My questions after reading this opinion piece from Robert Fisk are:
1. How Oriental & Western paintings, & Gauguin, Picasso, & Poussin art is going to help educate the Arabs?
2. What's the point of this education when it doesn't help broaden the mind to discuss political, social, cultural, & religious matters openly (instead of one family dictatorship rule)?
3. What's the point of all this educational institutions when Arabs, & Muslims, most likely, have forgotten how Prophet Muhammad used to live & they are spending billions on gigantic mosques to show what to whom?
As Mr. Fisk very aptly asks, "what to make of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque? The truly gigantic carpet, the chandeliers, the fact that it was constructed by men & materials from Morocco to China & can hold more than 40,000 faithful – all give it the feel of cathedrals built in the Middle Ages. It has avoided the gruesome, concrete pseudo-modernism of the Saudi-built mosques of Bosnia, but is it art? Or, with its gold and precious stones, is it a message about the power of wealth as well as the power of God? The Prophet Mohamed was a businessman & he would, I suspect, have rather liked Abu Dhabi – but Mohamed was also a humble man. Is this mosque humble?"
And while UAE spends billions on grand mosques & building Louvres & Guggenheims "for educational purposes," thousands upon thousands of Muslims are getting killed in South East Asia (Rohingya) to Iraq to Libya, & millions more are refugees. I am not even going to discuss the plights of Muslims in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, & Xinjiang etc.
4. What's the point of this education when those same Arab elites are forcing thousands of foreign workers from South & Central Asia to work in extreme heat of the Middle East, to build these grand mosques, museums, roads, buildings, & essentially, whole cities in the middle of desert, for meagre wages & at great risks to their lives?
5. What's the point of such education which doesn't help one learn the meaning of justice, equality, & basic humanity?
I guess, I can't really pin that one on Emiratis or Arabs only, since this is all over the world. There are far more "educated" people now in this so-called "modern" world than, say, 1900s, but the suffering & plight of our fellow human beings have increased that much in only a century.
Didn't this modern "education" increase injustice, inequality, & erased the meaning of humanity from the public's minds?
So what's the point of such education when it only increases suffering, further traps the public in the flawed system (poor can't get good quality education because of its unaffordability & the rich don't really need it in the first place) & the overall system doesn't change at all since education doesn't help in broadening the mind?
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The Abu Dhabi Louvre looks like the top of a giant, primordial eggshell pushing its way out of the sand. Its giant dome already glisters under the sun, its construction workers moving like spiders over 5 layers of cladding, steel & aluminium which will give this extraordinary museum a combined weight of 7,000 tons, just a little less than the Eiffel Tower. Already the concrete base of a man-made lake spreads around the construction, for architect Jean Nouvel's Louvre will be on a miniature island, its works of art transported to its gallery through an underground tunnel, light sprinkled into its interior as if through the fronds of palm trees.
Very romantic. Very French orientalist, I say to myself. Very Arab too, perhaps. The idea is that art will move chronologically through centuries inside the new Louvre, oriental & Western paintings next to each other.
But won't Abu Dhabi have a few problems with nudes, with Gauguin or Picasso or Poussin? No, says my companion, as he explains the double insulation & the cladding which will ... prevent water spewing on to the Louvre's greatest masterpieces. "All that is accepted. This is art. This is for education." Contemporary art will be inside the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim a few hundred yards away, still just a sand-pile of dumper trucks & bobbing labourers' hats.
... so many people in Abu Dhabi don't like their names being revealed – my companion included – for they live under a form of autocracy; not the dictatorship of Saddamite or Mubarakite or Ghaddafite political power, but the dictatorship of money. Abu Dhabi is so rich, & its ambitions so mystical, that people speak in whispers. If the Abu Dhabi Louvre has already purchased Gauguin's Breton Boys Wrestling ... & Magritte's The Subjugated Reader ... then perhaps some miracle has taken place.
