Assalamu Aleikum!
Before I go any further let me just say this - I have found the people in the UAE to be friendly and welcoming. I find the country a delight to live and work in. As a Muslim I have mosques on every street corner and, for the first time in my working life, I have Fridays off. And to make it even easier for me English is so widely spoken I need never learn another language. The country is home to a multitude of nationalities.
I work with Brits, Americans, Algerians, Palestinians, Indians, Australians, Canadians, Jordanians and the list goes on and on. Living in the UK as a minority meant that there was a sense of Muslim identity that was strong. True, many Pakistanis seemed to view themselves as Pakistani first and Muslim second but on the whole Muslims mixed together. In recent years this has got much better in the UK now that English was being used far more widely in the mosques. It meant that Muslims from Pakistan or Morocco or Turkey or converts could enjoy a real sense of ummah.
Here in the UAE Arab Muslims mix mostly with their own countrymen. So when I have been invited to a Palestinian get together I will be the only one there who is not Palestinian. There will be no Tunisians or Syrians or any other Arabs. An Algerian colleague quickly made friends with just about every other Algerian in the town. I myself have found that I mix more with those I have more in common with. In my case it is Brits, Americans, Australians and any other English speaking westerners. Most of these are not Muslim and so the thing I have in common is a shared culture (not religion).
It makes me ponder was there ever a united ummah?
Masalamah
Yahya
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
In the footsteps of Wilfred Thesiger
Assalamu Aleikum!
I am back in the UAE after my time back home in rainy Britain. I came back just in time for another holiday. This time it's the Islamic New Year.
One of my colleagues decided to spend the holiday in the desert and I volunteered to drive him to his drop off point and pick him up again. As for myself I spent the afternoon at Mirfa, a seaside town on the road to Saudi Arabia. The town and beach were deserted except for a few couples looking out to sea. It was funny but the road leading to the sea when I had turned off the main highway reminded me of just about any seaside town in Europe. I felt my excitement rising as I got closer to the sea. It was a bit like my feelings as a child on holiday in Pembrokeshire. And......the beach was golden with palm trees and little areas of seating. The weather was warm but not hot. I guess it will be more crowded when the weather heats up a bit.
Meanwhile, my colleague spent his night sleeping under the stars with only the sound of roaring 4x4 jeeps to keep him company. Apparently it is a popular pastime to camp out in the desert and race 4x4s over the dunes well into the night. But he did manage to have a chat with a camel herder and I arrived right on time to bring him home. When I picked him up he was barefoot as he said it was easier to walk over the sand that way. He also managed to avoid any encounters with snakes, scorpians or camel spiders.
Masalamah
Yahya
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Eid Mubarak!
Assalamu Aleikum!
Eid Mubarak to all!
It has been declared that Eid will be on Wednesday 19th December (at least here in the UAE). I'll be flying back to the UK and have been checking out the weather reports. It looks like it's freezing back there. I wonder how it'll feel coming from short sleeves and hot, sunny weather back to winter in Britain.
One of my colleagues at work is a Muslim from just outside London. His mosque has decided to celebrate Eid on Thursday. He explained it to me - the mosque celebrate Eid according to their home country. Now, is this Pakistan or the UK? But irrespective of whether it is Pakistan or the UK how can a mosque not follow what happens in Makka? In the old days before phones, internet, TV etc I can understand that a remote village would have to calculate when Eid was themselves. However, we are in the 21st century!
Masalamah
Yahya
Eid Mubarak to all!
It has been declared that Eid will be on Wednesday 19th December (at least here in the UAE). I'll be flying back to the UK and have been checking out the weather reports. It looks like it's freezing back there. I wonder how it'll feel coming from short sleeves and hot, sunny weather back to winter in Britain.
One of my colleagues at work is a Muslim from just outside London. His mosque has decided to celebrate Eid on Thursday. He explained it to me - the mosque celebrate Eid according to their home country. Now, is this Pakistan or the UK? But irrespective of whether it is Pakistan or the UK how can a mosque not follow what happens in Makka? In the old days before phones, internet, TV etc I can understand that a remote village would have to calculate when Eid was themselves. However, we are in the 21st century!
Masalamah
Yahya
My first time in Dubai
Assalamu Aleikum!
Since moving to the UAE I haven't visited Dubai. Lots of brothers warned me of how much they hated it when they visited. To be honest everything they have in Dubai I can get in Abu Dhabi and it's closer! So it was going to take a special event to get me into Dubai. That event came yesterday with the final day of the Dubai Film Festival. The festival had a real international feel with movies from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Not the usual American fare. So myself and a friend signed up for 3 movies over the course of a day including one from Lebanon about last year's war.
