the authors to ground these expressions in a specific Gulf vernacular and identity. We find here excellent contributions on the centrality of football to forging cultural identities, and on the role of media in projecting a uniquely Gulf identity and culture to the rest of the world. These two chapters are slightly overshadowed by the excellent chapter on Gulf poetry by Nimah Ismail Nawwah. In this chapter, Nawwah introduces readers to a series of personal poems that deal with major social, political and cultural issues, including Palestine, the role of women, marriage and divorce, and freedom. These poems are used to convey to the reader the array of issues that shape contemporary Gulf poetry. Nawwah’s poems are powerful, insightful, and a wonderful addition to the book.
Source: Arab Media & Society, Book Review: Popular Culture and Political Identity in the Arab Gulf States by Alanoud Alsharekh and Robert Springborg (eds). London: Saqi, 2008.
Showing posts with label Khalij. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Khalij. Show all posts
Monday, 31 August 2009
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Inside Sharjah
To its critics, it is the ‘stone age emirate’, an incongruous pocket of puritanical conservatism. But for its growing influx of young families, Sharjah is a haven of traditional values, with a rich heritage and cultural vibrancy to rival its neighbours.
Jonaid Haque, his wife Sadaf, and Shahnaz, his mother, are all sitting in folding chairs on the small beach that encircles al Mamzar lagoon in Sharjah. We rest in the shade of their new Prado 4x4. Their daughter Daania, a precocious three-year-old, wearing a pale blue frock and squeaky black patent leather shoes, kneels just beyond the turquoise water’s reach, writing and rewriting everyone’s name in English script in the sand. Impressively, she gets them all half right. At an impasse she squeals, “Help me, Mummy!” in her mother’s native Sindhi. To the rest of us, in Urdu: “I want to go for ice cream now!”
On the other side of the lagoon, above the sand, a row of low concrete houses and palm trees sits on the horizon, remnants of the emirate’s less populated past. Sharjah’s tall new apartment buildings and those still under construction loom in the distance beyond. To our right, in the distance, is the silhouette of Burj Dubai and the rest of Dubai’s skyline. For a moment, it feels as if you are looking at Miami.
Of late, Sharjah’s reputation has been overshadowed by the towers of Dubai. But its political history and cultural present make it one of the most unusual emirates. Flirting with the new, embracing the old, Sharjah offers a unique laboratory to deconstruct clichés about tradition.
Jonaid, 35, a tall Pakistani with floppy hair, is a cabin steward for Emirates Airline. He moved to Dubai from Karachi eight years ago. Sadaf, 27, who is also a Karachi native, joined him there after their marriage in 2002. Wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, she smiles at Daania who, ice cream forgotten, is now engrossed in a seashell. I ask her, all things being equal, where she would rather live, Sharjah or Dubai. “It is too fast in Dubai. People don’t have time for family. Here it is more family-orientated, and honestly, I don’t ever see myself moving back to Dubai, even if we could afford it.”
One hundred thousand people move to Sharjah each year, many of them middle-class expats from South Asia and the Middle East. The emirate offers lower rents, relatively cheap education and a traditional identity explicitly rooted in Islam and Arab culture. The latter, along with the fact that most of the residents come from more or less the same social class, means that public space in Sharjah has a character unlike the other two urbanised emirates, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. There is no perceptible ethnic segregation in its neighbourhoods, and it is children and families, rather than young global jet-setters, who structure the demands of this space.
The city of Sharjah, the UAE’s third largest, lies just north of Dubai, an unpretentious appendage stuck to the side of its glamorous neighbour. The two cities are contiguous and form one conurbation with virtually no undeveloped land in between, but in Sharjah, the rate of development has not been on par with Dubai’s Commercial success. In a way, it has become the anti-Dubai; a place that offers what Dubai cannot.
If you search for Sharjah-related posts on the various blogs at www.uaecommunity.blogspot.com, the general tone is one of disdain. The emirate is routinely described as pre-modern, primarily because of the authors’ presumption that the “decency laws” make the place as puritanical as Saudi Arabia. On www.secretdubaidiary.blogspot.com, a banned but still popular site, Sharjah is almost always referred to as “the stone-age emirate”.
These laws, passed in 2001 – formally the “Decency and Public Conduct Rules and Objectives” – dictate rules on clothing, social interaction and living arrangements, in accordance with the emirate’s interpretation of Islam. Officially, they forbid men from wearing “very short shorts” and going shirtless, women from wearing clothes that expose their stomachs and backs, skirts above the knee and tight and transparent clothing.
Most notoriously, women and men “not in a legally acceptable relationship” are forbidden from being alone together both in public and private. In addition, alcohol has been banned in the emirate since the late-1980s. Legal pronouncements such as these have helped to cement Sharjah’s reputation as the most socially conservative emirate.
I ring the doorbell and Jonaid invites me into a comfortable flat whose spacious living room is thickly decorated with souvenirs from his weekly trips to Europe, Asia and Africa. He leads me into the master bedroom where his mother and Sadaf sit cross-legged on the bed, having tea. Jonaid’s cousin Abid, a sales executive who also moved to Sharjah from Dubai two years ago, reclines on the couch as Daania presents him with his portrait on an Etch A Sketch.
Tall and broad shouldered, he explains the reasons for the move: “My wife works at a hospital in Dubai and I got a job here at the Expo Centre. But the number-one reason we decided to live here was the rent.” Even with Sharjah’s recent rent hikes, a two-bedroom flat still costs around 30 per cent less than in Dubai.
Aside from housing costs, Sharjah offers young parents additional incentives. “Obviously, it is more conservative here, and that was also a benefit because I have a family. A friend of mine also moved here because he said in Dubai, there were prostitutes on the street in front of his house and he couldn’t take his kids outside to play. Another thing are the school fees. They are much cheaper here than in Dubai.”
Sharjah, which means sunshine, according to a local guidebook, was not always known as Dubai’s traditionalist residential satellite. From the time its ruling clan, the Qawasim, settled the area in the early 18th century, until the first decades of the 20th, the emirate was the effective capital and commercial centre of the Trucial states, and also its most populous city. Sharjah lost its regional dominance to Dubai over the course of the first half of the 20th century, as Dubai took the initiative of catering to local merchants and international business, drawing away expertise and capital. By the end of the Second World War, Dubai’s population was four times that of Sharjah.
Historically, Sharjah’s rulers have maintained closer ties with the wider Arab world than the other emirates. Thus their vision has been more pan-Arab, and can be read as a factor in Sharjah’s greater emphasis on traditional culture and religion. While it was a British protectorate, Sharjah turned to the Arab League for economic assistance rather than rely on the colonial power’s largesse. In the 1950s and Sixties, its leader Sheikh Saqr bin Sultan Al Qasimi supported the Egyptian leader Nasser and was an advocate of a unified Arab state across the Middle East.
During the Eighties, Sharjah had become a popular tourist destination for vacationers from the Soviet Union and South Asia, and its five-star hotels served liquor. Towards the end of the decade, the emirate passed laws banning the sale of alcohol and its consumption in hotels and private homes.
Sharjah’s unique history trickles down in many other ways. Dr Sheikh Sultan, an avid playwright who has PhDs in history, political science and agriculture, is the most well-educated member of the Qawasim and was previously the UAE’s first Minister for Education. Since the early 90s, he has been a major patron of the arts, creating 16 museums that exhibit and promote Islamic and Arab art and culture. In 1998, Unesco designated Sharjah as the cultural capital of the Arab world for its focus on historical preservation and promotion of the arts. University City was created in 1997, and now houses two universities, Sharjah University and the American University of Sharjah, where students can study liberal arts, sciences, architecture and business.
Since its foundation in 1993, the Sharjah International Biennial has become one of the Middle East’s most important arts events, competing with Beirut, Cairo and Istanbul as a magnet for emerging arts and artists. Sharjah’s staid reputation has been confounded by its arrival on the regional culture scene.
Valerie Grove is a British woman who recently moved to Sharjah from Dubai. Her blog, naturestrikesback.blogspot.com, describes Sharjah lovingly, and I wanted to find out how she, a professional artist from London, was able to find happiness in the “stone-age emirate”.
Only a few cars are parked in front of the Museum of Islamic Civilisation. Instead, a gang of children race their bikes from one end to the other. Their female teenage guardians sit in the building’s shade, wearing jeans and hijabs, smoking cigarettes.
The museum seems to be a mishmash of classical Islamic architecture’s most recognisable design elements: the al Aqsa mosque’s golden dome; the narrow, striped arches of the Maghreb and Spain; and the lattice work of Mughal India.
Inside, in a gallery on the ground floor, an installation features modern reinterpretations of hijabs and jilbab’s by local female fashion designers, including a velour tracksuit-cum-abaya and the “capster”, a garment for the pious woman athlete. Upstairs, in the galleries containing hundreds of exquisite exhibits from Islamic empires, a sign discusses the “long tradition of figurative images” in Islamic art, which are only “strictly forbidden in religious buildings”. With its combination of ancient artefacts and contemporary abstract art, traditional sculpture and newer genres such as fashion design, the museum’s collections mimic its architecture: mixture, fusion, anachronism.
I meet Mrs Grove, a friendly blonde woman in her thirties, who works as a coordinator for the Sharjah Biennial, at the museum’s smart cafeteria. She moved to the city from Dubai last December with her husband, who took a teaching position at the American University of Sharjah. After initial worries about the emirate’s reputation, she quickly found that she preferred her new home. “I relaxed much more here because there’s a sense of reality about it,” she says. “It feels like a much more ‘Middle Eastern’ experience.”
For someone interested in developing the local arts scene, Sharjah was a better place to be, she adds. “The challenge is
to connect cultural development to the ground, and for this, Sharjah has a much better foundation. There’s more a sensibility of preservation.”
Leaving the museum, I head for the city’s bus station. There, a handwritten notice in the canteen explains the rules of the small mosque next-door: “This place only use for Muslims and please keep your shoes outside.” Oblivious, a fleshy western man, probably a tourist, is lying on the raised AstroTurf platform in the mosque’s courtyard, backpack behind his head, napping, his face covered by a book, sandals protecting white sock-clad feet. Worshippers politely ignore his faux pas, and there are no policemen in sight.
The bus station is on the edge of the Heritage and Arts area in old Sharjah, a maze of traditional buildings, souqs and a mosque, some more than 200 years old, which have been renovated and converted into museums, art galleries, shops and cafes.
The shops of Souq al Kadim, which sell medicinal herbs, dried fruits, spices, inexpensive clothes and more, face each other across a path covered by a makeshift canopy of corrugated metal and thatched palm fronds that filter the afternoon light. At one end of the souq is a row of shops selling women’s clothing and lingerie whose windows display mannequins in various stages of undress – some posing in full-length abayas, others in revealing, frilly undergarments. Unlike the mannequins in malls in Dubai, however, these plastic women are either headless or have colourful scarves wrapped around their faces.
Further along, in an indoor section, are similar shops, but their mannequins all have uncovered heads. Perplexed, I walk into one and ask its Keralite shop assistant, Bala, about the state of the souq’s mannequins. “I wasn’t here last year, but I heard that the police came and told the stores and tailors that the faces in the windows must be covered,” he explains. “But we haven’t covered them because in this area only women come. No one bothers us.” A year ago, the Sharjah Municipality appended its decency laws by requiring that all mannequins be relieved of their facial features.
This combination of what might be considered a conservative branding “abroad” and a laissez-faire realism on the ground was noticeable everywhere. During an evening walk along the corniche, I see a few teenage couples sitting on the steps leading to an overpass, and more huddle together on benches closer to the water.
I ask Shahid, who is sitting with friends on a concrete block nearby, playing a guitar, if it is easy for young people to date in Sharjah, given the decency laws. He replies, “I’ve seen the police take a guy and girl out of a car because they weren’t married. Someone told the police about them.” He gestures around, “Right here, most people know each other and won’t call the police. But still, they should be careful,” he says, nodding in the direction of the couples.
I walk to the al Qasba, a leisure area surrounding the canal that flows between the Khalid Lagoon and the al Khan Lagoon. At one end is the Kids’ Zone, a miniature amusement park for children, where play structures compete with rides lit by garish, coloured light bulbs. At the other end, the Eye of the Emirates, a gigantic observatory wheel, stands 60 metres high, with 42 egg-like observation pods. From the top you can see Sharjah spread out below, the Dubai skyline glistening in the distance. Restaurants and boutiques line either side of the canal. Children reign in Sharjah, confirming the emirate’s simultaneous backward and forward glances. Any place catering to the next generation will take time to commemorate the past and carve out avenues for the future. Unlike the limitless present of Dubai, Sharjah is creating a chronology, marked by pan-Arab history, South Asian immigration, public art and culture, and familial pride.
Jonaid Haque, his wife Sadaf, and Shahnaz, his mother, are all sitting in folding chairs on the small beach that encircles al Mamzar lagoon in Sharjah. We rest in the shade of their new Prado 4x4. Their daughter Daania, a precocious three-year-old, wearing a pale blue frock and squeaky black patent leather shoes, kneels just beyond the turquoise water’s reach, writing and rewriting everyone’s name in English script in the sand. Impressively, she gets them all half right. At an impasse she squeals, “Help me, Mummy!” in her mother’s native Sindhi. To the rest of us, in Urdu: “I want to go for ice cream now!”
On the other side of the lagoon, above the sand, a row of low concrete houses and palm trees sits on the horizon, remnants of the emirate’s less populated past. Sharjah’s tall new apartment buildings and those still under construction loom in the distance beyond. To our right, in the distance, is the silhouette of Burj Dubai and the rest of Dubai’s skyline. For a moment, it feels as if you are looking at Miami.
Of late, Sharjah’s reputation has been overshadowed by the towers of Dubai. But its political history and cultural present make it one of the most unusual emirates. Flirting with the new, embracing the old, Sharjah offers a unique laboratory to deconstruct clichés about tradition.
Jonaid, 35, a tall Pakistani with floppy hair, is a cabin steward for Emirates Airline. He moved to Dubai from Karachi eight years ago. Sadaf, 27, who is also a Karachi native, joined him there after their marriage in 2002. Wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, she smiles at Daania who, ice cream forgotten, is now engrossed in a seashell. I ask her, all things being equal, where she would rather live, Sharjah or Dubai. “It is too fast in Dubai. People don’t have time for family. Here it is more family-orientated, and honestly, I don’t ever see myself moving back to Dubai, even if we could afford it.”
One hundred thousand people move to Sharjah each year, many of them middle-class expats from South Asia and the Middle East. The emirate offers lower rents, relatively cheap education and a traditional identity explicitly rooted in Islam and Arab culture. The latter, along with the fact that most of the residents come from more or less the same social class, means that public space in Sharjah has a character unlike the other two urbanised emirates, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. There is no perceptible ethnic segregation in its neighbourhoods, and it is children and families, rather than young global jet-setters, who structure the demands of this space.
The city of Sharjah, the UAE’s third largest, lies just north of Dubai, an unpretentious appendage stuck to the side of its glamorous neighbour. The two cities are contiguous and form one conurbation with virtually no undeveloped land in between, but in Sharjah, the rate of development has not been on par with Dubai’s Commercial success. In a way, it has become the anti-Dubai; a place that offers what Dubai cannot.
If you search for Sharjah-related posts on the various blogs at www.uaecommunity.blogspot.com, the general tone is one of disdain. The emirate is routinely described as pre-modern, primarily because of the authors’ presumption that the “decency laws” make the place as puritanical as Saudi Arabia. On www.secretdubaidiary.blogspot.com, a banned but still popular site, Sharjah is almost always referred to as “the stone-age emirate”.
These laws, passed in 2001 – formally the “Decency and Public Conduct Rules and Objectives” – dictate rules on clothing, social interaction and living arrangements, in accordance with the emirate’s interpretation of Islam. Officially, they forbid men from wearing “very short shorts” and going shirtless, women from wearing clothes that expose their stomachs and backs, skirts above the knee and tight and transparent clothing.
Most notoriously, women and men “not in a legally acceptable relationship” are forbidden from being alone together both in public and private. In addition, alcohol has been banned in the emirate since the late-1980s. Legal pronouncements such as these have helped to cement Sharjah’s reputation as the most socially conservative emirate.
I ring the doorbell and Jonaid invites me into a comfortable flat whose spacious living room is thickly decorated with souvenirs from his weekly trips to Europe, Asia and Africa. He leads me into the master bedroom where his mother and Sadaf sit cross-legged on the bed, having tea. Jonaid’s cousin Abid, a sales executive who also moved to Sharjah from Dubai two years ago, reclines on the couch as Daania presents him with his portrait on an Etch A Sketch.