But if all this is educational, what to make of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque? The truly gigantic carpet, the chandeliers, the fact that it was constructed by men & materials from Morocco to China & can hold more than 40,000 faithful – all give it the feel of cathedrals built in the Middle Ages. It has avoided the gruesome, concrete pseudo-modernism of the Saudi-built mosques of Bosnia, but is it art? Or, with its gold & precious stones, is it a message about the power of wealth as well as the power of God? The Prophet Mohamed was a businessman & he would, I suspect, have rather liked Abu Dhabi – but Mohamed was also a humble man. Is this mosque humble?
That's the catch in Abu Dhabi. When you own 9% of the world's oil & close to 5% of the planet's natural gas, you have to decide whether you shout about it, display it before all with Saudi abandon, or send it off to fund charitable projects or cult-like Islamist militias. Abu Dhabi has stuck to charity, avoided the darkness of Wahabism, ... but can't shake off the need for ostentation. And the Emirates Palace Hotel is an obscenity. I've stayed there twice ... & I've written of its imperial architecture – Mogul-Gothic Lutyens, I suppose, with just a hint of Saddam & just a dangerous flavour of Titanic.
This is egregious affluence on an unprecedented scale, real gold on the walls, doors & fittings, 1,022 crystal chandeliers & a guest list of Hollywood-Bollywood glamerati who've taken rooms at up to £10,000 a night. So gargantuan is the wretched hotel's size that no guest can escape walking 2 miles a day; the Egyptian & Russian staff call it the "Hotel Sporto" because most have to walk between 10 & 15 miles a day escorting guests.
This, however, is being picky. Old Sheikh Zayed, the founder of Abu Dhabi, his son & successor, the current Sheikh Khalifa, & now his brother, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, have all said that the Emirates lagged behind in that most precious, & largely absent, commodity of any Arab state: education. Now that Abu Dhabi had "a lot of wealth" ... the emirate needed to invest in education, Prince Mohammed told a summit 2 months ago. "Maybe in 50 years, we might have the last barrel of oil. The question is: will we be sad? If today we are investing in the right sectors, we will celebrate at that moment."
Abu Dhabi is the sensible, adult version of Dubai, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, smaller than its neighbour, but probably the wealthiest city in the world. It's still ruled by the al-Nahyan family whose Bani Yas tribe migrated to the north Arabian peninsula Gulf coast, opposite what is now Iran, in the late 18th century. So rich is Abu Dhabi, with an oil producing capacity of 2.3 million barrels a day, that even its total investments – statistics it prefers to keep secret – must be calculated to the nearest £70bn. The total figure is probably close to £650bn.
In the awful corporate language that crown princes now feel constrained to speak, Prince Mohammed said that, while Abu Dhabi possessed oil & gas for the present, "We need as of today to stress that learning outcomes should create human capital that is able to serve us for the 50 years & beyond." In other words, education, education, education…
What on earth, I asked Zaki Nusseibeh, one of the advisers to the government's cultural affairs ministry, was Prince Mohammed banging on about? "The Arab peoples in their revolutions asked for dignity," he replied. "They asked for a future. But… you need to create the 'custom' for discussion & for accepting other people's point of view. All that is happening with religious ideology in this part of the world is a fascist movement. Teaching is by rote – I mean this, by rote – & people are not encouraged to have critical thinking. They don't listen to music at a young age or know what it's like to go to a museum. Sheikh Zayed said this as early as 1968."
Mr Nusseibeh sits on a Rhodes Scholarship committee & says how rewarding it is to see two young UAE students competing with international students, to see them go to Oxford to get their Masters. So Abu Dhabi & the other emirates must have good universities, he says, fine schools, a commitment to "education & culture". Investing in the future, every Abu Dhabi government official will tell you, is also about renewable energy, solar energy, but it's primarily about education.
