A Whirlwind Tour Through the Middle East – Some Remaining Observations

In the mall at Abu Dhabi, I saw a lady completely covered in black, from head to toe.  She was very tall.  Her towering figure allowed no exposure of her features except for her height.  That was the most conservative expression of Islam that I observed on this trip.  The irony was that this lady was walking in the most extensive and westernized mall in Abu Dhabi; its scale and luxury easily surpassed any mall in the West.

It is a common observation that the UAE is the most open of Islamic nations.  In Dubai and Abu Dhabi, I felt no pressure in “behaving more reservedly.”  The atmosphere changed rather notably when I was in Jordan.  Surely, the women of Dubai wore their headscarves, but more women did so in Jordan, its cultural vibe stiffer than Dubai’s.

When a traveler had done no research on the destination, she must rely on the tour guides’ rendition of the history and culture of the sites.  The rest was then a matter of observation by the traveler.  Needless to say, I was curious about the status of women in Islamic nations.  In Jordan, I felt compelled to put on a headscarf myself.  Yet I wondered, did women here smoke?  Did they wear makeup?  Did they wear perfume?  The answer was yes, I have seen all of the above in the UAE and Jordan.

I then wondered if it was fair to say that the real difference between “Islamic” and “Western” women really only lied in the façade of the headscarf alone.

The people of Dubai seemed not to have been concerned, or rather that they were actually quite proud, of the fact that in maintaining an appearance of western lifestyle they have well surpassed the West.  And this pride was expressed in its malls, innovative architecture and city-building.

The wonderful Museum of Dubai showed me the development of this city from pearl harvesting to oil trade.  Both water and oil were the living streams that gave rise to the boom of the city from its arid beginning in the desert.  In this type of climate and geological inheritance, what was constantly at work was the human effort to change, morph and conquer nature.  While faith has every expression in its people’s daily lives, the collective will expressed in the city-scape remained that of the common human desire to innovate for a better life—and the pride to show for it.