Tall and broad shouldered, he explains the reasons for the move: “My wife works at a hospital in Dubai and I got a job here at the Expo Centre. But the number-one reason we decided to live here was the rent.” Even with Sharjah’s recent rent hikes, a two-bedroom flat still costs around 30 per cent less than in Dubai.
Aside from housing costs, Sharjah offers young parents additional incentives. “Obviously, it is more conservative here, and that was also a benefit because I have a family. A friend of mine also moved here because he said in Dubai, there were prostitutes on the street in front of his house and he couldn’t take his kids outside to play. Another thing are the school fees. They are much cheaper here than in Dubai.”
Sharjah, which means sunshine, according to a local guidebook, was not always known as Dubai’s traditionalist residential satellite. From the time its ruling clan, the Qawasim, settled the area in the early 18th century, until the first decades of the 20th, the emirate was the effective capital and commercial centre of the Trucial states, and also its most populous city. Sharjah lost its regional dominance to Dubai over the course of the first half of the 20th century, as Dubai took the initiative of catering to local merchants and international business, drawing away expertise and capital. By the end of the Second World War, Dubai’s population was four times that of Sharjah.
Historically, Sharjah’s rulers have maintained closer ties with the wider Arab world than the other emirates. Thus their vision has been more pan-Arab, and can be read as a factor in Sharjah’s greater emphasis on traditional culture and religion. While it was a British protectorate, Sharjah turned to the Arab League for economic assistance rather than rely on the colonial power’s largesse. In the 1950s and Sixties, its leader Sheikh Saqr bin Sultan Al Qasimi supported the Egyptian leader Nasser and was an advocate of a unified Arab state across the Middle East.
During the Eighties, Sharjah had become a popular tourist destination for vacationers from the Soviet Union and South Asia, and its five-star hotels served liquor. Towards the end of the decade, the emirate passed laws banning the sale of alcohol and its consumption in hotels and private homes.
Sharjah’s unique history trickles down in many other ways. Dr Sheikh Sultan, an avid playwright who has PhDs in history, political science and agriculture, is the most well-educated member of the Qawasim and was previously the UAE’s first Minister for Education. Since the early 90s, he has been a major patron of the arts, creating 16 museums that exhibit and promote Islamic and Arab art and culture. In 1998, Unesco designated Sharjah as the cultural capital of the Arab world for its focus on historical preservation and promotion of the arts. University City was created in 1997, and now houses two universities, Sharjah University and the American University of Sharjah, where students can study liberal arts, sciences, architecture and business.
Since its foundation in 1993, the Sharjah International Biennial has become one of the Middle East’s most important arts events, competing with Beirut, Cairo and Istanbul as a magnet for emerging arts and artists. Sharjah’s staid reputation has been confounded by its arrival on the regional culture scene.
Valerie Grove is a British woman who recently moved to Sharjah from Dubai. Her blog, naturestrikesback.blogspot.com, describes Sharjah lovingly, and I wanted to find out how she, a professional artist from London, was able to find happiness in the “stone-age emirate”.
Only a few cars are parked in front of the Museum of Islamic Civilisation. Instead, a gang of children race their bikes from one end to the other. Their female teenage guardians sit in the building’s shade, wearing jeans and hijabs, smoking cigarettes.
The museum seems to be a mishmash of classical Islamic architecture’s most recognisable design elements: the al Aqsa mosque’s golden dome; the narrow, striped arches of the Maghreb and Spain; and the lattice work of Mughal India.
Inside, in a gallery on the ground floor, an installation features modern reinterpretations of hijabs and jilbab’s by local female fashion designers, including a velour tracksuit-cum-abaya and the “capster”, a garment for the pious woman athlete. Upstairs, in the galleries containing hundreds of exquisite exhibits from Islamic empires, a sign discusses the “long tradition of figurative images” in Islamic art, which are only “strictly forbidden in religious buildings”. With its combination of ancient artefacts and contemporary abstract art, traditional sculpture and newer genres such as fashion design, the museum’s collections mimic its architecture: mixture, fusion, anachronism.
I meet Mrs Grove, a friendly blonde woman in her thirties, who works as a coordinator for the Sharjah Biennial, at the museum’s smart cafeteria. She moved to the city from Dubai last December with her husband, who took a teaching position at the American University of Sharjah. After initial worries about the emirate’s reputation, she quickly found that she preferred her new home. “I relaxed much more here because there’s a sense of reality about it,” she says. “It feels like a much more ‘Middle Eastern’ experience.”
For someone interested in developing the local arts scene, Sharjah was a better place to be, she adds. “The challenge is
to connect cultural development to the ground, and for this, Sharjah has a much better foundation. There’s more a sensibility of preservation.”
Leaving the museum, I head for the city’s bus station. There, a handwritten notice in the canteen explains the rules of the small mosque next-door: “This place only use for Muslims and please keep your shoes outside.” Oblivious, a fleshy western man, probably a tourist, is lying on the raised AstroTurf platform in the mosque’s courtyard, backpack behind his head, napping, his face covered by a book, sandals protecting white sock-clad feet. Worshippers politely ignore his faux pas, and there are no policemen in sight.
The bus station is on the edge of the Heritage and Arts area in old Sharjah, a maze of traditional buildings, souqs and a mosque, some more than 200 years old, which have been renovated and converted into museums, art galleries, shops and cafes.
The shops of Souq al Kadim, which sell medicinal herbs, dried fruits, spices, inexpensive clothes and more, face each other across a path covered by a makeshift canopy of corrugated metal and thatched palm fronds that filter the afternoon light. At one end of the souq is a row of shops selling women’s clothing and lingerie whose windows display mannequins in various stages of undress – some posing in full-length abayas, others in revealing, frilly undergarments. Unlike the mannequins in malls in Dubai, however, these plastic women are either headless or have colourful scarves wrapped around their faces.
Further along, in an indoor section, are similar shops, but their mannequins all have uncovered heads. Perplexed, I walk into one and ask its Keralite shop assistant, Bala, about the state of the souq’s mannequins. “I wasn’t here last year, but I heard that the police came and told the stores and tailors that the faces in the windows must be covered,” he explains. “But we haven’t covered them because in this area only women come. No one bothers us.” A year ago, the Sharjah Municipality appended its decency laws by requiring that all mannequins be relieved of their facial features.
This combination of what might be considered a conservative branding “abroad” and a laissez-faire realism on the ground was noticeable everywhere. During an evening walk along the corniche, I see a few teenage couples sitting on the steps leading to an overpass, and more huddle together on benches closer to the water.
I ask Shahid, who is sitting with friends on a concrete block nearby, playing a guitar, if it is easy for young people to date in Sharjah, given the decency laws. He replies, “I’ve seen the police take a guy and girl out of a car because they weren’t married. Someone told the police about them.” He gestures around, “Right here, most people know each other and won’t call the police. But still, they should be careful,” he says, nodding in the direction of the couples.
I walk to the al Qasba, a leisure area surrounding the canal that flows between the Khalid Lagoon and the al Khan Lagoon. At one end is the Kids’ Zone, a miniature amusement park for children, where play structures compete with rides lit by garish, coloured light bulbs. At the other end, the Eye of the Emirates, a gigantic observatory wheel, stands 60 metres high, with 42 egg-like observation pods. From the top you can see Sharjah spread out below, the Dubai skyline glistening in the distance. Restaurants and boutiques line either side of the canal. Children reign in Sharjah, confirming the emirate’s simultaneous backward and forward glances. Any place catering to the next generation will take time to commemorate the past and carve out avenues for the future. Unlike the limitless present of Dubai, Sharjah is creating a chronology, marked by pan-Arab history, South Asian immigration, public art and culture, and familial pride.
Now forgotten, the place where, the UAE was born
Roughly half way along the highway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, there is an interchange at a place called Semeih. One can turn off here to a large camel-racing track hidden in the desert behind the plantations and small farms, but otherwise, it doesn’t appear of much interest to the passer-by: no houses, no roadside cafe, simply a small plantation of trees and a lake formed by surplus irrigation water draining out of other, larger, plantations nearby. Occasionally I and other birdwatchers will pull off here to look at the lake, but it’s rarely produced anything of interest in the way of rare birds. For the most part, travellers just speed past, and one can’t really blame them for doing so.
Yet this unremarkable place was the site of one of the most important events in the history of the United Arab Emirates. It was here, 41 years ago tomorrow, that the two fathers of the UAE federation, Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Rashid of Dubai, met on February 18 1968, to lay the foundations of the state of today.
A few weeks earlier, a British Foreign Office minister had visited what were then known as the Trucial States to inform the Rulers that, contrary to promises made as recently as a couple of months before, Britain would be bringing an end to its presence in the Gulf, in December 1971. In consequence, it would be terminating the agreements signed in 1820 – and subsequently supplemented by others – that had ensured protection for, and had guaranteed the sovereignty and survival of, the emirates. The seven states, still poor and underdeveloped – though Abu Dhabi had commenced oil exports six years earlier – would henceforth have to make their own way in the world.
The timing was scarcely auspicious. The previous year, the June war between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria had ended in disastrous defeat for the Arab side, with the West Bank and Gaza, both parts of Palestine, and the Sinai peninsula coming under Israeli occupation. In December 1967, the British had withdrawn in haste from Aden and the former protectorates of South Arabia, with the radical, Marxist-inspired, National Liberation Front coming to power and supporting a spreading of insurgency into Oman. Three of the emirates, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah, had parts of their territory being claimed by neighbouring states.
Sheikh Zayed, who had become Abu Dhabi’s Ruler in August 1966, and Sheikh Rashid were taken aback by the British decision, and by the explicit advice that they and their fellow Rulers should now plan for a future on their own.
Deciding to meet to discuss what to do next, they fixed on Semeih as the meeting point. Half way between the two towns – for they were not yet cities – it was a place replete with symbolism. The small well at Semeih had, for generations, been the place where Abu Dhabi’s tribes had gathered before engaging in warfare. The last time that had occurred was only just over 20 years earlier, prior to a conflict between Abu Dhabi and Dubai in which both Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid had taken part.
At their meeting at Semeih on February 18 1968, the two rulers agreed to form a union of their two emirates, with a common approach to foreign affairs, defence, security and social services, as well as to immigration. Settling a long-standing disagreement over their land and maritime borders, they also invited the rulers of the other Trucial States to join their union, as well as Qatar and Bahrain, which were also to be affected by the termination of the agreements with Britain.
There was a prompt response. On February 25, a week later, the rulers of all nine states met in Dubai and agreed to form a federation. Qatar and Bahrain eventually, in mid-1971, decided to go their own way, and the federation of the United Arab Emirates was formally established in December 1971, with Sheikh Zayed as the first President and Sheikh Rashid the first Vice President. Thus the Semeih meeting can, rightly, be said to have represented the birth of the federation.
Yet if one stops at Semeih, there is nothing to mark this historic event. The modest rest-house that once existed there was demolished years ago, and its role in the modern history of the country is largely forgotten.
We hear much about efforts to preserve the country’s history and heritage, and, of course, to promote the country’s national identity. Billions of dirhams are being spent on planning new museums, which, in some cases, have little if anything to do with the UAE itself. Welcome though these projects may be, would it not also be a good idea to create a small museum at Semeih? It needn’t be a dramatic or expensive structure – a simple building with a commemorative display of photographs and a few old film clips of the federation’s founding fathers would suffice, supported by staff members who could explain the displays and the significance of the location to visitors.
It probably wouldn’t attract many tourists, although one might hope that some travel agencies might pick it as a regular stop for their tour buses – but it should become a place that is a focus of trips by any school, whether for Emiratis or expatriates, that has a programme of teaching local history. What better location to talk about the wisdom and vision of Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid than Semeih, where they together, in simple surroundings in what was then just desert, laid down the keel of what has become today’s ship of state?
Peter Hellyer is a writer and consultant specialising in the UAE’s heritage and environment. He has also written extensively on the country’s social, political and economic development.
Yet this unremarkable place was the site of one of the most important events in the history of the United Arab Emirates. It was here, 41 years ago tomorrow, that the two fathers of the UAE federation, Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Rashid of Dubai, met on February 18 1968, to lay the foundations of the state of today.
A few weeks earlier, a British Foreign Office minister had visited what were then known as the Trucial States to inform the Rulers that, contrary to promises made as recently as a couple of months before, Britain would be bringing an end to its presence in the Gulf, in December 1971. In consequence, it would be terminating the agreements signed in 1820 – and subsequently supplemented by others – that had ensured protection for, and had guaranteed the sovereignty and survival of, the emirates. The seven states, still poor and underdeveloped – though Abu Dhabi had commenced oil exports six years earlier – would henceforth have to make their own way in the world.
The timing was scarcely auspicious. The previous year, the June war between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria had ended in disastrous defeat for the Arab side, with the West Bank and Gaza, both parts of Palestine, and the Sinai peninsula coming under Israeli occupation. In December 1967, the British had withdrawn in haste from Aden and the former protectorates of South Arabia, with the radical, Marxist-inspired, National Liberation Front coming to power and supporting a spreading of insurgency into Oman. Three of the emirates, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah, had parts of their territory being claimed by neighbouring states.
Sheikh Zayed, who had become Abu Dhabi’s Ruler in August 1966, and Sheikh Rashid were taken aback by the British decision, and by the explicit advice that they and their fellow Rulers should now plan for a future on their own.
Deciding to meet to discuss what to do next, they fixed on Semeih as the meeting point. Half way between the two towns – for they were not yet cities – it was a place replete with symbolism. The small well at Semeih had, for generations, been the place where Abu Dhabi’s tribes had gathered before engaging in warfare. The last time that had occurred was only just over 20 years earlier, prior to a conflict between Abu Dhabi and Dubai in which both Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid had taken part.
At their meeting at Semeih on February 18 1968, the two rulers agreed to form a union of their two emirates, with a common approach to foreign affairs, defence, security and social services, as well as to immigration. Settling a long-standing disagreement over their land and maritime borders, they also invited the rulers of the other Trucial States to join their union, as well as Qatar and Bahrain, which were also to be affected by the termination of the agreements with Britain.
There was a prompt response. On February 25, a week later, the rulers of all nine states met in Dubai and agreed to form a federation. Qatar and Bahrain eventually, in mid-1971, decided to go their own way, and the federation of the United Arab Emirates was formally established in December 1971, with Sheikh Zayed as the first President and Sheikh Rashid the first Vice President. Thus the Semeih meeting can, rightly, be said to have represented the birth of the federation.
Yet if one stops at Semeih, there is nothing to mark this historic event. The modest rest-house that once existed there was demolished years ago, and its role in the modern history of the country is largely forgotten.
We hear much about efforts to preserve the country’s history and heritage, and, of course, to promote the country’s national identity. Billions of dirhams are being spent on planning new museums, which, in some cases, have little if anything to do with the UAE itself. Welcome though these projects may be, would it not also be a good idea to create a small museum at Semeih? It needn’t be a dramatic or expensive structure – a simple building with a commemorative display of photographs and a few old film clips of the federation’s founding fathers would suffice, supported by staff members who could explain the displays and the significance of the location to visitors.
It probably wouldn’t attract many tourists, although one might hope that some travel agencies might pick it as a regular stop for their tour buses – but it should become a place that is a focus of trips by any school, whether for Emiratis or expatriates, that has a programme of teaching local history. What better location to talk about the wisdom and vision of Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid than Semeih, where they together, in simple surroundings in what was then just desert, laid down the keel of what has become today’s ship of state?
Peter Hellyer is a writer and consultant specialising in the UAE’s heritage and environment. He has also written extensively on the country’s social, political and economic development.
Saturday, 17 January 2009
Online archive will preserve the past
In the ghost village of Jazirat al Hamra, once a thriving pearling community in Ras al Khaimah, a visitor tries to show her daughter the beach where she played as a young girl. She finds it inaccessible behind a wire fence.
Jazirat al Hamra, thought to have been occupied since the 16th century, is one of the few remaining coastal villages in the Gulf region that predate the discovery of oil.
Yet today the abandoned houses of coral, sand and seashell, hemmed in on all sides by the pressure of encroaching modern development, are in danger of being lost altogether. The fate of the sandcastle village sums up the dilemma facing the UAE today: how to embrace the future while cherishing and preserving the heritage that is the foundation of today’s nation and is in danger of being lost.
Today, The National launches UAE Heritage, a project designed to capture and record living memories of the region’s past.
The weekly feature, which begins today on page a20 with the story of how Umm al Qaiwain was transformed in the lifetime of Sheikh Rashid bin Ahmed, will be a gateway to a growing online collection of stories, photographs, video and oral histories.