"Political ideology has taken over from education," Mr Nusseibeh says of recent Arab history. He talks of the museums & the Biennale in Sharjah & Abu Dhabi & then blurts out one of those clichés which always make me suspicious: that Abu Dhabi must be "a role model for the societies around us – look at the media, the internet city, the communications infrastructure…"
It's not long ago that the West told the Arabs that Turkey should be their role model – until Recep Tayyip Erdogan started going bonkers, talking about plots & locking up journalists & turning into a role model for the Mubaraks & Ghaddafis that had already passed into history. Yet it's not difficult to see what Abu Dhabi is trying to do. If Saudi Arabia is the empire of prayer & Qatar the empire of television ... then Abu Dhabi runs the empire of higher education, the one commodity which has always failed the Arabs, or which the Arabs have always failed to take advantage of.
From education comes dignity & from dignity comes justice. But this is surely too sentimental. It's glorious to know that in Abu Dhabi there is an Abu Dhabi Choral Group, an Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, an Amadeus Music Institute, a House of Oud, studying the Arabic stringed instrument which is a distant relative of the lute, the International Music Institute & the Modern Art Music Institute. But then I find Abu Dhabi's version of Time Out lists 108 bars & nightclubs in its entertainment inventory. Is it trying to imitate Dubai? Can there be two Dubais – or two Abu Dhabis – in the Emirates?
And who are they ultimately for? Not for the 4 million foreign labourers, of course. Nor for the middle-class elites who arrive from the West & from the rest of that amorphous "Arab world". An Iraqi high-up in the medical profession in Abu Dhabi – which is why he, too, asked to remain anonymous – explained his relationship with the Emirate in surprisingly frank terms. "We all came here by choice," he said over the hottest coffee I've ever tasted in Arabia. "I made an informed decision – I believed I would have a better life here. I'm very happy with the way they run their country."
He paused here, I think because – as a doctor as well as an expatriate – he didn't want to give Abu Dhabi too clean a bill of health. "The deal is this: 'We're going to pay you money & you can have the lifestyle you have chosen – but you have no rights.' A non-Emirati cannot go to a government school. You can only go to a government hospital in emergency. I'm here as a servant of the country. I know if I don't want to be a servant any more, I can get on a plane & go home."
Then he thought for a moment & captured the venality of it all. "We're all here by invitation – or temptation."
1. How Oriental & Western paintings, & Gauguin, Picasso, & Poussin art is going to help educate the Arabs?
2. What's the point of this education when it doesn't help broaden the mind to discuss political, social, cultural, & religious matters openly (instead of one family dictatorship rule)?
3. What's the point of all this educational institutions when Arabs, & Muslims, most likely, have forgotten how Prophet Muhammad used to live & they are spending billions on gigantic mosques to show what to whom?
As Mr. Fisk very aptly asks, "what to make of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque? The truly gigantic carpet, the chandeliers, the fact that it was constructed by men & materials from Morocco to China & can hold more than 40,000 faithful – all give it the feel of cathedrals built in the Middle Ages. It has avoided the gruesome, concrete pseudo-modernism of the Saudi-built mosques of Bosnia, but is it art? Or, with its gold and precious stones, is it a message about the power of wealth as well as the power of God? The Prophet Mohamed was a businessman & he would, I suspect, have rather liked Abu Dhabi – but Mohamed was also a humble man. Is this mosque humble?"
And while UAE spends billions on grand mosques & building Louvres & Guggenheims "for educational purposes," thousands upon thousands of Muslims are getting killed in South East Asia (Rohingya) to Iraq to Libya, & millions more are refugees. I am not even going to discuss the plights of Muslims in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, & Xinjiang etc.
4. What's the point of this education when those same Arab elites are forcing thousands of foreign workers from South & Central Asia to work in extreme heat of the Middle East, to build these grand mosques, museums, roads, buildings, & essentially, whole cities in the middle of desert, for meagre wages & at great risks to their lives?
5. What's the point of such education which doesn't help one learn the meaning of justice, equality, & basic humanity?
I guess, I can't really pin that one on Emiratis or Arabs only, since this is all over the world. There are far more "educated" people now in this so-called "modern" world than, say, 1900s, but the suffering & plight of our fellow human beings have increased that much in only a century.
