The UAE: Paris of the East?

It seems from this short piece in the SMH/Guardian that the Emirates is remaking itself in the image of the “West”. But this attachment to western-centricism is at the cost of emphasising the rich historical culture of Arabia and its surrounds. The Gulf has also had a longer historical connection with both the east, India, Persia and China, and with the East African coastline, than with Western Europe. The effort shown by the rulers of the Emirates to replicate the “west” in Arabia is most unfortunate, not because the best of western culture is not impressive, but that it ignores the richness of the eastern and African culture achievements and also those of the Americas and the Pacific. Most of all it belies the claim made in the article by Sheikh Mohammed that the planned projects will help “interconencted global understanding” as a project of truly global projections would provide space for attractions that represent the cultural achievements from all around the world. I can’t help but see the project of westernising the Emirates as part of the reaction of some Islamic elites to the “clash of civilizations” discourse and the aggressive assault on non-western culture by neo-conservatives in the US and elsewhere. Looking forward to some debate regarding this, even if this is not an entry about Israel.

Noah Bassil

Saudi labels Israel’s killing in Gaza as “copying…the Nazis”

Yet more on language, which somehow seems to be the common factor in most of our postings and comments this past week.  AP is reporting that an unnamed official in Saudi Arabia is likening Israel’s attack on Gaza, in which more than 70 have been killed, to Nazi war crimes:

“Saudi Arabia, which condemns the Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people and the threats of Israeli officials to turn Gaza into an inferno, sees that Israel through its actions is copying the war crimes of the Nazis.”

AP describes this remark as coming in response to Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai’s use of the word “shoah,” which can be translated as “holocaust,” to describe what the Gazans were “bringing onto themselves” with the continued firing of rockets into Israel.  The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, has settled for just calling Israeli actions “war crimes” without likening them to Nazism.

Does the Middle East Matter? The Struggle Continues.

On reading a piece by Jim Al-Khalili in the Guardian on Jan 30, 2008, I was immediately sympathetic to the author’s view but was also struck by the futility and fatality of dealing with this issue, in the context of the dominance of the American-European world view, that the US- Europe are at the centre of world history, and the remaining four-fifths of the globe exist in the shadow of the western enlightenment. While I certainly agree that recognising achievements by the great women and men of the Middle East, or of China or India, is an important task in reconfiguring the power relations in global affairs I wonder whether taking the position that al-Khalili takes actually helps or hinders such a task. More than anything I was disappointed that the debate continues to be framed as Arab/Islamic culture opposed to a European/Christian culture as if they can ever be neatly separated.

Beduin Fuzzy-Wuzzies and Hairy Heretic Arabs

Apropos of nothing, I thought I’d point people over to some interesting historical material I put up ages ago on my old Princeton website (which will probably turn defunct any day now, so if you happen upon this blog entry a year from now and find that the links don’t work, let me know). It’s an extract from an early 1900s (I think) magazine that I bought in eBay. Unfortunately, I have no idea what magazine, so if you can figure it out, please let me know.

It’s a National Geographic-style photo essay by Donald McLeish with text by Hamilton Fyfe entitled “Arabia: Life Along the Fringes of the Desert Land.” Note the intense interest in ‘race’ (“many Yemen families along the coast show touches of Negro blood”), religious sect, empire (“The Turks have been beaten and the land is open to Europeans”), and hairstyles of the men (“Hairy heretic Arabs,” “He is one of the Beduin Fuzzy-Wuzzies…”). The photos are fantastic, but go see for yourself, because there’s much more than the example above.

L.L. Wynn