And we want to hear from you. Saleh Hanbalouh, of the coastal village of Galileh, recently shared with us his memory of fishermen’s songs, learnt on his father’s boat as a child. His story, and some of the songs, can be heard in The National’s online UAE Heritage archive. Perhaps, like Saleh, your relatives also handed down their memories.
E-mail heritage@thenational.ae with your personal histories
Click here to read the first story from the UAE Heritage project – feature on how Umm al Qaiwain was transformed in the lifetime of Sheikh Rashid bin Ahmed.
Jazirat al Hamra, thought to have been occupied since the 16th century, is one of the few remaining coastal villages in the Gulf region that predate the discovery of oil.
Yet today the abandoned houses of coral, sand and seashell, hemmed in on all sides by the pressure of encroaching modern development, are in danger of being lost altogether. The fate of the sandcastle village sums up the dilemma facing the UAE today: how to embrace the future while cherishing and preserving the heritage that is the foundation of today’s nation and is in danger of being lost.
Today, The National launches UAE Heritage, a project designed to capture and record living memories of the region’s past.
The weekly feature, which begins today on page a20 with the story of how Umm al Qaiwain was transformed in the lifetime of Sheikh Rashid bin Ahmed, will be a gateway to a growing online collection of stories, photographs, video and oral histories.
And we want to hear from you. Saleh Hanbalouh, of the coastal village of Galileh, recently shared with us his memory of fishermen’s songs, learnt on his father’s boat as a child. His story, and some of the songs, can be heard in The National’s online UAE Heritage archive. Perhaps, like Saleh, your relatives also handed down their memories.
E-mail heritage@thenational.ae with your personal histories
Click here to read the first story from the UAE Heritage project – feature on how Umm al Qaiwain was transformed in the lifetime of Sheikh Rashid bin Ahmed.
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Festival of literature to tackle illiteracy
DUBAI // The inaugural Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature next year aims to encourage young people to read and write more.
Organisers yesterday spoke of widespread illiteracy in the Arab world.
“The statistics regarding illiteracy in the Middle East are frightening and the first thing we need to do is admit that there is an issue,” said Saeed Al Nabouda, the chief projects officer of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority.
“What we need to do is educate children and their parents on the beauty of reading, because at the moment many people do not understand the importance of it.
“According to the Arab League, there are 100 million Arabs who still do not know how to read and write. We want to use this initiative to help improve this statistic.”
The festival has been scheduled for Feb 26 to Mar 1, and would be attended by more than 60 international and Arab authors.
Among the international writers who have committed to attend are Anthony Horowitz, Margaret Atwood, Ranulph Fiennes and Wilbur Smith.
Arab authors including Turki al Dakhil, Khaled al Khamissi and Ibrahim Nasrallah have agreed to come.
The festival is to include discussions, debates, readings, book signings, workshops and an education day for students.
Organisers said they would try to reach every student in Dubai on that day. If students could not attend the festival, authors would go to the schools and universities.
“We are working with all educational institutions across Dubai where the whole purpose is, ‘If you can’t make it, don’t worry, we’ll come to you’,” said Isobel Abulhoul, director of the festival and Magrudy’s book shops.
“We want to touch thousands of children on the same day... The festival is a celebration of literature and we want children to enjoy it and see its benefits, as they are our future.”
The Saudi-based children’s writer and publisher Nahed al Shawa, who will attend the festival, said: “It is estimated on average that every Arab child reads one page a year, in comparison to European children who read 10 books a year.”
Shawa began reading at the age of 10 when her father gave her the classics. “There were no children’s books available then,” she said.
So she started writing books for her own children. “It is so important for children to read. Every household must have books, and every parent should take 10 minutes out of their day to read with their children.”
Shawa said illiteracy among Arab youth was caused by lack of good books available; lack of encouragement from parents; and the lack of reading libraries.
“There is a lack of authors too,” she said. “We want to use the festival to encourage young writers to come out. My personal mission is to spread awareness.”
Shawa said lack of organisation in the Arab world’s literary market made it hard for authors to be heard and make a name for themselves.
Horowitz, who wrote the Alex Rider book series, as well as screenplays for Midsomer Murders, Murder in Mind and Foyle’s War, was also at yesterday’s launch.
He said literary festivals were an important opportunity to encourage children to read and write through meeting their favourite authors. “It is important to have that human contact.”
Horowitz said UK studies have shown there seemed to be a link between children who do not read from an early age and delinquency.
“It is vitally important for children to be reading at an early age and this festival provides that opportunity and that interest,” he said.
nsamaha@thenational.ae
Organisers yesterday spoke of widespread illiteracy in the Arab world.
“The statistics regarding illiteracy in the Middle East are frightening and the first thing we need to do is admit that there is an issue,” said Saeed Al Nabouda, the chief projects officer of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority.
“What we need to do is educate children and their parents on the beauty of reading, because at the moment many people do not understand the importance of it.
“According to the Arab League, there are 100 million Arabs who still do not know how to read and write. We want to use this initiative to help improve this statistic.”
The festival has been scheduled for Feb 26 to Mar 1, and would be attended by more than 60 international and Arab authors.
Among the international writers who have committed to attend are Anthony Horowitz, Margaret Atwood, Ranulph Fiennes and Wilbur Smith.
Arab authors including Turki al Dakhil, Khaled al Khamissi and Ibrahim Nasrallah have agreed to come.
The festival is to include discussions, debates, readings, book signings, workshops and an education day for students.
Organisers said they would try to reach every student in Dubai on that day. If students could not attend the festival, authors would go to the schools and universities.
“We are working with all educational institutions across Dubai where the whole purpose is, ‘If you can’t make it, don’t worry, we’ll come to you’,” said Isobel Abulhoul, director of the festival and Magrudy’s book shops.
“We want to touch thousands of children on the same day... The festival is a celebration of literature and we want children to enjoy it and see its benefits, as they are our future.”
The Saudi-based children’s writer and publisher Nahed al Shawa, who will attend the festival, said: “It is estimated on average that every Arab child reads one page a year, in comparison to European children who read 10 books a year.”
Shawa began reading at the age of 10 when her father gave her the classics. “There were no children’s books available then,” she said.
So she started writing books for her own children. “It is so important for children to read. Every household must have books, and every parent should take 10 minutes out of their day to read with their children.”
Shawa said illiteracy among Arab youth was caused by lack of good books available; lack of encouragement from parents; and the lack of reading libraries.
“There is a lack of authors too,” she said. “We want to use the festival to encourage young writers to come out. My personal mission is to spread awareness.”
Shawa said lack of organisation in the Arab world’s literary market made it hard for authors to be heard and make a name for themselves.
Horowitz, who wrote the Alex Rider book series, as well as screenplays for Midsomer Murders, Murder in Mind and Foyle’s War, was also at yesterday’s launch.
He said literary festivals were an important opportunity to encourage children to read and write through meeting their favourite authors. “It is important to have that human contact.”
Horowitz said UK studies have shown there seemed to be a link between children who do not read from an early age and delinquency.
“It is vitally important for children to be reading at an early age and this festival provides that opportunity and that interest,” he said.
nsamaha@thenational.ae
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
How will Arabic be preserved with rules like these?
If one is to believe the statements coming out of Government, then one major concern is the way in which the whole nature and ethos of what is being described as the “UAE’s national identity” is being undermined and lost as a result of the development of the past 30 or 40 years. Indeed, this year has been dubbed “Year of National Identity” – how to define it and how to preserve it.
There are many reasons for the “undermining”, which certainly exists. At one level, it’s a simple reflection of the change in the country’s demography. What was, in large measure, an Arab country in the not-so-distant past is now one where more than 80 per cent of the population are non-Emiratis, and where over two thirds, at a guess, are non-Arabs. Not only are languages other than Arabic widely used, such as Urdu, English, Bengali, Malayalam, and, increasingly, Mandarin and the various Filipino languages, but a new lingua franca has emerged, and is spreading, which is a curious mix of Arabic, Urdu and English words and a highly-simplified grammar. I call it “Urdubic”, though others may have their own name for it.
At another level, the threat to national identity comes from increasing globalisation – whether it be in business, on television channels, absorbed as a by-product of education overseas, or in a non-native tongue at home. That’s not just a matter of language, of course, but in culture and daily life. Even in food – where the all-pervasive presence of American fast-food chains affects almost all, with a consequent rise in obesity and heart disease.
My concern, however, is with language, particularly the use of Arabic. Of course English is widely used in business, and, indeed, in Government. It would be difficult to engage with the outside world otherwise. It is absolutely right that English is considered to be a high priority in both Government and private schools. Any young Emirati today who lacks fluency in English will be at a clear disadvantage to better-equipped compatriots in the future.
I worry, though, that, in the drive to promote a knowledge of English as a second language, the need to promote Arabic as a first language is being sidelined.
I am not bothered about those who have a different mother tongue and for whom Arabic will always be a second language, though I regret that so many expatriate non-Arabs make no effort to try to learn a few simple words. That’s pitiful. Rather, I am concerned about those for whom Arabic is a first language.
I am told by colleagues who recruit native Arabic speakers, including Emiratis, into positions where a proper level of Arabic literacy is required, that all too often the standards even of university graduates with degrees in the Arabic language are simply not up to scratch. That must be in part due to the teaching they receive, both in school and university, as well as the use of Arabic at home.
I recently had an interesting conversation with the headmistress of one of Abu Dhabi’s leading primary schools. Around 20 per cent of her students are Emiratis and in some classes there’s an almost 50-50 split between those with Arabic as the mother tongue (Emiratis and others) and the rest, many whose first language is English but many from Europe, India and elsewhere.
The language of instruction in the school is English, so that, naturally, takes priority. In accordance with Ministry of Education guidelines, the school provides Arabic only at the kindergarten or foundation stages (up to five years old) for those whose mother tongue is Arabic, in two 20-minute conversation classes a week. Is that really sufficient for Emirati and other Arab children, particularly those being brought up in homes where parents, sadly, might devolve much of the responsibility for their children to employees who speak no Arabic whatsoever? Will those children ever be properly fluent in their mother tongue?
I have a particular interest in the topic because my wife, a native Arabic speaker, and I have a small child currently in the kindergarten stage. It will be a hard task to bring her up to be as bilingual as possible, though we’re trying. She is having the twice-weekly conversation classes and, provided her level stays high enough, she should go on to the formal classes in Arabic for native speakers next year.
I gather, though, that the rough rule used by the Ministry of Education to determine whether a child should go into “native speaker” classes is based on the nationality of the father. How, I wonder, do they assess a couple of Arab birth who have taken up British, Canadian or American citizenship? There are plenty of those around.
And as for mixed marriages, I, as a Briton, would be ruled out from the start. Were my child to be put in a class next year designed for those for whom Arabic is not a mother tongue – simple beginners – it would be a distinct step backwards. I have no quarrel with the school: they don’t set the guidelines and, rightly, must focus on English.
Language is, surely, a fundamental part of national identity. So what is the Ministry of Education doing to tackle this issue of declining Arabic literacy skills among so many of the country’s native Arabic speakers, Emiratis and others?
After more than 30 years here, I should, I concede, speak much better Arabic than I do. I hope that my young child will do so, and my wife and I intend to make the effort to ensure that she does. But I’m well aware it’s not going to be easy. Shu Sawee?
Peter Hellyer is a writer and consultant specialising in the UAE’s heritage and environment. He has also written extensively on the country’s social, political and economic development
There are many reasons for the “undermining”, which certainly exists. At one level, it’s a simple reflection of the change in the country’s demography. What was, in large measure, an Arab country in the not-so-distant past is now one where more than 80 per cent of the population are non-Emiratis, and where over two thirds, at a guess, are non-Arabs. Not only are languages other than Arabic widely used, such as Urdu, English, Bengali, Malayalam, and, increasingly, Mandarin and the various Filipino languages, but a new lingua franca has emerged, and is spreading, which is a curious mix of Arabic, Urdu and English words and a highly-simplified grammar. I call it “Urdubic”, though others may have their own name for it.
At another level, the threat to national identity comes from increasing globalisation – whether it be in business, on television channels, absorbed as a by-product of education overseas, or in a non-native tongue at home. That’s not just a matter of language, of course, but in culture and daily life. Even in food – where the all-pervasive presence of American fast-food chains affects almost all, with a consequent rise in obesity and heart disease.
My concern, however, is with language, particularly the use of Arabic. Of course English is widely used in business, and, indeed, in Government. It would be difficult to engage with the outside world otherwise. It is absolutely right that English is considered to be a high priority in both Government and private schools. Any young Emirati today who lacks fluency in English will be at a clear disadvantage to better-equipped compatriots in the future.
I worry, though, that, in the drive to promote a knowledge of English as a second language, the need to promote Arabic as a first language is being sidelined.
I am not bothered about those who have a different mother tongue and for whom Arabic will always be a second language, though I regret that so many expatriate non-Arabs make no effort to try to learn a few simple words. That’s pitiful. Rather, I am concerned about those for whom Arabic is a first language.
I am told by colleagues who recruit native Arabic speakers, including Emiratis, into positions where a proper level of Arabic literacy is required, that all too often the standards even of university graduates with degrees in the Arabic language are simply not up to scratch. That must be in part due to the teaching they receive, both in school and university, as well as the use of Arabic at home.
I recently had an interesting conversation with the headmistress of one of Abu Dhabi’s leading primary schools. Around 20 per cent of her students are Emiratis and in some classes there’s an almost 50-50 split between those with Arabic as the mother tongue (Emiratis and others) and the rest, many whose first language is English but many from Europe, India and elsewhere.
The language of instruction in the school is English, so that, naturally, takes priority. In accordance with Ministry of Education guidelines, the school provides Arabic only at the kindergarten or foundation stages (up to five years old) for those whose mother tongue is Arabic, in two 20-minute conversation classes a week. Is that really sufficient for Emirati and other Arab children, particularly those being brought up in homes where parents, sadly, might devolve much of the responsibility for their children to employees who speak no Arabic whatsoever? Will those children ever be properly fluent in their mother tongue?
I have a particular interest in the topic because my wife, a native Arabic speaker, and I have a small child currently in the kindergarten stage. It will be a hard task to bring her up to be as bilingual as possible, though we’re trying. She is having the twice-weekly conversation classes and, provided her level stays high enough, she should go on to the formal classes in Arabic for native speakers next year.
I gather, though, that the rough rule used by the Ministry of Education to determine whether a child should go into “native speaker” classes is based on the nationality of the father. How, I wonder, do they assess a couple of Arab birth who have taken up British, Canadian or American citizenship? There are plenty of those around.
And as for mixed marriages, I, as a Briton, would be ruled out from the start. Were my child to be put in a class next year designed for those for whom Arabic is not a mother tongue – simple beginners – it would be a distinct step backwards. I have no quarrel with the school: they don’t set the guidelines and, rightly, must focus on English.
Language is, surely, a fundamental part of national identity. So what is the Ministry of Education doing to tackle this issue of declining Arabic literacy skills among so many of the country’s native Arabic speakers, Emiratis and others?
After more than 30 years here, I should, I concede, speak much better Arabic than I do. I hope that my young child will do so, and my wife and I intend to make the effort to ensure that she does. But I’m well aware it’s not going to be easy. Shu Sawee?
Peter Hellyer is a writer and consultant specialising in the UAE’s heritage and environment. He has also written extensively on the country’s social, political and economic development
Monday, 3 November 2008
Literacy and a reading culture are not the same thing
For 27 years in a row, the Sharjah World Book Fair has successfully presented itself not only as a forum for pan-Arab and global intellectual dialogue, but also as a bastion of a reading culture that has been steadily losing ground to the expanding digital communications revolution.
The region’s ailing book publishing and print media industries certainly seem to be casualties of this trend, but when viewed in a broader cultural context, it is society at large that turns out to be the prime loser. Although reading is embossed as a virtuous practice in Arab-Islamic traditions, a convergence of culturally-entrenched oral traditions, colonial underdevelopment, and 21st century digital advances seem to have coalesced to mitigate against the promotion of reading in the region.
Yet reading is both a central ingredient of lifelong learning and a key means of creating a knowledge society. Arab countries need not only to reduce number of people unable to read – 60 million – in the region, but to entrench the written word as an enduring facet of our cultural development.
From a historical perspective, reading is engrained in the central document of Islamic religion, the Holy Quran (which in Arabic means “Book to be Read or Recited”). Sura 96 of the Quran states: “Read! In the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created man out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood.” This command was inspiring for ancient Arab scholars as they sought to integrate Greek and Latin knowledge into their scientific heritage in the golden age of Arabic civilisation. Schools and universities with extensive libraries were established in urban centres in Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Tunisia, and Andalus.