Didn't this modern "education" increase injustice, inequality, & erased the meaning of humanity from the public's minds?
So what's the point of such education when it only increases suffering, further traps the public in the flawed system (poor can't get good quality education because of its unaffordability & the rich don't really need it in the first place) & the overall system doesn't change at all since education doesn't help in broadening the mind?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Abu Dhabi Louvre looks like the top of a giant, primordial eggshell pushing its way out of the sand. Its giant dome already glisters under the sun, its construction workers moving like spiders over 5 layers of cladding, steel & aluminium which will give this extraordinary museum a combined weight of 7,000 tons, just a little less than the Eiffel Tower. Already the concrete base of a man-made lake spreads around the construction, for architect Jean Nouvel's Louvre will be on a miniature island, its works of art transported to its gallery through an underground tunnel, light sprinkled into its interior as if through the fronds of palm trees.
Very romantic. Very French orientalist, I say to myself. Very Arab too, perhaps. The idea is that art will move chronologically through centuries inside the new Louvre, oriental & Western paintings next to each other.
But won't Abu Dhabi have a few problems with nudes, with Gauguin or Picasso or Poussin? No, says my companion, as he explains the double insulation & the cladding which will ... prevent water spewing on to the Louvre's greatest masterpieces. "All that is accepted. This is art. This is for education." Contemporary art will be inside the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim a few hundred yards away, still just a sand-pile of dumper trucks & bobbing labourers' hats.
... so many people in Abu Dhabi don't like their names being revealed – my companion included – for they live under a form of autocracy; not the dictatorship of Saddamite or Mubarakite or Ghaddafite political power, but the dictatorship of money. Abu Dhabi is so rich, & its ambitions so mystical, that people speak in whispers. If the Abu Dhabi Louvre has already purchased Gauguin's Breton Boys Wrestling ... & Magritte's The Subjugated Reader ... then perhaps some miracle has taken place.
But if all this is educational, what to make of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque? The truly gigantic carpet, the chandeliers, the fact that it was constructed by men & materials from Morocco to China & can hold more than 40,000 faithful – all give it the feel of cathedrals built in the Middle Ages. It has avoided the gruesome, concrete pseudo-modernism of the Saudi-built mosques of Bosnia, but is it art? Or, with its gold & precious stones, is it a message about the power of wealth as well as the power of God? The Prophet Mohamed was a businessman & he would, I suspect, have rather liked Abu Dhabi – but Mohamed was also a humble man. Is this mosque humble?
That's the catch in Abu Dhabi. When you own 9% of the world's oil & close to 5% of the planet's natural gas, you have to decide whether you shout about it, display it before all with Saudi abandon, or send it off to fund charitable projects or cult-like Islamist militias. Abu Dhabi has stuck to charity, avoided the darkness of Wahabism, ... but can't shake off the need for ostentation. And the Emirates Palace Hotel is an obscenity. I've stayed there twice ... & I've written of its imperial architecture – Mogul-Gothic Lutyens, I suppose, with just a hint of Saddam & just a dangerous flavour of Titanic.
This is egregious affluence on an unprecedented scale, real gold on the walls, doors & fittings, 1,022 crystal chandeliers & a guest list of Hollywood-Bollywood glamerati who've taken rooms at up to £10,000 a night. So gargantuan is the wretched hotel's size that no guest can escape walking 2 miles a day; the Egyptian & Russian staff call it the "Hotel Sporto" because most have to walk between 10 & 15 miles a day escorting guests.
This, however, is being picky. Old Sheikh Zayed, the founder of Abu Dhabi, his son & successor, the current Sheikh Khalifa, & now his brother, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, have all said that the Emirates lagged behind in that most precious, & largely absent, commodity of any Arab state: education. Now that Abu Dhabi had "a lot of wealth" ... the emirate needed to invest in education, Prince Mohammed told a summit 2 months ago. "Maybe in 50 years, we might have the last barrel of oil. The question is: will we be sad? If today we are investing in the right sectors, we will celebrate at that moment."
