Also seen as eroding the status of Islam, and in particular Islamic holidays, has been the shopping mall-backed rise of the commercial and secular Christmas. In the 1990s Christmas trees were rarely seen in public places in the Gulf monarchies, but are now featured prominently in many retail outlets, hotels, bars, and restaurants, especially in the UAE. While in the past government-sponsored Eid and national day street lights and decorations were always dismantled shortly before Christmas, so as to avoid any confusion, they now often remain in place throughout the Christmas period, especially if Ramadan is late and finishes in December. On occasion, the UAE’s high spending on Christmas has caught out the establishment. In late 2010, having spent approximately $10 million assembling a giant 43 foot tall Christmas tree festooned with diamonds, Abu Dhabi’s most prestigious hotel, the Emirates Palace, was forced to admit that it had ‘taken the holiday spirit a bit too far’ and removed the tree following a large number of complaints. In its defence, the hotel — which is regularly used for high level government conferences — explained that it was simply an effort to ‘…boost the holiday mood for its guests, based on the UAE’s values of openness and tolerance’.[663] Further to the changing status of holidays, even the Muslim Sabbath day is now considered to be under threat, given that in late 2006 the UAE’s official public sector weekend changed from Thursday and Friday — as it had been for thirty-five years — to Friday and Saturday. Ostensibly to bring the UAE more in line with other Middle Eastern states[664] (including Kuwait, which had already switched), the real reason was to provide government departments and state-backed companies in the UAE with an extra day of contact and trade with their internationally based counterparts and colleagues. There is now a fear among some UAE nationals that the country will soon fully follow the western weekend, especially given that many private sector employees are already following such a schedule.
While gambling remains a fragile taboo, with no lawful casinos in operation, some Gulf monarchies have nevertheless legitimised such thrills by allowing lottery-style tickets at horse-racing events and, in the UAE’s case, by recently introducing prize-carrying ‘national bonds’ which offer savers the ‘chance to win 41,750 rewards [per annum]’.[665] Perhaps most controversially, as part of the aforementioned overseas investments strategy, some of the Gulf monarchies have been investing in Western companies that focus on gambling. In 2007, for example, the state-backed Dubai Holdings acquired a $5 billion, 9.5 per cent stake in the Nevadaheadquartered MGM Mirage Corporation — the world’s second largest gaming group and the proprietor of the Monte Carlo, the Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace, the Luxor, the Mirage, and several other extravagant casinos on the Las Vegas strip. At the same time it was also reported that Dubai Holdings had bought a 50 per cent stake in MGM Mirage’s $7 billion residential and leisure CityCenter project.[666] And in 2008 it was reported that Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Company was setting up a joint venture with MGM Mirage.[667] This has resulted in the building of a $3 billion MGM resort in Abu Dhabi, including a 600 bedroom MGM Grand hotel.[668]
Prostitution is also on the rise in the Gulf monarchies, with Dubai and Bahrain having long stood out as major centres in the region’s sex tourism industry, and with the authorities in Abu Dhabi and Qatar increasingly turning a blind eye to the activity. Almost all demands appear to be catered for, with many hotels in these cities — including luxury establishments — being awash with high class escorts in the evenings, while in Dubai there are also many streetwalkers in certain areas. Although there are occasional crackdowns, usually preceding Ramadan, in practice the police rarely intervene and soliciting and kerb crawling is usually left unchecked. Most prostitutes arrive in the Gulf monarchies on tourist visas, or are initially employed as hostesses or waitresses in hotels and restaurants. In many cases they are separated from their passports by their sponsors or employers, and often end up trapped in a debt cycle, where they have to find ways to pay off the cost of their visas and accommodation. While some originate from other parts of the Arab world and Iran, a large number come from much further afield, including Central Asia, East Asia, and Eastern Europe.
The exact routes into prostitution in the Gulf monarchies tend to differ, varying from country to country, but in general it is either a story of entrapment or human trafficking. Entire books have now been devoted to the subject, especially regarding the women who end up in Dubai.[669] In most cases it is a story of economic deprivation, misery, human rights abuses, and a disregard of the values and traditions that the indigenous populations of the Gulf monarchies are supposed to uphold. Commenting on the situation from the perspective of a major supplier country, an Iranian military officer has explained that ‘…notorious women used to identify young women and girls from [Iranian] families with financial difficulties, then under the pretext of happiness for these girls in Persian Gulf countries, they offered a ransom to the families and in a matter of three weeks they transferred these girls to Dubai. After arrival in Dubai, through their network, they introduced these girls to Arab businessmen. Each girl was sold for $5000 profit for their families and ten times the amount for the traffickers. The buyers used these girls for their sinister business’. Providing another example, he explained how men masquerading as taxi drivers would drive around Tehran identifying runaway girls, and then report them to traffickers who would then arrange for their visa and passport to go to the Gulf monarchies. The travel details were described as ‘…taking no more than a month, and were arranged under the pretext of tourism. While waiting for passport and visa, these girls were promised a better and prosperous life and marriage to Arab Sheikhs. However, after entering UAE, the ring members handed these girls over to brothels and prostitution networks’.[670]
Criticism of these many problems and issues is, as would be expected, becoming increasingly loud. A few years ago, for example, a prominent UAE national claimed to a major US newspaper that the city he lives in — Dubai — is now unrecognisable and is not even Arab anymore. Moreover, he complained that when he visits one of the many malls, the vast majority of patrons are foreigners, and that he rarely hears Arabic. Most damningly the article recorded the man’s concern that despite religious prohibitions ‘…drinking is unabashed, and [he fears] public wine-tasting parties are on the way, with the beaches of his youth having been taken over by hotels and their occasionally topless sunbathers and other westerners whose dress is deemed inappropriate… he grimaces at women jogging in the streets, sometimes with their dogs, considered unclean under Islamic law, and the celebration of Islamic holidays and the country’s national day pale before the more commercialised commemoration of Christmas’. He concluded his interview by stating that he and his family felt they were in ‘internal exile’ and in an effort to maintain their Arab and Muslim identities they had had to move away from the central area of Dubai to an outlying suburb.[671] This is far from being an isolated case, with there being many other examples of UAE national families relocating from Dubai completely, or at least building a new family home in another emirate so that their children could still feel they were growing up in an Arab city. Most recently, in 2012 there has been an extensive, grass roots social media campaign to uphold modest dress codes. Launched by two women and now centred on a Twitter subject entitled #UAE-DressCode, the campaign has seen large numbers of UAE nationals criticise the inaction of their government to enforce basic standards.[672]
668
11.
669
12. See for example Mahdavi, Parvis,
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13. SINA News Agency press release, May 2004, translated by the Women’s Forum Against Fundamentalism in Iran.
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15. BBC News, 5 July 2012. The authorities seem unwilling to take action, likely concerned that any enforcement of dress code will be viewed as a concession to Islamist groups in the country.