But during the era of decline, written text took a hard beating, giving rise to a resurgence of oral culture. It was only in 1798 that the region had its first encounter with the printing press during Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt. Yet the colonial subjugation of the Arab world dealt another blow to Arabic literature, especially in French-dominated regions, something that began to change only after independence.
Faced with the immense challenges of integration and development, many Arab states could not afford to combat the massive illiteracy rates.
The essential need to promote reading in the Arab world has received considerable publicity; but the effects on the ground have been limited. Egypt, in cooperation with the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (Alecso) and the UN’s cultural body, Unesco, has launched its national “Reading for All” programme to sustain solid reading habits.
Last year, an international conference organised by the Qatar Foundation and Unesco to discuss literacy in the Arab World noted the importance of reinforcing the habit of reading among the younger generations to ensure the development of all forms of knowledge in the region.
Here in the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice-President and ruler of Dubai, this week helped launch the Million Book Challenge, which calls on local children to read a million books in two weeks. And the 2009 Abu Dhabi International Book Fair will feature activities to promote reading, while at the opening of this year’s Sharjah World Book Fair, Dr Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, the Ruler of Sharjah, announced the establishment of home libraries in another step to turn reading into a daily ritual.
The rest of the Arab world could do more to promote reading as a fundamental component of literacy and continuous learning. Unesco and the International Reading Association have offered numerous initiatives to foster a reading culture around the world.
The problem, according to a recent study, is that many education systems in the Arab region take too narrow a view of literacy as a mechanical, text-centred process of translating print into speech. The goals of literacy instruction have become too focused on basic decoding skills, limited to and achieved during the first few grades of primary education.
I think that reading skills in knowledge societies require more than decoding simple printed text; they depend on critical cognitive interactions. This feature is highly significant for the young who constitute more than 60 per cent of the region’s population and increasingly demonstrate more attachment to web-based, multimedia sources of knowledge. If they can be taught to love books at an early age, then the rest of their education will become that much easier.
The alarming decline of reading as a knowledge acquisition tool in the Arab world has been perceived as a literacy issue. But once we realise the critical nature of reading as key to knowledge development, we should reconsider our current attitudes and give it the attention it deserves in our educational and cultural agendas.
Muhammad Ayish is professor of communications studies at the University of Sharjah
The region’s ailing book publishing and print media industries certainly seem to be casualties of this trend, but when viewed in a broader cultural context, it is society at large that turns out to be the prime loser. Although reading is embossed as a virtuous practice in Arab-Islamic traditions, a convergence of culturally-entrenched oral traditions, colonial underdevelopment, and 21st century digital advances seem to have coalesced to mitigate against the promotion of reading in the region.
Yet reading is both a central ingredient of lifelong learning and a key means of creating a knowledge society. Arab countries need not only to reduce number of people unable to read – 60 million – in the region, but to entrench the written word as an enduring facet of our cultural development.
From a historical perspective, reading is engrained in the central document of Islamic religion, the Holy Quran (which in Arabic means “Book to be Read or Recited”). Sura 96 of the Quran states: “Read! In the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created man out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood.” This command was inspiring for ancient Arab scholars as they sought to integrate Greek and Latin knowledge into their scientific heritage in the golden age of Arabic civilisation. Schools and universities with extensive libraries were established in urban centres in Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Tunisia, and Andalus.
But during the era of decline, written text took a hard beating, giving rise to a resurgence of oral culture. It was only in 1798 that the region had its first encounter with the printing press during Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt. Yet the colonial subjugation of the Arab world dealt another blow to Arabic literature, especially in French-dominated regions, something that began to change only after independence.
Faced with the immense challenges of integration and development, many Arab states could not afford to combat the massive illiteracy rates.
The essential need to promote reading in the Arab world has received considerable publicity; but the effects on the ground have been limited. Egypt, in cooperation with the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (Alecso) and the UN’s cultural body, Unesco, has launched its national “Reading for All” programme to sustain solid reading habits.
Last year, an international conference organised by the Qatar Foundation and Unesco to discuss literacy in the Arab World noted the importance of reinforcing the habit of reading among the younger generations to ensure the development of all forms of knowledge in the region.
Here in the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice-President and ruler of Dubai, this week helped launch the Million Book Challenge, which calls on local children to read a million books in two weeks. And the 2009 Abu Dhabi International Book Fair will feature activities to promote reading, while at the opening of this year’s Sharjah World Book Fair, Dr Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, the Ruler of Sharjah, announced the establishment of home libraries in another step to turn reading into a daily ritual.
The rest of the Arab world could do more to promote reading as a fundamental component of literacy and continuous learning. Unesco and the International Reading Association have offered numerous initiatives to foster a reading culture around the world.
The problem, according to a recent study, is that many education systems in the Arab region take too narrow a view of literacy as a mechanical, text-centred process of translating print into speech. The goals of literacy instruction have become too focused on basic decoding skills, limited to and achieved during the first few grades of primary education.
I think that reading skills in knowledge societies require more than decoding simple printed text; they depend on critical cognitive interactions. This feature is highly significant for the young who constitute more than 60 per cent of the region’s population and increasingly demonstrate more attachment to web-based, multimedia sources of knowledge. If they can be taught to love books at an early age, then the rest of their education will become that much easier.
The alarming decline of reading as a knowledge acquisition tool in the Arab world has been perceived as a literacy issue. But once we realise the critical nature of reading as key to knowledge development, we should reconsider our current attitudes and give it the attention it deserves in our educational and cultural agendas.
Muhammad Ayish is professor of communications studies at the University of Sharjah
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Saudi tower symbolises GCC’s stout economies
RIYADH // One of the globe’s richest men recently disclosed details about his newest real estate development, unveiling plans for constructing the world’s tallest building just outside Jeddah.
In a ceremony on Saturday attended by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz, the chairman of Kingdom Holding Company, displayed a model of Kingdom City, a SR100 billion (Dh98bn) project of more than seven sq km to be constructed near Jeddah’s international airport.
Its most prominent feature will be a tower of more than 1,000m (the exact height is a secret) for offices, luxury residences and a five-star hotel.
The new community, expected to attract up to 80,000 residents, “will signify Kingdom Holding Company’s contribution in placing Saudi Arabia at the forefront of the first world,” Prince Alwaleed said in a press release.
Officials at his company declined to answer questions about how the project will be financed. But with a fortune estimated by Forbes of US$21 billion (Dh77bn), the prince is not just the world’s 19th richest man. He also is someone with no problem getting loans or credit.
The long-expected, formal unveiling of his latest development, and his apparent confidence in the future, is symbolic of the general sentiment in Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, in other Gulf countries, about how they may fare in the current global financial crisis.
Despite the ill effects so far, which include a slide in oil prices and a disastrous two weeks in stock markets, government officials and outside experts are predicting that, barring an unexpectedly severe global depression, their oil-rich region will not suffer as much as the rest of the world.
“Gulf countries are going to feel the pinch,” said Howard Handy, the chief economist at Samba Financial Group. “But I think from everything I’ve seen so far, it is not going to be fatal.”
The Gulf nations, Mr Handy said, are facing the financial crisis “from a position of great strength” stemming from their huge budget surpluses and reserves garnered from high oil prices in recent years.
“This, by all means, is a very serious crisis,”the Saudi economist Ihsan Buhulaiga said of the events emanating from Wall Street in recent weeks. And Saudi Arabia has seen some trauma: in the first four days of opening after the Eid holiday, its stock market lost about 22 per cent of its value, Mr Buhulaiga said.
“And over the whole year, it has lost 46 per cent,” he said.
Still, the economist predicted that the impact on GCC countries will be far less than on the G7 industrial nations.
With the G7, “we’re talking about zero growth or contraction”, he said. In the GCC, economic growth will slow down but still be positive, he said.
Similar to Mr Handy, Mr Buhulaiga predicted that even with less revenue from oil sales, Saudi Arabia and other states will be able to pay their regular bills and finance many of their large development projects out of their current reserves.
Ibrahim Al Assaf, the Saudi finance minister, said much the same thing.
“Oil revenues will definitely cover these projects in addition to what we have in reserve,” he told Saudi television.
Mr Assaf said Saudi banks had shown “excellent third-quarter results”, proving “that they were not affected by the subprime mortgage crisis in the US”.
The minister called the sell-offs in the Saudi stock market “unjustifiable” and predicted the market would regain stability – which it did. The Tadawul, taking its cue from Asia and Europe, bounced back early this week.
But whether that bounce will be permanent is an open question. Brad Bourland, the chief economist at Jadwa Investment in Riyadh, wrote last week that “regional stock markets are overwhelmed by panic” and “investor confidence is exceptionally fragile”. He predicted that “a sustainable recovery is not likely in the near term”.
Mr Bourland said the drying up of credit internationally “is hampering implementation of the project boom in the region”.
And there are other concerns. Many Saudi banks and the government – which owns huge foreign assets managed by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (Sama), the country’s central bank – have not yet disclosed how much those foreign investments have suffered.
According to Reuters, Sama reported in August that it had $285bn invested in foreign securities and $79bn in foreign bank deposits. Other government bodies, the news wire said, had $63bn in foreign securities and $5bn deposits with foreign banks.
Another concern is whether the depression that most economists see coming will be worse than anticipated, with demand for oil dropping beyond expectations.
After its record price zenith of $147 a barrel in July, oil has fallen steadily, closing last week below $80 a barrel.
That still leaves a huge cushion for Saudi Arabia, whose current budget is based on a conservative price prediction of $50 a barrel.
But drops below that would mean a whole new ball game for the kingdom and its Gulf neighbours.
Saturday, 11 October 2008
Our film festivals thrive – but our filmmakers struggle
The chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, James Gianopoulos, eloquently summed up the reality of the film industry in his keynote speech at The Circle conference in Abu Dhabi last week. He described making films as an “economic opportunity and a cultural imperative”.
There is no doubt that the creation of film festivals has been a successful economic manoeuvre in the UAE. Through Dubai’s thriving International Film Festival and Abu Dhabi’s budding MEIFF, the country has embarked on a brilliant public relations strategy that has brought both cities to the forefront of the world’s entertainment press. Now the UAE is attracting big names like Spike Lee, Antonio Banderas and Gianopoulos himself, while adding a new cultural dimension to a country that was viewed until recently as solely an economic hub.
But the creation of film festivals is presenting a tough challenge to the UAE’s cultural identity and to local filmmakers in general. All major film festivals (Cannes, Toronto, Venice…) were born when an indigenous film industry required a platform for its output. In the UAE, festivals have preceded the industry – rather similar to throwing a “sweet 16” party for a 12-year-old.
Both UAE festivals have been conscientious about promoting local cinema by creating Emirati sections in their programmes, but that, if anything, has highlighted the gap in production values between international selections and the passionate yet under-funded attempts of young Emiratis and UAE-based filmmakers who are making cinema out of pocket.
Unlike painting, composing, or writing, cinema has rarely made notable achievements that were not tied to substantial national funding. Filmmaking is an expensive enterprise that requires the involvement of a multitude of skill sets. Time and money is required for research, scriptwriting, script-doctoring, location scouting, casting, lighting, filming, editing, etc. When all of these are attempted from a personal bank account, the outcome is usually a testimony to willpower, but rarely creates a production of high enough value to compete with the films of Europe and North America at our festivals.
It is true that filmmakers can seek money abroad, but the basics of financial partnerships apply to films, too: unless a filmmaker comes to the table with equity in hand, co-producers are unlikely to invest in the project. Egypt’s once glorious film industry, characterised by local stories that touched hearts around the world, was only made possible by national subsidies. Spike Lee rightfully asked at The Circle: “Why should Hollywood produce your films and your stories?”
There are only a few international funds open to Arabs with no local subsidies required, but those are minimal and fraught with restrictions. None of them is likely to support a period film about, say, an Emirati family early in the last century who try to survive in the desert after the father perishes on a pearl diving trip. Not enough international appeal for major revenues; but definitely a pearl in this country’s history.
Like Canada and the UK, the UAE can only become a true film contributor by creating a national film fund and international co-production agreements. Unlike mere cash, which has often been extended to local filmmakers by benefactors, a film fund also includes the supervision of film professionals who can advise on what is viable and what is not. The team behind a film fund is also entrusted with outlining the cultural vision of a country, the kind of rhetoric it needs to voice to the rest of world, making the film industry a major contributor to a nation’s discourse.
Co-production treaties enable various countries to contribute to a project, thereby promising a higher budget and wider distribution. These have been the initiatives behind the glory of much of world cinema. I moved back to the UAE in 2005 when my documentary Being Osama came to the Dubai International Film Festival and I was motivated to stay by its success. The film was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Telefilm Fund, who both agreed that a film on the tribulations of six men called Osama might alter public opinion and make life for Arab-Canadians easier.
Since 2005, I have become friends with driven Emiratis who want to make films. Each year we meet at festivals, with the same old scripts under our arms, hoping that some of the country’s wealth will be directed towards indigenous filmmaking. But that never seems to happen.
We were all pleased hearing Jim Gianopoulos speak in Abu Dhabi, but nothing was more impressive than his expression a few silent seconds after he asked the audience how many local feature films are released here annually. My fellow filmmaker Ali Mustafa sought the floating microphone and solemnly whispered: “Zero.”
Mahmoud Kaabour is an award-winning filmmaker and lecturer. He is also the managing director of the Dubai-based Veritas Films
There is no doubt that the creation of film festivals has been a successful economic manoeuvre in the UAE. Through Dubai’s thriving International Film Festival and Abu Dhabi’s budding MEIFF, the country has embarked on a brilliant public relations strategy that has brought both cities to the forefront of the world’s entertainment press. Now the UAE is attracting big names like Spike Lee, Antonio Banderas and Gianopoulos himself, while adding a new cultural dimension to a country that was viewed until recently as solely an economic hub.
But the creation of film festivals is presenting a tough challenge to the UAE’s cultural identity and to local filmmakers in general. All major film festivals (Cannes, Toronto, Venice…) were born when an indigenous film industry required a platform for its output. In the UAE, festivals have preceded the industry – rather similar to throwing a “sweet 16” party for a 12-year-old.
Both UAE festivals have been conscientious about promoting local cinema by creating Emirati sections in their programmes, but that, if anything, has highlighted the gap in production values between international selections and the passionate yet under-funded attempts of young Emiratis and UAE-based filmmakers who are making cinema out of pocket.
Unlike painting, composing, or writing, cinema has rarely made notable achievements that were not tied to substantial national funding. Filmmaking is an expensive enterprise that requires the involvement of a multitude of skill sets. Time and money is required for research, scriptwriting, script-doctoring, location scouting, casting, lighting, filming, editing, etc. When all of these are attempted from a personal bank account, the outcome is usually a testimony to willpower, but rarely creates a production of high enough value to compete with the films of Europe and North America at our festivals.
It is true that filmmakers can seek money abroad, but the basics of financial partnerships apply to films, too: unless a filmmaker comes to the table with equity in hand, co-producers are unlikely to invest in the project. Egypt’s once glorious film industry, characterised by local stories that touched hearts around the world, was only made possible by national subsidies. Spike Lee rightfully asked at The Circle: “Why should Hollywood produce your films and your stories?”
There are only a few international funds open to Arabs with no local subsidies required, but those are minimal and fraught with restrictions. None of them is likely to support a period film about, say, an Emirati family early in the last century who try to survive in the desert after the father perishes on a pearl diving trip. Not enough international appeal for major revenues; but definitely a pearl in this country’s history.
Like Canada and the UK, the UAE can only become a true film contributor by creating a national film fund and international co-production agreements. Unlike mere cash, which has often been extended to local filmmakers by benefactors, a film fund also includes the supervision of film professionals who can advise on what is viable and what is not. The team behind a film fund is also entrusted with outlining the cultural vision of a country, the kind of rhetoric it needs to voice to the rest of world, making the film industry a major contributor to a nation’s discourse.
Co-production treaties enable various countries to contribute to a project, thereby promising a higher budget and wider distribution. These have been the initiatives behind the glory of much of world cinema. I moved back to the UAE in 2005 when my documentary Being Osama came to the Dubai International Film Festival and I was motivated to stay by its success. The film was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Telefilm Fund, who both agreed that a film on the tribulations of six men called Osama might alter public opinion and make life for Arab-Canadians easier.
Since 2005, I have become friends with driven Emiratis who want to make films. Each year we meet at festivals, with the same old scripts under our arms, hoping that some of the country’s wealth will be directed towards indigenous filmmaking. But that never seems to happen.