Abu Dhabi is the sensible, adult version of Dubai, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, smaller than its neighbour, but probably the wealthiest city in the world. It's still ruled by the al-Nahyan family whose Bani Yas tribe migrated to the north Arabian peninsula Gulf coast, opposite what is now Iran, in the late 18th century. So rich is Abu Dhabi, with an oil producing capacity of 2.3 million barrels a day, that even its total investments – statistics it prefers to keep secret – must be calculated to the nearest £70bn. The total figure is probably close to £650bn.
In the awful corporate language that crown princes now feel constrained to speak, Prince Mohammed said that, while Abu Dhabi possessed oil & gas for the present, "We need as of today to stress that learning outcomes should create human capital that is able to serve us for the 50 years & beyond." In other words, education, education, education…
What on earth, I asked Zaki Nusseibeh, one of the advisers to the government's cultural affairs ministry, was Prince Mohammed banging on about? "The Arab peoples in their revolutions asked for dignity," he replied. "They asked for a future. But… you need to create the 'custom' for discussion & for accepting other people's point of view. All that is happening with religious ideology in this part of the world is a fascist movement. Teaching is by rote – I mean this, by rote – & people are not encouraged to have critical thinking. They don't listen to music at a young age or know what it's like to go to a museum. Sheikh Zayed said this as early as 1968."
Mr Nusseibeh sits on a Rhodes Scholarship committee & says how rewarding it is to see two young UAE students competing with international students, to see them go to Oxford to get their Masters. So Abu Dhabi & the other emirates must have good universities, he says, fine schools, a commitment to "education & culture". Investing in the future, every Abu Dhabi government official will tell you, is also about renewable energy, solar energy, but it's primarily about education.
"Political ideology has taken over from education," Mr Nusseibeh says of recent Arab history. He talks of the museums & the Biennale in Sharjah & Abu Dhabi & then blurts out one of those clichés which always make me suspicious: that Abu Dhabi must be "a role model for the societies around us – look at the media, the internet city, the communications infrastructure…"
It's not long ago that the West told the Arabs that Turkey should be their role model – until Recep Tayyip Erdogan started going bonkers, talking about plots & locking up journalists & turning into a role model for the Mubaraks & Ghaddafis that had already passed into history. Yet it's not difficult to see what Abu Dhabi is trying to do. If Saudi Arabia is the empire of prayer & Qatar the empire of television ... then Abu Dhabi runs the empire of higher education, the one commodity which has always failed the Arabs, or which the Arabs have always failed to take advantage of.
From education comes dignity & from dignity comes justice. But this is surely too sentimental. It's glorious to know that in Abu Dhabi there is an Abu Dhabi Choral Group, an Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, an Amadeus Music Institute, a House of Oud, studying the Arabic stringed instrument which is a distant relative of the lute, the International Music Institute & the Modern Art Music Institute. But then I find Abu Dhabi's version of Time Out lists 108 bars & nightclubs in its entertainment inventory. Is it trying to imitate Dubai? Can there be two Dubais – or two Abu Dhabis – in the Emirates?
And who are they ultimately for? Not for the 4 million foreign labourers, of course. Nor for the middle-class elites who arrive from the West & from the rest of that amorphous "Arab world". An Iraqi high-up in the medical profession in Abu Dhabi – which is why he, too, asked to remain anonymous – explained his relationship with the Emirate in surprisingly frank terms. "We all came here by choice," he said over the hottest coffee I've ever tasted in Arabia. "I made an informed decision – I believed I would have a better life here. I'm very happy with the way they run their country."
He paused here, I think because – as a doctor as well as an expatriate – he didn't want to give Abu Dhabi too clean a bill of health. "The deal is this: 'We're going to pay you money & you can have the lifestyle you have chosen – but you have no rights.' A non-Emirati cannot go to a government school. You can only go to a government hospital in emergency. I'm here as a servant of the country. I know if I don't want to be a servant any more, I can get on a plane & go home."
Then he thought for a moment & captured the venality of it all. "We're all here by invitation – or temptation."
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