Recognizing The Dubai Trap

I've seen two interesting documentaries in the past two weeks. The first was recommended to me by an acquaintance, and turned out to be by the same director of another favourite documentary of mine. Adam Curtis's "The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream of Freedom," is another BBC production, in his characteristic narrative style. I still have yet to watch parts of it, but essentially it tells a compelling story of how our idea of "freedom" in the West has become narrowed over the last 4 decades, and has become characterized by the freedom to satisfy one's own desires without interference from any other individual or power. The film explores how this idea of freedom came to dominate the West, and how the attempt to force this idea of freedom upon the developing world, particularly the Muslim world, has lead to a violent backlash against the ideas of liberalism and democracy that the West is ostensibly trying to teach them.

Instead, the filmmakers posit, people are drawn to an idea of freedom that defines itself by the ability of the individual to play a positive role in the future of his community - it is the idea that freedom does not have inherent value, but that freedom is for something, and that for it to really benefit mankind, it must have a purpose. The first episode of the movie is available on Google Video.


Shortly after starting into The Trap, I also watched Dubai: Miracle or Mirage? This documentary examines the history of the tiny sheikhdom, and what its successes and challenges have been.

I've flown through Dubai a few times, but never had much of a chance to see the city. The airport is gaudy and overdone, a massive shopping mall with airplanes parked outside, and cheezy decorations inside, epitomized by the concrete palm trees that crop up in sections. One thing that does catch the eye, however, are the newspapers, whose sole purpose is to glorify the the Maktoum family who run the place, and have turned the backwater port into a hub of commerce and the Las Vegas of real-estate speculation.

And now I come to the point that inspired this post, which was made by an Emirati political scientist who was interviewed for the film. Responding to a question about how locals have reacted to the growth of Dubai's nightlife, which includes racy night-clubs and a booming sex trade, he replied something to the effect of "If people want to do these things, that's their business. You don't have to go there. If you don't want to be involved in them, then there are plenty of mosques and places of prayer where people can go and spend time, if they wish. . . We have developed an Islam that is compatible with modernity, that is tolerant and forward-looking, and that we would like to see exported as the model for other Muslim countries to follow."

My non-Muslim readers probably think that this is quite a nice sentiment. I revile it. This sort of practice of Islam is so divorced from the principles of the Qur'an and the practice of the Prophets (peace be upon them all) that it gives me a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach to think that this is the model that the Muslim world should follow.

The suggestion is that religion can be separated from day-to-day life - that it is something that is only witnessed in masajid and mussullahs, not on the street where the prostitutes solicit. This is the trap! For what good is Islam if it doesn't change the life of the community, and fails to empower all individuals to have some influence on the society that surrounds them? Dubai is good at making money. Aside from providing very comfortable travel and accommodations, it hasn't proven, as a society, that it is good at much else.

Now, I don't say that Muslims need to be in the streets, declaring that all the prostitutes be stoned. I do, however, long for a world where they are the first to weep that disenfranchised women must resort to such a profession, and the first to explore and find solutions to the problem, instead of crawling back into their Mosques, oblivious to the purpose of freedom.