We were all pleased hearing Jim Gianopoulos speak in Abu Dhabi, but nothing was more impressive than his expression a few silent seconds after he asked the audience how many local feature films are released here annually. My fellow filmmaker Ali Mustafa sought the floating microphone and solemnly whispered: “Zero.”
Mahmoud Kaabour is an award-winning filmmaker and lecturer. He is also the managing director of the Dubai-based Veritas Films
Monday, 6 October 2008
The road to Islamic art
The Silk Road. The name alone conjures up visions of bounty-laden caravans travelling to distant locations, saddlebags full of riches like gold, ivory, spices, incense, and of course silk, all ready for the trade or raid, whichever came first.
The Silk Road was not one long paved caravan superhighway; it was made up of many routes. Northern stretches and southern passages carried soldiers, traders and even Marco Polo himself from Rome all the way to modern-day Xi’an in Western China since the second century BC. These routes also helped the transmission of theologies over the difficult mountain passes, carrying Islam to non-Arab lands until the 15th century when a sea route from Europe to Asia was discovered.
When Islam arrived in the cities along the routes, it brought its own artistic tradition as well. Calligraphy, architecture and replications of the Quran a mingled with the local cultures of central Asia, the Far East and the Levant.
The 11th annual Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival is a tribute to Islamic art from the countries that made up the former Silk Road, from Syria and Uzbekistan to Iran and China. Instead of displaying historical artefacts, the festival shows off artwork from the modern and contemporary periods. All of the art, whether it be calligraphy or video, bears the mark of those Arabs who spread Islam along the Silk Road.
The festival is too large for a one-day visit; it’s so large that the emirate’s Art Directorate has spaced programmes for the festival out over the course of a month and a half. The bad news: the festival’s programmes are all finished. The good news: the exhibits are still showing until October 10, so there is still time to experience the multitude of Islamic-influenced art and video from former Silk Road regions that is on display.
Detail from Taraneh Saheb’s 2003 poster commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Iranian author Sadeq Hedayat. Pawan Singh / The National
The eight separate exhibitions that make up the Islamic Arts Festival were selected for a purpose. “We chose them because it’s a new way to use calligraphy in design and their social motifs,” says Hisham al Mazloum, the festival’s general coordinator. In the 20 years that he has worked at the Sharjah Directorate of Art, Mazloum says he rarely saw the museum shift focus from Arab countries to other Muslim countries. “We did a little on these countries, but not like this before.”
“The Silk Route is an integral part of Islamic history,” says Charles Pocock, an expert on ancient and modern Islamic art who is an official adviser to the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (ADMAF). “It was like a throbbing vein – a jugular through the Islamic world. “
The various galleries present a microcosm of the Islamically-influenced post-Silk Road world. The city-states and counties that emerged along the route combined their own traditions with those of Arabian Islam so well that today they appear to be seamless. Farsi calligraphy uses Arabic letters and fonts; Chinese red lacquer looks perfectly at home in a mosque’s interior. Even the red pigment in the lacquer is a combination from the Middle and Far East. Its base is made with the sap of dragon’s blood trees (Dracaena cinnabari) endemic to the Yemeni island of Socotra, which surely made its way to China via the Silk Road.
The two “must-see” parts of the eight exhibits, which heavily cover Central and Eastern Asia, are the Iranian posters and the Chinese photography displays.
The Iranian posters, all of them dating from the 1960s and onward, are clean and sparse with their use of script, a change from traditional Arabic calligraphy. There are posters for music festivals, theatre festivals, poetry festivals … even posters for poster festivals.
“The Iranian graphic design pieces are interesting because of the huge influence they have in the region,” adds Pocock, who points out that the exhibition features works by a number of well-known Iranian designers who unfortunately get precious little wall-time at galleries outside of Iran.
The Sharjah Art Museum’s display of over 130 posters will remind those who think of Iran only in terms of today’s rhetoric of nuclear armament that the country’s populace is both globally aware and extremely sophisticated, something that is articulated in contemporary Iranian graphic design.
One poster by Sadeg Barirani from 1967 references the iconic 1896 Don Quixote poster by the Beggarstaff Brothers by using the same shadowing and colour blocking techniques. Only in Barirani’s print, the poster advertises an Iranian folk dancing program at Roudaki Hall with a white figure atop a mirror image in indigo on a cobalt background. This technique creates a damask pattern in the blue-on-blue silhouettes, building on the inventions of its less visually lush 19th century predecessor.
Another work by Taraneh Saheb from 2003 commemorates the 100th anniversary Sadeq Hedayat’s birth (Hedayat was a celebrated Iranian short story writer and is widely considered to be a national treasure). Saheb’s poster for the exhibition uses thumbnail reproductions of other posters from the exhibition arranged in a way that they create a shadowy portrait of Hedeyat emerging from the background.
Saheb, herself a “grande dame” of Iranian graphic design, uses the same technique in her Hedayat poster’s design as the American artist Chuck Close uses in his oversized portraits. Saheb, along with a host of other Iranian graphic designers including Barirani, clearly still inform their work with western artistic traditions, though they use them as another tool in their box in order to create uniquely Iranian design. As far as their Islamic-ness goes, it’s unclear how these posters are religiously orientated in the traditional sense, besides their origination in a Muslim country.
That is less of a conundrum for the richly coloured portraits of Chinese Islamic life captured by Haji Mohammed Bai Xue Yi, a photographer and professor in China’s central Henan province. Bai is known at home for his photographs of Muslim life in the Arabian Peninsula and has mounted solo shows featuring shots of Oman and his pilgrimage to Mecca. Here, Bai depicts the colourful street life – and the serene religious life – of Chinese Muslims. Pictures like Xichuan Mosque in Guanghe, Gansu Province, are photographed in colour but almost look like they were printed in all sepia. The terracotta spires and dome of the titular mosque rise in the foreground against a hennaed sunrise along the mountains that frame them. Gansu province, which runs from Mongolia to Central China, is at the heart of the Silk Road and is considered one of the cradles of Chinese civilization. It also has a large Muslim population, featured prominently and proudly in Bai’s photos.
In Make a Du’a (informal prayers) a photo of Chinese men praying in an open-air mosque while light streams in on them, there is a palpable spirituality. Other photos of the same series, all taken in 2007, show the mixing of Arab Islamic culture and Chinese heritage. Plug into the Incense is a photo of mourners at a funeral hoisting a giant stick of incense that is twice their size into an even larger copper pot filled with sand in front of a mosque as others look on. The mosque is not domed as in the Middle East but tiered like traditional Chinese architecture. Though burning incense at a funeral is more often associated with Buddhist tradition, the oversized incense stick here is green – the colour of Islam.
Chinese and Arabic cultures have influenced each other since before the time of the famed travelers Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo. “Islam was brought through to China on the Silk Road,” says Pocock. “And the central themes of Middle Eastern renaissance were borne out of the influx of Chinese ceramics brought through the Silk Road.” The two cultures undeniably share a reverence for calligraphic art and are known for their elegant scripts.
“The Silk Road was very important to the exchange of cultures and facilitated understanding,” says Mazloum. “And old writing in Chinese has something Arabic in it.”
The rest of the shows in the festival are worth checking out if you’ve got the time, but the lack of explanations, background or historical significance of the works certainly dampens the desire. The space itself is beautiful though, and there is a plentiful amount of work from lands of the Silk Road displayed in the museum’s various galleries. As Pocock says, “there’s something for everyone there.”
swolff@thenational.ae
Sunday, 5 October 2008
What the Arab (and the non-Arab) world is missing…
Five years ago, the Arab Human Development Report issued by the United Nations Development Programme noted that the Arab world’s progress towards sustainable development was being hindered by what was termed “a knowledge deficit in all fields”. To redress this problem, the report prescribed a range of policies, one of which calls for promoting the translation of the best of Arab and international works in different subjects to create a robust two-way flow of information between the region and the outside world.
Although the report was received with enthusiasm in all Arab countries, it is here in the United Arab Emirates that its recommendations in the area of translation have found relevant echoes with the recent launch of two major translation projects: Kalima (meaning “word” in Arabic) of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, and Tarjem (meaning “translate” in Arabic) of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation.
But while the two projects are to be commended for their initiatives in keeping Arab readers abreast of the best in international literature, I believe similar attention needs to be paid to the spreading of Arabic cultural works among international audiences.
In historical terms, 1,000 and more years ago, the great Arab thinkers and doctors built upon Greek and Latin works of philosophy and literature to advance their own cultural development. But the flow was two-way. Arab works were translated into Latin and other languages to advance the human understanding of religion, philosophy and science around the world.
The launch of the Kalima and Tarjem projects demonstrates the UAE’s vision of leading the region into the “knowledge society” of the future. Kalima has recently announced that John Milton’s Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of man written in the 17th century, and his later work Paradise Regained, would be among eight texts that will soon be available in Arabic. Others include A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, The Roots of Arab Capitalism by Gene Heck, Kafka On the Shore by Murakami Haruki, The Future of Human Nature by Jurgen Habermas, The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig, and Il Segno (The Sign) by Umberto Eco.
Tarjem plans to facilitate the translation of 365 bestselling books into Arabic within a year, with a goal of translating more than 1,000 books covering diverse cultural and management topics within three years.
Given the huge resources allocated to Kalima and Tarjem, both projects will surely contribute to the enrichment of Arabic libraries of international writing. The significance of these initiatives can be fully appreciated only when we realise the shocking fact that more books were translated into Spanish last year than have been translated into Arabic in the past 100 years.
Yet it wasn’t always like this. For centuries, translation was a key force behind the cross-fertilisation of both Arab and Western cultural and scientific developments at different phases of their history. From the 9th to the 12th centuries, Arab-Islamic scholars actively sought out and translated classical Greek texts of Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Ptolemy and Galen, among many others, into Arabic.
Likewise, Latin translations of Arabic books triggered transformations in Europe’s schools and growing cities. The works of Ibn Sina, al-Razi and al-Zahrawi were translated into Latin and instituted as learning texts in the emerging European universities. What is more, Arab-Muslim assisted translations of the classical Greek authors also contributed to what historians call Europe’s “scientific renaissance” of the 12th century.
There is a broad consensus that the translation of the best international works into Arabic will contribute to bridging the current knowledge gap between the Arab world and the more advanced regions of North America, Western Europe and the Far East. Making these works available to Arab readers will help the region not only to be more informed about emerging professional practices, but also to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for other peoples’ cultures and attitudes.
Research around the world suggests that cultural stereotypes often arise either out of insufficient information or deficient knowledge about the “other”. The spread of knowledge in Arabic about the “other” will help rectify negative attitudes and establishing more common grounds for inter-cultural understanding.
Yet, to complete the circle, it is not enough to enable Arabs to know more about the “other”; the “other” also needs to know more about Arabs and their culture. Some towering Arab literary figures, such as Nagib Mahfouz, Nizar Qabbani and Mahmoud Darwish, have already found their way into the hearts and minds of millions around the world; now it should be the turn of others. For new generations of creative Arabs, the Kalima and Tarjem projects hold the only promise for making their names known globally.
Muhammad Ayish is a professor of communications at the University of Sharjah.
Although the report was received with enthusiasm in all Arab countries, it is here in the United Arab Emirates that its recommendations in the area of translation have found relevant echoes with the recent launch of two major translation projects: Kalima (meaning “word” in Arabic) of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, and Tarjem (meaning “translate” in Arabic) of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation.
But while the two projects are to be commended for their initiatives in keeping Arab readers abreast of the best in international literature, I believe similar attention needs to be paid to the spreading of Arabic cultural works among international audiences.
In historical terms, 1,000 and more years ago, the great Arab thinkers and doctors built upon Greek and Latin works of philosophy and literature to advance their own cultural development. But the flow was two-way. Arab works were translated into Latin and other languages to advance the human understanding of religion, philosophy and science around the world.
The launch of the Kalima and Tarjem projects demonstrates the UAE’s vision of leading the region into the “knowledge society” of the future. Kalima has recently announced that John Milton’s Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of man written in the 17th century, and his later work Paradise Regained, would be among eight texts that will soon be available in Arabic. Others include A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, The Roots of Arab Capitalism by Gene Heck, Kafka On the Shore by Murakami Haruki, The Future of Human Nature by Jurgen Habermas, The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig, and Il Segno (The Sign) by Umberto Eco.
Tarjem plans to facilitate the translation of 365 bestselling books into Arabic within a year, with a goal of translating more than 1,000 books covering diverse cultural and management topics within three years.
Given the huge resources allocated to Kalima and Tarjem, both projects will surely contribute to the enrichment of Arabic libraries of international writing. The significance of these initiatives can be fully appreciated only when we realise the shocking fact that more books were translated into Spanish last year than have been translated into Arabic in the past 100 years.
Yet it wasn’t always like this. For centuries, translation was a key force behind the cross-fertilisation of both Arab and Western cultural and scientific developments at different phases of their history. From the 9th to the 12th centuries, Arab-Islamic scholars actively sought out and translated classical Greek texts of Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Ptolemy and Galen, among many others, into Arabic.
Likewise, Latin translations of Arabic books triggered transformations in Europe’s schools and growing cities. The works of Ibn Sina, al-Razi and al-Zahrawi were translated into Latin and instituted as learning texts in the emerging European universities. What is more, Arab-Muslim assisted translations of the classical Greek authors also contributed to what historians call Europe’s “scientific renaissance” of the 12th century.
There is a broad consensus that the translation of the best international works into Arabic will contribute to bridging the current knowledge gap between the Arab world and the more advanced regions of North America, Western Europe and the Far East. Making these works available to Arab readers will help the region not only to be more informed about emerging professional practices, but also to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for other peoples’ cultures and attitudes.
Research around the world suggests that cultural stereotypes often arise either out of insufficient information or deficient knowledge about the “other”. The spread of knowledge in Arabic about the “other” will help rectify negative attitudes and establishing more common grounds for inter-cultural understanding.
Yet, to complete the circle, it is not enough to enable Arabs to know more about the “other”; the “other” also needs to know more about Arabs and their culture. Some towering Arab literary figures, such as Nagib Mahfouz, Nizar Qabbani and Mahmoud Darwish, have already found their way into the hearts and minds of millions around the world; now it should be the turn of others. For new generations of creative Arabs, the Kalima and Tarjem projects hold the only promise for making their names known globally.
Muhammad Ayish is a professor of communications at the University of Sharjah.
Saturday, 4 October 2008
'Consumerism and foreigners' greatest identity threats
Residents of the UAE say the burgeoning expatriate population and consumerism are the greatest threats to national identity, according to a study published today.
In the survey, conducted by the market-research company YouGov Siraj, 60 per cent of Emiratis questioned said they felt a sense of isolation as their cultural identity became increasingly diluted by large numbers of expatriates. In contrast, 71 per cent of the western expatriates surveyed said that the biggest threat to Emirati culture and
identity was the country’s “highly materialistic and consumerist society”.
Despite those sentiments, 81 per cent of the 628 respondents – Emirati and expatriate – said they belonged in the UAE. More than half said the country’s safety record was the main attraction.
Most of those surveyed agreed that a sense of national identity could be developed by creating a “consolidated vision across the emirates that all citizens and residents can relate to equally” and by communicating traditional values.
High rents, traffic and inflation emerged as the three main problems residents have. Traffic was considered the biggest problem in Sharjah, where 56 per cent of those surveyed said it reduced the quality of their lives.
The survey found that nationals were the most likely group to say the UAE is a good place to raise a family. A fifth of all Asians questioned cited discrimination as a key complaint.
Most Western and Asian expatriates said their inability to speak Arabic had not been an obstacle to their career aspirations.
The survey will be featured this evening on Emirates Tonight, on the Arabic-language Emirates Channel.
In the survey, conducted by the market-research company YouGov Siraj, 60 per cent of Emiratis questioned said they felt a sense of isolation as their cultural identity became increasingly diluted by large numbers of expatriates. In contrast, 71 per cent of the western expatriates surveyed said that the biggest threat to Emirati culture and
identity was the country’s “highly materialistic and consumerist society”.
Despite those sentiments, 81 per cent of the 628 respondents – Emirati and expatriate – said they belonged in the UAE. More than half said the country’s safety record was the main attraction.
Most of those surveyed agreed that a sense of national identity could be developed by creating a “consolidated vision across the emirates that all citizens and residents can relate to equally” and by communicating traditional values.
High rents, traffic and inflation emerged as the three main problems residents have. Traffic was considered the biggest problem in Sharjah, where 56 per cent of those surveyed said it reduced the quality of their lives.
The survey found that nationals were the most likely group to say the UAE is a good place to raise a family. A fifth of all Asians questioned cited discrimination as a key complaint.
Most Western and Asian expatriates said their inability to speak Arabic had not been an obstacle to their career aspirations.
The survey will be featured this evening on Emirates Tonight, on the Arabic-language Emirates Channel.
Our big worries: rent, traffic, prices
ABU DHABI // High rents, traffic and inflation are the three most pressing problems facing UAE residents, a wide-ranging survey on life in the Emirates finds.
The survey, conducted by the market research company YouGov Siraj, asked Emiratis and expatriates to list the best and worst aspects of life in the country.
Respondents were divided by emirate of residence, age, income group, gender and ethnic group.
While they praised the country’s safety, and cited job opportunities as the reason for moving here, the survey highlighted the different perceptions among Emiratis and other ethnic groups.
“Emiratis, Asians and westerners seem to have quite different experiences,” said Maria Joao Neves, a regional research director at YouGov Siraj.
For example, the fact that the UAE is an Islamic country was one of the top three things praised by Emiratis and expatriate Arabs. That was low on the lists of Westerners, who said better career opportunities and lack of taxation were the things they liked most.
Expatriates from the subcontinent also cited tax-free status, as well as the clean environment and lack of political conflict.
Nationwide, high rents were the most commonly expressed problem, although heavy traffic was the main complaint from residents of Sharjah.
“Inflation is a big concern for everybody, including Emiratis,” Ms Neves said. “If the Government were to do something to check the rate of inflation, that would improve people’s perception.”
Westerners also referred to encountering rude and arrogant behaviour and uncertainty over legal rights.
Ms Neves said Westerners were probably more concerned about legalities because they were more likely than other expatriates to buy property. “Until very recently they didn’t know where they stood in terms of land rights.”
The third most popular reason for living in the UAE was that the respondents were born and brought up here.
“Locals do have privileges that a lot of expatriates don’t have and that does make people feel like they are outsiders,” Ms Neves said. “Expatriates can’t become citizens and that’s important to a lot of people.”
Khalid, a Yemeni born in the UAE who was not among the survey respondents, said inequality between Emiratis and residents like himself was troubling. He complained about the lack of citizenship rights for those who have no other home.
“I’ve never been to Yemen and I’m not going any time soon,” he said. “I’ve lived here all my life. My brother has lived here. He just went to university and now to come back he needs a visit visa.”
Recent changes to the visa system require those seeking visit visas to await the paperwork in their home countries. For people like Khalid, that would mean going to Yemen.
“I don’t know anyone there,” he said.
Sixteen per cent of the Emiratis surveyed said the country was too liberal.
Emiratis were the most likely group to say the UAE is a good place to raise a family.
One fifth of all Asians said they most disliked the discrimination against them.
While 59 per cent of all the people surveyed said they would recommend to others that they move to the UAE, the country’s most avid supporters lived in either Abu Dhabi or the Northern Emirates.
The lower the respondents’ monthly income, the more likely they were to say they felt a sense of belonging in the UAE. Less than 34 per cent of those who earned more than US$8,000 (Dh29,400 a month) said they felt at home here, compared with 59 per cent of those who made less than US$1,066.
“Before, people would stay for three to four years and then leave. Now the UAE is moving toward a more stable community,” Ms Neves said.
“It’s interesting that despite the transitory nature of the community … there was a sense of belonging. When asked ‘Do you feel at home?’ 85 per cent of people said yes, or that they felt a little at home … that means the country is certainly moving in the right direction. People are staying longer in Dubai and the UAE.”
The survey, conducted by the market research company YouGov Siraj, asked Emiratis and expatriates to list the best and worst aspects of life in the country.
Respondents were divided by emirate of residence, age, income group, gender and ethnic group.
While they praised the country’s safety, and cited job opportunities as the reason for moving here, the survey highlighted the different perceptions among Emiratis and other ethnic groups.
“Emiratis, Asians and westerners seem to have quite different experiences,” said Maria Joao Neves, a regional research director at YouGov Siraj.
For example, the fact that the UAE is an Islamic country was one of the top three things praised by Emiratis and expatriate Arabs. That was low on the lists of Westerners, who said better career opportunities and lack of taxation were the things they liked most.
Expatriates from the subcontinent also cited tax-free status, as well as the clean environment and lack of political conflict.
Nationwide, high rents were the most commonly expressed problem, although heavy traffic was the main complaint from residents of Sharjah.
“Inflation is a big concern for everybody, including Emiratis,” Ms Neves said. “If the Government were to do something to check the rate of inflation, that would improve people’s perception.”
Westerners also referred to encountering rude and arrogant behaviour and uncertainty over legal rights.
Ms Neves said Westerners were probably more concerned about legalities because they were more likely than other expatriates to buy property. “Until very recently they didn’t know where they stood in terms of land rights.”
The third most popular reason for living in the UAE was that the respondents were born and brought up here.
“Locals do have privileges that a lot of expatriates don’t have and that does make people feel like they are outsiders,” Ms Neves said. “Expatriates can’t become citizens and that’s important to a lot of people.”
Khalid, a Yemeni born in the UAE who was not among the survey respondents, said inequality between Emiratis and residents like himself was troubling. He complained about the lack of citizenship rights for those who have no other home.
“I’ve never been to Yemen and I’m not going any time soon,” he said. “I’ve lived here all my life. My brother has lived here. He just went to university and now to come back he needs a visit visa.”
Recent changes to the visa system require those seeking visit visas to await the paperwork in their home countries. For people like Khalid, that would mean going to Yemen.
“I don’t know anyone there,” he said.
Sixteen per cent of the Emiratis surveyed said the country was too liberal.
Emiratis were the most likely group to say the UAE is a good place to raise a family.
One fifth of all Asians said they most disliked the discrimination against them.
While 59 per cent of all the people surveyed said they would recommend to others that they move to the UAE, the country’s most avid supporters lived in either Abu Dhabi or the Northern Emirates.
The lower the respondents’ monthly income, the more likely they were to say they felt a sense of belonging in the UAE. Less than 34 per cent of those who earned more than US$8,000 (Dh29,400 a month) said they felt at home here, compared with 59 per cent of those who made less than US$1,066.
“Before, people would stay for three to four years and then leave. Now the UAE is moving toward a more stable community,” Ms Neves said.
“It’s interesting that despite the transitory nature of the community … there was a sense of belonging. When asked ‘Do you feel at home?’ 85 per cent of people said yes, or that they felt a little at home … that means the country is certainly moving in the right direction. People are staying longer in Dubai and the UAE.”
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
UAE marks Eid al Fitr today
Eid al Fitr celebrations begin today following confirmation last night of the official sighting of the new moon, marking the end of Ramadan.
The moon-sighting committee announced the beginning of Eid from the Abu Dhabi Judiciary building at about 8.30pm.
According to Islamic tradition, the sighting of a new moon determines the end of Ramadan and start of a new month.
Families who have been fasting during daylight hours for the holy month were to gather at Abu Dhabi mosques at 4.49am tomorrow for the dawn prayer. This is followed by the Eid prayer which, traditionally, takes place outdoors. Then families congregate for a day of feasts and celebration, as couples visit their parents and children receive gifts.
“It has been determined that Eid begins on Tuesday,” said Dr Hadef bin Jua’an al Dhaheri, the Minister of Justice, at the official announcement after last night’s meeting of the Shawwal Crescent Committee.
The sighting marks the official start of a three-day holiday period. Today, tomorrow and Thursday are public holidays, followed by a normal weekend. All businesses and government departments are expected to go back to work after the festive period on Sunday.
Today also marks the beginning of Shawwal, the 10th month in the Islamic calendar.
“After exhausting all legitimate methods and making contacts with neighbouring countries, the Shawwal moon was sighted,” the committee said in a statement released by the state news agency, WAM.
To mark the start of the festivities, the committee’s members extended congratulations to the country’s rulers, the people of the UAE and Muslims around the world.
“The Islamic month is tied to the moon,” said Hasan al Hariri, head of the Dubai Astronomy Group. “This way, God made it easy for humanity. No calendar, no counting days, just follow the moon.”
Astronomical calculations dating back to early Islamic times can determine with some accuracy when the moon will be sighted by the naked eye.
“Astronomers do not come up with contradictory calculations. They use maths and science to arrive at the same answer,” said Mr Hariri. “But astronomers do not call Ramadan and Eid. That is the job of muftis.”
The moon-sighting committee meets if there is the slightest chance of a sighting because, by tradition, when the new moon can be seen by the naked eye, a new month has begun.
Uncertainty about when Eid will begin remains until the very last minute, with contradictory reports, rumours and media speculation.
However, last night's committee’s meeting was not in vain and the sighting of a tiny sliver of the new moon was confirmed.
Different countries often call Ramadan and Eid on different days. This year, Iran and Oman began Ramadan a day after the UAE and other GCC countries.
Each year the UAE ensures its timings match Saudi Arabia as a display of “unity for the Arabian peninsula”, according to one official.
The Emirates is an hour behind Saudi Arabia, which means the Emirati moon-sighting committee broke their fast then waited for the Saudi committee to break theirs before they could begin communicating.
Other nations, however, are likely to choose a different date. Nigeria, for example, started its Eid celebrations yesterday.
The moon-sighting committee announced the beginning of Eid from the Abu Dhabi Judiciary building at about 8.30pm.
According to Islamic tradition, the sighting of a new moon determines the end of Ramadan and start of a new month.
Families who have been fasting during daylight hours for the holy month were to gather at Abu Dhabi mosques at 4.49am tomorrow for the dawn prayer. This is followed by the Eid prayer which, traditionally, takes place outdoors. Then families congregate for a day of feasts and celebration, as couples visit their parents and children receive gifts.
“It has been determined that Eid begins on Tuesday,” said Dr Hadef bin Jua’an al Dhaheri, the Minister of Justice, at the official announcement after last night’s meeting of the Shawwal Crescent Committee.
The sighting marks the official start of a three-day holiday period. Today, tomorrow and Thursday are public holidays, followed by a normal weekend. All businesses and government departments are expected to go back to work after the festive period on Sunday.
Today also marks the beginning of Shawwal, the 10th month in the Islamic calendar.
“After exhausting all legitimate methods and making contacts with neighbouring countries, the Shawwal moon was sighted,” the committee said in a statement released by the state news agency, WAM.
To mark the start of the festivities, the committee’s members extended congratulations to the country’s rulers, the people of the UAE and Muslims around the world.
“The Islamic month is tied to the moon,” said Hasan al Hariri, head of the Dubai Astronomy Group. “This way, God made it easy for humanity. No calendar, no counting days, just follow the moon.”
Astronomical calculations dating back to early Islamic times can determine with some accuracy when the moon will be sighted by the naked eye.
“Astronomers do not come up with contradictory calculations. They use maths and science to arrive at the same answer,” said Mr Hariri. “But astronomers do not call Ramadan and Eid. That is the job of muftis.”
The moon-sighting committee meets if there is the slightest chance of a sighting because, by tradition, when the new moon can be seen by the naked eye, a new month has begun.
Uncertainty about when Eid will begin remains until the very last minute, with contradictory reports, rumours and media speculation.
However, last night's committee’s meeting was not in vain and the sighting of a tiny sliver of the new moon was confirmed.
Different countries often call Ramadan and Eid on different days. This year, Iran and Oman began Ramadan a day after the UAE and other GCC countries.
Each year the UAE ensures its timings match Saudi Arabia as a display of “unity for the Arabian peninsula”, according to one official.
The Emirates is an hour behind Saudi Arabia, which means the Emirati moon-sighting committee broke their fast then waited for the Saudi committee to break theirs before they could begin communicating.
Other nations, however, are likely to choose a different date. Nigeria, for example, started its Eid celebrations yesterday.
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Journalists Association calls for press freedom
DUBAI // Journalists observed the first UAE Press Freedom Day at a majlis last night with a call for more openness in the media and further legal protection for reporters and editors.
Mohammed Youssef, the head of the UAE Journalists Association, said there was growing acceptance by government officials and businesses that the media need to be free, but that there was a long way to go before journalists could get the same access to information as their counterparts in other parts of the world.
“Things are improving; people realise now that if they do not tell the truth and give journalists the information they need, there is more chance of inaccurate rumours appearing on the internet,” Mr Youssef said before the majlis.
“When people are looking for information about the UAE, if they do not find it here, they will find it on Reuters or Bloomberg in London or New York, so it does not make sense to keep things hidden from the press in this country.”
“Still, we are not given information on a silver plate. We have to fight for it. In some ways it is harder now because more government departments are using PR firms, so you are passed on to someone who knows nothing about the topic.
“It still takes too long to get information, but I think now if a journalist has information that he knows is 100 per cent correct, it is easier for him to print the story without waiting for weeks. That makes people more willing to talk, and if they will not talk before you do the story, they will give a response the day after you print it.”
On Sept 25 last year, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, in his capacity as UAE prime minister, said journalists should not be threatened with imprisonment for doing their jobs. The Journalists Association designated the date as UAE Press Freedom Day.
During the majlis, Mr Youssef said that to his knowledge, no journalists had been arrested or taken to court since.
However, he warned that journalists still needed to exercise caution as newspapers can be still be reprimanded for printing incorrect or libellous information.
The majlis, which was also attended by Abdul Hamid Ahmad, editor in chief of Gulf News, and Abdul Hamid al Kumati, a legal consultant to the UAE Journalists Association, also discussed the proposed revision of the UAE media law.
Mr Ahmad said at the meeting the authorities had been “more civilised” in dealing with complaints against journalists since Sheikh Mohammed’s proclamation last year that said reform of the media law was essential.
Reports on the draft of the new law suggested that its authors ignored many of the suggestions made by journalists, Mr Youssef said, speaking before the majlis.
As an example, he said he understood that in the draft law, “if a journalist is to be taken to court, it is still to the criminal court, not the civil courts as we have asked for”.
Mohammed Youssef, the head of the UAE Journalists Association, said there was growing acceptance by government officials and businesses that the media need to be free, but that there was a long way to go before journalists could get the same access to information as their counterparts in other parts of the world.
“Things are improving; people realise now that if they do not tell the truth and give journalists the information they need, there is more chance of inaccurate rumours appearing on the internet,” Mr Youssef said before the majlis.
“When people are looking for information about the UAE, if they do not find it here, they will find it on Reuters or Bloomberg in London or New York, so it does not make sense to keep things hidden from the press in this country.”
“Still, we are not given information on a silver plate. We have to fight for it. In some ways it is harder now because more government departments are using PR firms, so you are passed on to someone who knows nothing about the topic.
“It still takes too long to get information, but I think now if a journalist has information that he knows is 100 per cent correct, it is easier for him to print the story without waiting for weeks. That makes people more willing to talk, and if they will not talk before you do the story, they will give a response the day after you print it.”
On Sept 25 last year, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, in his capacity as UAE prime minister, said journalists should not be threatened with imprisonment for doing their jobs. The Journalists Association designated the date as UAE Press Freedom Day.
During the majlis, Mr Youssef said that to his knowledge, no journalists had been arrested or taken to court since.
However, he warned that journalists still needed to exercise caution as newspapers can be still be reprimanded for printing incorrect or libellous information.
The majlis, which was also attended by Abdul Hamid Ahmad, editor in chief of Gulf News, and Abdul Hamid al Kumati, a legal consultant to the UAE Journalists Association, also discussed the proposed revision of the UAE media law.
Mr Ahmad said at the meeting the authorities had been “more civilised” in dealing with complaints against journalists since Sheikh Mohammed’s proclamation last year that said reform of the media law was essential.
Reports on the draft of the new law suggested that its authors ignored many of the suggestions made by journalists, Mr Youssef said, speaking before the majlis.
As an example, he said he understood that in the draft law, “if a journalist is to be taken to court, it is still to the criminal court, not the civil courts as we have asked for”.
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Academic City plans campus facilities
Student facilities similar to those on major university campuses are to be built at Dubai International Academic City.
Social centres, sport facilities and student housing are planned for the education free-zone, which is intended to house 40 institutions and 40,000 students.
The new facilities would transform the site from a collection of academic buildings to a fully-fledged student community.
The addition of housing would help students financially. University officials have said that high housing costs could deter potential students from enrolling for classes. Lecturers also would be provided with housing.
Several branch campuses are based at DIAC, among them the French Fashion University Esmod, Heriot-Watt University and Michigan State University.
There are 10,000 students based at DIAC and Dubai Knowledge Village. Most universities in Knowledge Village plan to move to DIAC in the coming years as other institutions from overseas set up in Knowledge Village.
Dr Warren Fox, chairman of the University Quality Assurance International Board, said the new facilities would make DIAC a more appealing place for students.
“We will have facilities for students so that when they’re studying they will have social and other facilities,” he said.
A food court will open soon, to be followed within a year by the student housing and a social centre. There will also be a sport centre, a library and internet facilities. Housing could be shared by several institutions.
Denis Ravizza, art director and associate dean at Esmod, which opened at DIAC in 2006, said: “It will bring a real student life, with students meeting each other and sharing in the development of the multicultural aspect of the campus, because there are so many nationalities. Student facilities will bring an interesting cultural life to the campus.”
The significant increase in Dubai rents has forced some universities to charge students more. Michigan State University, for example, raised its annual housing charge from Dh22,000 (US$6,000) to Dh31,000 (US$8,400) this year.
Mr Ravizza said the cost of housing “really has an impact” on whether students register.
“That’s the number one issue,” he said.
Dr Fox said DIAC would be the centrepiece of Dubai’s bid to emerge as a regional hub for higher education.
“When you look at the population around the Gulf – from India up to the Arab world – there’s a large area from which you can draw,” he said.
“We do expect, as the institutions develop, they will be drawing from the region.
“People will want to come here because this is where the action is. By tying our programmes to the areas where Dubai has a world reputation, we’ll become a regional hub and students will want to come here and be part of what’s happening.”
Subjects such as tourism, hotel management, shipping and finance are likely to be particularly popular among students, Dr Fox said.
Social centres, sport facilities and student housing are planned for the education free-zone, which is intended to house 40 institutions and 40,000 students.
The new facilities would transform the site from a collection of academic buildings to a fully-fledged student community.
The addition of housing would help students financially. University officials have said that high housing costs could deter potential students from enrolling for classes. Lecturers also would be provided with housing.
Several branch campuses are based at DIAC, among them the French Fashion University Esmod, Heriot-Watt University and Michigan State University.
There are 10,000 students based at DIAC and Dubai Knowledge Village. Most universities in Knowledge Village plan to move to DIAC in the coming years as other institutions from overseas set up in Knowledge Village.
Dr Warren Fox, chairman of the University Quality Assurance International Board, said the new facilities would make DIAC a more appealing place for students.
“We will have facilities for students so that when they’re studying they will have social and other facilities,” he said.
A food court will open soon, to be followed within a year by the student housing and a social centre. There will also be a sport centre, a library and internet facilities. Housing could be shared by several institutions.
Denis Ravizza, art director and associate dean at Esmod, which opened at DIAC in 2006, said: “It will bring a real student life, with students meeting each other and sharing in the development of the multicultural aspect of the campus, because there are so many nationalities. Student facilities will bring an interesting cultural life to the campus.”
The significant increase in Dubai rents has forced some universities to charge students more. Michigan State University, for example, raised its annual housing charge from Dh22,000 (US$6,000) to Dh31,000 (US$8,400) this year.
Mr Ravizza said the cost of housing “really has an impact” on whether students register.
“That’s the number one issue,” he said.
Dr Fox said DIAC would be the centrepiece of Dubai’s bid to emerge as a regional hub for higher education.
“When you look at the population around the Gulf – from India up to the Arab world – there’s a large area from which you can draw,” he said.
“We do expect, as the institutions develop, they will be drawing from the region.
“People will want to come here because this is where the action is. By tying our programmes to the areas where Dubai has a world reputation, we’ll become a regional hub and students will want to come here and be part of what’s happening.”
Subjects such as tourism, hotel management, shipping and finance are likely to be particularly popular among students, Dr Fox said.
Sunday, 14 September 2008
The rainbow nation
“Ramadan is for everyone, Muslims and non-Muslims,” says Marwan al Sarkal, the CEO of Al Qasba. This is the message he hopes is conveyed by the nightly celebrations at Sharjah’s waterfront development. This is the fourth year in a row that Al Qasba has hosted nightly Ramadan celebrations and, as ever, it is an event that really only starts to take off later in the evening.
Until around 10pm, the Ramadan crowds at Al Qasba are fairly sparse but as people emerge from iftar and isha’a prayers, ready for suhoor, the atmosphere becomes more festive and the crowds thicken and remain until well after midnight. At around 10.30, energetic Chinese dancers dressed as lions accompanied by rowdy drums herald the beginning of a more lively few hours. The dancers are involved with the Silk Road part of the nightly Ramadan event. This incorporates food and merchandise stalls along the Al Qasba canal from China, India, Syria and Iran, some of the countries that comprised the old Silk Road trade routes across Asia and the Middle East to the Mediterranean. As well as the energetic antics of the Chinese lion dancers, the brightly coloured Indian puppet show was another popular attraction.
According to Sarkal, Al Qasba is busiest over Ramadan on the weekend evenings. “We get up to 2,500 people on Thursday and Friday nights but it has been as high as 6,000. People are really starting to relate to Al Qasba as a Ramadan destination,” he says.
But it’s not a just a numbers game for Sarkal. “We don’t want to have thousands of people here if there aren’t enough parking spaces and people aren’t happy.”
To that end, plans are with an architect for a multi-storey car park for Al Qasba so that more people will be able to enjoy the restaurants, funfair, outdoor spaces and the popular Eye of the Emirates Ferris wheel with its 42 air-conditioned carriages. In the meantime, Sarkal is more concerned with making Al Qasba a place where everyone can be part of Ramadan. Al Qasba has hosted Ramadan celebrations since opening in 2005.
While the Heritage Tent slowly comes alive with Arabic cooking stations, henna painting, traditional basket weaving and stalls selling jewellery, abayas and thobes at one end of Al Qasba, the Al Eman Oasis Tent at the other end fills with people who are keen to listen to the nightly lecture on Islam. Sarkal says that he hopes Muslims and non-Muslims will attend the lectures which are being conducted in Arabic, English and French. There’s a separate section for women to sit where they can see and hear the lectures on TV screens. After Ramadan, lectures on Islam in English and Arabic will continue regularly.
“The lectures were big during 2007 but it is bigger again in 2008,” says Sarkal. “There have been more than 500 people at some of the lectures – this tent is an asset for us.”
It is also in the Al Eman Oasis Tent that people can participate in the charity aspect of Ramadan. With zakat, or the giving to charity, as one of the five pillars of Islam, Sarkal says that donation boxes have been provided in the tent and all money raised goes to humanitarian projects that the UAE government is administering. “These projects are in the UAE and beyond,” he says. “All sorts of projects – providing people with books, building mosques, hospitals and schools – by making a donation, people can feel like they are part of the whole community.”
Drawing crowds into the Heritage Tent after 10pm is the live filming of Munshid Al Sharjah, an Islamic singing contest that Markal likens to a local version of Star Academy. Screening on Sharjah TV, Munshid Al Sharjah has been running for three years with filming taking place at Al Qasba during the week and Academic City on weekends. The contestantscome from nations across the Arab world, including the UAE. For the first time this year, there are participants from Palestine, Morocco and Libya. Contestants can sing songs they have written themselves or those that have been written by others and viewers can vote for the favourites via SMS. All songs are performed without musical accompaniment and during the filming, the pure, clear voices of the contestants can be heard throughout the entire Heritage Tent over the chatter.
The grand prize for the winner is Dh200,000 and a new BMW. Along the way, there are other prizes given out – on our visit, the top six singers won a hot-air balloon ride. Hosted by Mohammed Zaki, who was resplendent in a khaki suit and apricot shirt, Munshid Al Sharjah even has its own Facebook page for fans to discuss who should and shouldn’t be voted off.
Noor Dubai, an Arabic language station, is doing live broadcasts from the Heritage Tent throughout Ramadan. “We’ve had a relationship with Noor Dubai for two years – they are very good supporters of Al Qasba, especially at Ramadan,” says Sarkal. The conversation is interrupted by a loud comedy voice-over in Arabic followed by much laughter – Sarkal explains that it is the voices of four humorous characters – “some Ramadan comedy”, he says with a smile.
In the middle of the Heritage Tent I saw a woman weaving baskets from dried palm fronds. Halima Khodin, an Emirati from Dibba, Fujairah, creates baskets in rich purple and green and explains that the dried fronds used to be dyed using natural dyes but these days, it’s easier to go to the supermarket and buy dyes in a range of colours. But Halima hasn’t entirely abandoned the traditions she learnt from her mother as a young girl – the main items she weaves include the sarood, a large serving platter for when everyone sits on the floor to eat, the machabeh, which is used to cover food and the jafeer, a food basket that can be hung from the wall. She makes a modest living with baskets selling for between Dh50 and Dh60.
Most of the visitors who arrive at the Heritage Tent late at night are keen to socialise with friends and family and eat a lavish Suhoor to sustain them for the next day’s fasting. As well as a cafe set up in a corner, there are women tirelessly cooking traditional Arabic treats and they are happy to share their wares as well as their recipes.
Mariam Ali is busy making chaba, Arabic pancakes that are deep fried and served with lashings of honey. At the next stall, Zainab Mohammed is making another regional dessert. Luqimat are dumplings made from sugar, flower, water, saffron and custard. Zainab deftly grabs the batter and transfers it swiftly from bowl to pot while maintaining the spherical shapes of the dumplings. They emerge from the hot oil crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.
Moving on from the cooking stations is a row of booths with wooden doors designed to replicate the earliest examples of housing in the UAE. For Dh70, you can get your photo taken decked out in traditional clothing and jewellery and even brandishing replicas of traditional weapons. The gold jewellery includes the mertasha, an impressive neck collar, the hagab, a heavy belt and the tasa, a spectacular headdress that drapes gold and baubles across the forehead.
Aziza, a softly spoken Pakistani woman, has only been in the UAE for a month but has already learnt the intricate art of painting henna tattoos and is busy working on the hands of willing visitors. Within a matter of minutes, she has created a swirling floral design on the hand of Ruby, a cheerful Filipina who is extremely excited about her new skin art and eagerly gets her friends to take photos on their mobile phones. Aziza is very modest about her skill, saying: “It’s easy, you can do anything if your mind wants to. I can do patterns, flowers, whatever my mind thinks of.”
For Sarkal, the holy month events are part of encouraging a growing awareness of the Al Qasba development. Annual visitor numbers have risen steadily since opening in 2005 with 25,000 visitors. In 2007, there were 226,000 visitors and by June this year, 228,000 people had already passed through Sharjah’s waterside haven.
“We’ve changed the perception of the place,” he says. “To create change was a challenge but we are getting people from around to see Al Qasba as a place to chill out. Ramadan is very important to us – people have come here because it’s a real place, not a fabrication. That’s what makes it special.”
Until around 10pm, the Ramadan crowds at Al Qasba are fairly sparse but as people emerge from iftar and isha’a prayers, ready for suhoor, the atmosphere becomes more festive and the crowds thicken and remain until well after midnight. At around 10.30, energetic Chinese dancers dressed as lions accompanied by rowdy drums herald the beginning of a more lively few hours. The dancers are involved with the Silk Road part of the nightly Ramadan event. This incorporates food and merchandise stalls along the Al Qasba canal from China, India, Syria and Iran, some of the countries that comprised the old Silk Road trade routes across Asia and the Middle East to the Mediterranean. As well as the energetic antics of the Chinese lion dancers, the brightly coloured Indian puppet show was another popular attraction.
According to Sarkal, Al Qasba is busiest over Ramadan on the weekend evenings. “We get up to 2,500 people on Thursday and Friday nights but it has been as high as 6,000. People are really starting to relate to Al Qasba as a Ramadan destination,” he says.
But it’s not a just a numbers game for Sarkal. “We don’t want to have thousands of people here if there aren’t enough parking spaces and people aren’t happy.”
To that end, plans are with an architect for a multi-storey car park for Al Qasba so that more people will be able to enjoy the restaurants, funfair, outdoor spaces and the popular Eye of the Emirates Ferris wheel with its 42 air-conditioned carriages. In the meantime, Sarkal is more concerned with making Al Qasba a place where everyone can be part of Ramadan. Al Qasba has hosted Ramadan celebrations since opening in 2005.
While the Heritage Tent slowly comes alive with Arabic cooking stations, henna painting, traditional basket weaving and stalls selling jewellery, abayas and thobes at one end of Al Qasba, the Al Eman Oasis Tent at the other end fills with people who are keen to listen to the nightly lecture on Islam. Sarkal says that he hopes Muslims and non-Muslims will attend the lectures which are being conducted in Arabic, English and French. There’s a separate section for women to sit where they can see and hear the lectures on TV screens. After Ramadan, lectures on Islam in English and Arabic will continue regularly.
“The lectures were big during 2007 but it is bigger again in 2008,” says Sarkal. “There have been more than 500 people at some of the lectures – this tent is an asset for us.”
It is also in the Al Eman Oasis Tent that people can participate in the charity aspect of Ramadan. With zakat, or the giving to charity, as one of the five pillars of Islam, Sarkal says that donation boxes have been provided in the tent and all money raised goes to humanitarian projects that the UAE government is administering. “These projects are in the UAE and beyond,” he says. “All sorts of projects – providing people with books, building mosques, hospitals and schools – by making a donation, people can feel like they are part of the whole community.”
Drawing crowds into the Heritage Tent after 10pm is the live filming of Munshid Al Sharjah, an Islamic singing contest that Markal likens to a local version of Star Academy. Screening on Sharjah TV, Munshid Al Sharjah has been running for three years with filming taking place at Al Qasba during the week and Academic City on weekends. The contestantscome from nations across the Arab world, including the UAE. For the first time this year, there are participants from Palestine, Morocco and Libya. Contestants can sing songs they have written themselves or those that have been written by others and viewers can vote for the favourites via SMS. All songs are performed without musical accompaniment and during the filming, the pure, clear voices of the contestants can be heard throughout the entire Heritage Tent over the chatter.
The grand prize for the winner is Dh200,000 and a new BMW. Along the way, there are other prizes given out – on our visit, the top six singers won a hot-air balloon ride. Hosted by Mohammed Zaki, who was resplendent in a khaki suit and apricot shirt, Munshid Al Sharjah even has its own Facebook page for fans to discuss who should and shouldn’t be voted off.
Noor Dubai, an Arabic language station, is doing live broadcasts from the Heritage Tent throughout Ramadan. “We’ve had a relationship with Noor Dubai for two years – they are very good supporters of Al Qasba, especially at Ramadan,” says Sarkal. The conversation is interrupted by a loud comedy voice-over in Arabic followed by much laughter – Sarkal explains that it is the voices of four humorous characters – “some Ramadan comedy”, he says with a smile.
In the middle of the Heritage Tent I saw a woman weaving baskets from dried palm fronds. Halima Khodin, an Emirati from Dibba, Fujairah, creates baskets in rich purple and green and explains that the dried fronds used to be dyed using natural dyes but these days, it’s easier to go to the supermarket and buy dyes in a range of colours. But Halima hasn’t entirely abandoned the traditions she learnt from her mother as a young girl – the main items she weaves include the sarood, a large serving platter for when everyone sits on the floor to eat, the machabeh, which is used to cover food and the jafeer, a food basket that can be hung from the wall. She makes a modest living with baskets selling for between Dh50 and Dh60.
Most of the visitors who arrive at the Heritage Tent late at night are keen to socialise with friends and family and eat a lavish Suhoor to sustain them for the next day’s fasting. As well as a cafe set up in a corner, there are women tirelessly cooking traditional Arabic treats and they are happy to share their wares as well as their recipes.
Mariam Ali is busy making chaba, Arabic pancakes that are deep fried and served with lashings of honey. At the next stall, Zainab Mohammed is making another regional dessert. Luqimat are dumplings made from sugar, flower, water, saffron and custard. Zainab deftly grabs the batter and transfers it swiftly from bowl to pot while maintaining the spherical shapes of the dumplings. They emerge from the hot oil crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.
Moving on from the cooking stations is a row of booths with wooden doors designed to replicate the earliest examples of housing in the UAE. For Dh70, you can get your photo taken decked out in traditional clothing and jewellery and even brandishing replicas of traditional weapons. The gold jewellery includes the mertasha, an impressive neck collar, the hagab, a heavy belt and the tasa, a spectacular headdress that drapes gold and baubles across the forehead.
Aziza, a softly spoken Pakistani woman, has only been in the UAE for a month but has already learnt the intricate art of painting henna tattoos and is busy working on the hands of willing visitors. Within a matter of minutes, she has created a swirling floral design on the hand of Ruby, a cheerful Filipina who is extremely excited about her new skin art and eagerly gets her friends to take photos on their mobile phones. Aziza is very modest about her skill, saying: “It’s easy, you can do anything if your mind wants to. I can do patterns, flowers, whatever my mind thinks of.”
For Sarkal, the holy month events are part of encouraging a growing awareness of the Al Qasba development. Annual visitor numbers have risen steadily since opening in 2005 with 25,000 visitors. In 2007, there were 226,000 visitors and by June this year, 228,000 people had already passed through Sharjah’s waterside haven.
“We’ve changed the perception of the place,” he says. “To create change was a challenge but we are getting people from around to see Al Qasba as a place to chill out. Ramadan is very important to us – people have come here because it’s a real place, not a fabrication. That’s what makes it special.”
Friday, 12 September 2008
Building a city from the sands
ABU DHABI // Kneeling alongside Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan 40 years ago, the young Japanese man sketched out plans for the “brand new city” of Abu Dhabi in the sand using a camel stick.
“He told me, ‘I want trees and green’, and so I gave him trees and green,” says Dr Katsuhiko Takahashi, now an eminent city planner and government adviser.
Although his career has spanned the globe and has included ambitious projects for the UN, the private sector and financial institutions, Dr Takahashi maintains that the year he spent with Sheikh Zayed, the late founder of the nation, on the plans for Abu Dhabi was the “most important, most personal, most instructive and rewarding time in my life”.
Dr Takahashi, 71, was responsible for the layout of the town, much of which can still be seen today in the wide roads, the Corniche and the greenery.
And Dr Takahashi, who recently failed to win the contract to prepare a regulatory framework for Abu Dhabi, believes that he still has an important message for city planners.
“I am quite sure that building several hundred million square feet of commercial buildings, millions of hotel rooms and luxurious condos will not kill the spirit of Abu Dhabi, but it may kill the spirit, vision and aspiration of the ‘old palace courtyard people’,” he says. “My goal would be to find a timely blend to mesh the two driving forces into the 21st century and beyond. I believe it to be highly achievable and most interesting and challenging.”
Dr Takahashi had recently completed his master’s degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, in New York, when he received a call from the Japanese ambassador in Kuwait asking him if he wanted to go to Abu Dhabi.
“As there was limited representation of world governments in Abu Dhabi”, Sheikh Zayed reached out to the embassy via Kuwait, Dr Takahashi says. The Pan American Airlines ticket office in New York “had no idea where Abu Dhabi was, and some of them asked me if it was a new town in the Caribbean”, he says. But, excited at the prospect of developing a new city, Dr Takahashi managed to make it to the town in 1967, when it had a population of about 40,000.
“I stepped into Abu Dhabi in the middle of its transformation from a fishing village to a modern city,” he says.
For the next year, Dr Takahashi had daily meetings with Sheikh Zayed, who had become Ruler of Abu Dhabi only the previous year.
The relationship between the two men was “very close” and “grew into something like a dual mentorship”, Dr Takahashi says.
“Over time we talked about many things, such as attributes of other cities around the world and my experiences and impressions of them,” he says. “We shared a vision of how Abu Dhabi should and could progress.
“Competing with Dubai for positioning as a global city was not his immediate concern. Sheikh Zayed’s priorities were for peace, security, progress, responsibility and welfare for the people of Abu Dhabi and its sister emirates, including Dubai.”
The relationship was such that the young planner, whose career was just starting, was able to speak frankly with the Sheikh when they had differences of opinion.
“You have hired me because I have the experience and education in this field and you have not. You should listen to me,” Dr Takahashi once boldly told the Sheikh.
It was a time when advisers praised everything the ruler said, with comments such as: “‘Yes, your highness, you are absolutely right, what a great idea it is’,” Dr Takahashi says.
“I do not clearly recall the exact words I used. However, they were highly disrespectful and dangerous in the society of a feudal system,” Dr Takahashi says. “I am a descendant of samurai and a long line of politicians, and in that system a man who spoke to the shogun [in that way] was long gone by hara-kiri [court-mandated ritual suicide]. I did leave Abu Dhabi alive. Inshallah.”
“Planning to make Abu Dhabi a modern city at that time required a free flow of ideas first in order to have visionary plans,” he says. “The decision-maker and planner had to work and speak frankly without fear or favour.
“I was extremely lucky to have a brilliant, broad-minded decision-maker across the table from me.
“He was a hands-on man, interested in everything. He was truly compassionate and concerned about public welfare and the progress of Abu Dhabi and beyond.”
Dr Takahashi says it “was exciting and challenging to visualise and interact with Sheikh Zayed and all the many people in laying out plans, making sketches and drawings of buildings, open spaces, circulation networks, with pencils, water colours, sometimes drawing in the sand with Sheikh Zayed using camel sticks”.
Before he left to join the UN Centre for Housing, Building and Planning, where he remained for 10 years, one of Dr Takahashi’s tasks was to give out the plots of land granted by the Sheikh to the people. Some were satisfied, while others complained that their plots were in a central area or too close to a main road.
“I explained to the people that their plots were the prime real estate in town and were valuable for future use either residentially or commercially,” he said. “The ruler agreed with my rationale and told people, ‘Do whatever the Japanese tells you to do.’ Today, many of these people must be among the richest in Abu Dhabi.”
“He told me, ‘I want trees and green’, and so I gave him trees and green,” says Dr Katsuhiko Takahashi, now an eminent city planner and government adviser.
Although his career has spanned the globe and has included ambitious projects for the UN, the private sector and financial institutions, Dr Takahashi maintains that the year he spent with Sheikh Zayed, the late founder of the nation, on the plans for Abu Dhabi was the “most important, most personal, most instructive and rewarding time in my life”.
Dr Takahashi, 71, was responsible for the layout of the town, much of which can still be seen today in the wide roads, the Corniche and the greenery.
And Dr Takahashi, who recently failed to win the contract to prepare a regulatory framework for Abu Dhabi, believes that he still has an important message for city planners.
“I am quite sure that building several hundred million square feet of commercial buildings, millions of hotel rooms and luxurious condos will not kill the spirit of Abu Dhabi, but it may kill the spirit, vision and aspiration of the ‘old palace courtyard people’,” he says. “My goal would be to find a timely blend to mesh the two driving forces into the 21st century and beyond. I believe it to be highly achievable and most interesting and challenging.”
Dr Takahashi had recently completed his master’s degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, in New York, when he received a call from the Japanese ambassador in Kuwait asking him if he wanted to go to Abu Dhabi.
“As there was limited representation of world governments in Abu Dhabi”, Sheikh Zayed reached out to the embassy via Kuwait, Dr Takahashi says. The Pan American Airlines ticket office in New York “had no idea where Abu Dhabi was, and some of them asked me if it was a new town in the Caribbean”, he says. But, excited at the prospect of developing a new city, Dr Takahashi managed to make it to the town in 1967, when it had a population of about 40,000.
“I stepped into Abu Dhabi in the middle of its transformation from a fishing village to a modern city,” he says.
For the next year, Dr Takahashi had daily meetings with Sheikh Zayed, who had become Ruler of Abu Dhabi only the previous year.
The relationship between the two men was “very close” and “grew into something like a dual mentorship”, Dr Takahashi says.
“Over time we talked about many things, such as attributes of other cities around the world and my experiences and impressions of them,” he says. “We shared a vision of how Abu Dhabi should and could progress.
“Competing with Dubai for positioning as a global city was not his immediate concern. Sheikh Zayed’s priorities were for peace, security, progress, responsibility and welfare for the people of Abu Dhabi and its sister emirates, including Dubai.”
The relationship was such that the young planner, whose career was just starting, was able to speak frankly with the Sheikh when they had differences of opinion.
“You have hired me because I have the experience and education in this field and you have not. You should listen to me,” Dr Takahashi once boldly told the Sheikh.
It was a time when advisers praised everything the ruler said, with comments such as: “‘Yes, your highness, you are absolutely right, what a great idea it is’,” Dr Takahashi says.
“I do not clearly recall the exact words I used. However, they were highly disrespectful and dangerous in the society of a feudal system,” Dr Takahashi says. “I am a descendant of samurai and a long line of politicians, and in that system a man who spoke to the shogun [in that way] was long gone by hara-kiri [court-mandated ritual suicide]. I did leave Abu Dhabi alive. Inshallah.”
“Planning to make Abu Dhabi a modern city at that time required a free flow of ideas first in order to have visionary plans,” he says. “The decision-maker and planner had to work and speak frankly without fear or favour.
“I was extremely lucky to have a brilliant, broad-minded decision-maker across the table from me.
“He was a hands-on man, interested in everything. He was truly compassionate and concerned about public welfare and the progress of Abu Dhabi and beyond.”
Dr Takahashi says it “was exciting and challenging to visualise and interact with Sheikh Zayed and all the many people in laying out plans, making sketches and drawings of buildings, open spaces, circulation networks, with pencils, water colours, sometimes drawing in the sand with Sheikh Zayed using camel sticks”.
Before he left to join the UN Centre for Housing, Building and Planning, where he remained for 10 years, one of Dr Takahashi’s tasks was to give out the plots of land granted by the Sheikh to the people. Some were satisfied, while others complained that their plots were in a central area or too close to a main road.
“I explained to the people that their plots were the prime real estate in town and were valuable for future use either residentially or commercially,” he said. “The ruler agreed with my rationale and told people, ‘Do whatever the Japanese tells you to do.’ Today, many of these people must be among the richest in Abu Dhabi.”
Wednesday, 3 September 2008
Women in work: there’s good news, but the UAE has more to do
The facts are startling. The UAE has a highly competitive economy, ranked 37th out of 131 countries in the 2007 World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness Index. It has the most competitive economy in the Arab world, according to the 2007 Arab World Competitiveness Report. Yet at the same time it has a strikingly poor gender equality ranking: 105th out of 128 countries in the WEF’s 2007 Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI).
Among Arab countries, the UAE ranks relatively well in terms of gender equality and is only surpassed by Kuwait, Tunisia, Jordan and Syria. But it ranks poorly compared to the 10 most competitive economies in the world, such as Sweden, Switzerland and the US.
The GGGI is not perfect. Some of the data used to compile the UAE’s ranking is misleading as they aggregate figures for expatriates (80 per cent of the population) and nationals. This makes it difficult to work out where Emirati women stand, as opposed to women overall. Also, there are no up-to-date labour force figures: the WEF relied on 1995 census data because the UAE had not released 2005 census figures. Furthermore, data were provided by several different government agencies, without coordination between them. This failure to collect proper statistics harms the UAE’s reputation and sometimes leads to it having a lower ranking than it merits.
Yet despite these limitations the GGGI is still a useful tool for comparing the “gender gap” (the inequality between women and men in their access to resources). It works by assessing how fairly countries distribute resources between women and men in four areas: education, economic opportunity, health and political participation.
According to the GGGI, the UAE has closed only 61 per cent of its gender gap, but this weak overall position is largely caused by its exceptionally low ranking for women’s economic participation (119th out of 128). The UAE ranks better for the other indices: it came 65th in political participation; 68th in education; while 96 per cent of the gender gap has been closed in health, similar to the world average.
Although women are highly educated in the UAE , this does not translate into large numbers in the workforce. Only 39 per cent of women work, compared to 92 per cent of men. Most women are in administrative jobs: only 25 per cent are in jobs considered professional or technical, and a mere eight per cent of top managers are women. Perhaps most strikingly of all, the average woman earns less than a quarter of the average man: $32,000 a year for men, but only $7,600 for women.
These figures are troubling, as study after study has shown that no country can sustain long-term development unless it improves women’s economic and political status. If the Government wants to maintain or improve its competitive position, it therefore needs to start using the potential of its entire human capital.
There have been some positive developments, however. The UAE’s position has improved since 2006, when it had closed only 59 per cent of the gender gap, and its rankings in political empowerment and economic participation have also improved. In addition, each of the four GGGI indices has at least one positive tale to tell. For example, women constitute 70 per cent of graduates of domestic public higher education institutions. Nearly, 39 per cent of women receive university degrees, against only 12 per cent of men, mainly due to the availability of viable alternatives in the workplace and the military for the latter. The UAE Government and many local families are highly committed to educating young women.
As for economic participation, the aggregated data conceal the fact that one-third of female Emirati nationals are in middle-ranking and senior positions. The UAE Government strongly encourages women to take up management positions. Furthermore, life expectancy between women and men is identical and quite high by international standards. And finally, following the 2006 elections, female representation in parliament constitutes 22.5 per cent of the total and there are four female ministers; these figures compare well to the world average.
So what can be done about the problems that remain, particularly the low level of female participation in the workforce? Some barriers run deep and are not easily resolved: for example, certain jobs are considered culturally inappropriate for women. Many women do not favour the private sector as it tends to have longer working hours, pays less and provides fewer maternity and child-care benefits. Also, many families discourage women from working in the private sector. Yet there are few jobs available in the public sector.
Official policies could make employment more attractive to women in both the public and private sectors, for example by encouraging flexi-time, internships, and benefits to help women balance their multiple roles. Longer maternity leave is needed in both sectors, and government-subsidised child-care facilities are essential.
Improved data collection – including gender sensitive questions in labour force surveys – is sorely needed, and the information gathered should be publicly available. The more accurate the information, the more likely that effective policies will result. Given the worryingly high gender gap in the UAE, accurate figures and effective policies are now a matter of urgency.
The Dubai School of Government is holding a conference in November on the production and dissemination of gender research in the Arab region.
Among Arab countries, the UAE ranks relatively well in terms of gender equality and is only surpassed by Kuwait, Tunisia, Jordan and Syria. But it ranks poorly compared to the 10 most competitive economies in the world, such as Sweden, Switzerland and the US.
The GGGI is not perfect. Some of the data used to compile the UAE’s ranking is misleading as they aggregate figures for expatriates (80 per cent of the population) and nationals. This makes it difficult to work out where Emirati women stand, as opposed to women overall. Also, there are no up-to-date labour force figures: the WEF relied on 1995 census data because the UAE had not released 2005 census figures. Furthermore, data were provided by several different government agencies, without coordination between them. This failure to collect proper statistics harms the UAE’s reputation and sometimes leads to it having a lower ranking than it merits.
Yet despite these limitations the GGGI is still a useful tool for comparing the “gender gap” (the inequality between women and men in their access to resources). It works by assessing how fairly countries distribute resources between women and men in four areas: education, economic opportunity, health and political participation.
According to the GGGI, the UAE has closed only 61 per cent of its gender gap, but this weak overall position is largely caused by its exceptionally low ranking for women’s economic participation (119th out of 128). The UAE ranks better for the other indices: it came 65th in political participation; 68th in education; while 96 per cent of the gender gap has been closed in health, similar to the world average.
Although women are highly educated in the UAE , this does not translate into large numbers in the workforce. Only 39 per cent of women work, compared to 92 per cent of men. Most women are in administrative jobs: only 25 per cent are in jobs considered professional or technical, and a mere eight per cent of top managers are women. Perhaps most strikingly of all, the average woman earns less than a quarter of the average man: $32,000 a year for men, but only $7,600 for women.
These figures are troubling, as study after study has shown that no country can sustain long-term development unless it improves women’s economic and political status. If the Government wants to maintain or improve its competitive position, it therefore needs to start using the potential of its entire human capital.
There have been some positive developments, however. The UAE’s position has improved since 2006, when it had closed only 59 per cent of the gender gap, and its rankings in political empowerment and economic participation have also improved. In addition, each of the four GGGI indices has at least one positive tale to tell. For example, women constitute 70 per cent of graduates of domestic public higher education institutions. Nearly, 39 per cent of women receive university degrees, against only 12 per cent of men, mainly due to the availability of viable alternatives in the workplace and the military for the latter. The UAE Government and many local families are highly committed to educating young women.
As for economic participation, the aggregated data conceal the fact that one-third of female Emirati nationals are in middle-ranking and senior positions. The UAE Government strongly encourages women to take up management positions. Furthermore, life expectancy between women and men is identical and quite high by international standards. And finally, following the 2006 elections, female representation in parliament constitutes 22.5 per cent of the total and there are four female ministers; these figures compare well to the world average.
So what can be done about the problems that remain, particularly the low level of female participation in the workforce? Some barriers run deep and are not easily resolved: for example, certain jobs are considered culturally inappropriate for women. Many women do not favour the private sector as it tends to have longer working hours, pays less and provides fewer maternity and child-care benefits. Also, many families discourage women from working in the private sector. Yet there are few jobs available in the public sector.
Official policies could make employment more attractive to women in both the public and private sectors, for example by encouraging flexi-time, internships, and benefits to help women balance their multiple roles. Longer maternity leave is needed in both sectors, and government-subsidised child-care facilities are essential.
Improved data collection – including gender sensitive questions in labour force surveys – is sorely needed, and the information gathered should be publicly available. The more accurate the information, the more likely that effective policies will result. Given the worryingly high gender gap in the UAE, accurate figures and effective policies are now a matter of urgency.
The Dubai School of Government is holding a conference in November on the production and dissemination of gender research in the Arab region.
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