The drive up was long and tiring. As we drove towards Dubai I caught sight of the city. The only way I could describe it was like something out of the Wizard of Oz. These massive skyscrapers rising out of the flat sand. Actually on second thoughts it was like a cross between the Wizard of Oz and Bladerunner. Is this what cities will look like in future? Land is plentiful and yet the architects were designing buildings as high as the next. Each building was about twice as high as the ones in Abu Dhabi.
In the malls there was a marked difference with Abu Dhabi. The traditional clothes worn in Abu Dhabi almost didn't exist here. In fact you would never know you were in the Middle East. After a day in Dubai I'm quite glad I live in the desert.
Masalamah
Yahya
Friday, December 14, 2007
He's behind you!
Assalamu Aleikum!
Well, I'm back safe and sound from the panto.
I mentioned in my previous posting that I was off to see a panto at the British Club. Actually the name of the place is The Club. I guess they dropped the British bit off somewhere along the line. But once you get inside it's as British as roast beef. There is a pub which looks like any pub back in the UK complete with Irish folk singers. They serve a mean beef pie and chips. Although the chips were the stringy kind rather than good old fat chips. Other than this the food was excellent.
The panto was a sell out and had loads of laughs. There was a lot of innuendo and I mean a lot. My Arab friends missed a lot of this and I had to explain. They were also a bit confused with the men playing women and the women playing men. But I explained that this was a British pastime - cross-dressing! All in all we all had a thoroughly fun evening out.
Tomorrow it's the Dubai Film Festival and I'm down to watch 3 films in a row. The films look great. They've got lots of Arab films and a few western ones. They're the sort of films you never hear about especially in Blockbusters.
Masalamah
Yahya
Well, I'm back safe and sound from the panto.
I mentioned in my previous posting that I was off to see a panto at the British Club. Actually the name of the place is The Club. I guess they dropped the British bit off somewhere along the line. But once you get inside it's as British as roast beef. There is a pub which looks like any pub back in the UK complete with Irish folk singers. They serve a mean beef pie and chips. Although the chips were the stringy kind rather than good old fat chips. Other than this the food was excellent.
The panto was a sell out and had loads of laughs. There was a lot of innuendo and I mean a lot. My Arab friends missed a lot of this and I had to explain. They were also a bit confused with the men playing women and the women playing men. But I explained that this was a British pastime - cross-dressing! All in all we all had a thoroughly fun evening out.
Tomorrow it's the Dubai Film Festival and I'm down to watch 3 films in a row. The films look great. They've got lots of Arab films and a few western ones. They're the sort of films you never hear about especially in Blockbusters.
Masalamah
Yahya
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Would you Adam and Eve it?
Assalamu Aleikum!
I'm recovered from the excitement of the football match and now look forward to my trip into the city. A few of us from the desert have been invited to the big city to watch a pantomime. It's being put on by the British Club and we have a few friends on the stage. I do enjoy a good panto and thought I might miss out being out of the UK. I haven't been to the British Club yet so I don't know what to expect. I have visions of that scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence appears out of the desert dressed as a Bedouin much to the disgust of the gentlemen officers in the club.
It's almost the end of this semester and things have slowed down. To help pass the time I've borrowed a few books from my American colleague. They're written by Spencer Wells and concern the Genographic Project. He uses the study of DNA to investigate where we all came from. It's a fascinating read. One of the things he says is that we all originate from Africa from ancestors he calls Adam and Eve. He talks about mtDNA which is passed down through the maternal line. Men and women inherit it from their mothers. Wells goes on to explain that there is a group of mtDNA called haplogroup J. Bedouins in Arabia have a high frequency of haplogroup J as do the peoples of northern Europe especially Britain and northern Germany. It's lower in southern Europe.
So we're all cousins after all!
Masalamah
Yahya
I'm recovered from the excitement of the football match and now look forward to my trip into the city. A few of us from the desert have been invited to the big city to watch a pantomime. It's being put on by the British Club and we have a few friends on the stage. I do enjoy a good panto and thought I might miss out being out of the UK. I haven't been to the British Club yet so I don't know what to expect. I have visions of that scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence appears out of the desert dressed as a Bedouin much to the disgust of the gentlemen officers in the club.
It's almost the end of this semester and things have slowed down. To help pass the time I've borrowed a few books from my American colleague. They're written by Spencer Wells and concern the Genographic Project. He uses the study of DNA to investigate where we all came from. It's a fascinating read. One of the things he says is that we all originate from Africa from ancestors he calls Adam and Eve. He talks about mtDNA which is passed down through the maternal line. Men and women inherit it from their mothers. Wells goes on to explain that there is a group of mtDNA called haplogroup J. Bedouins in Arabia have a high frequency of haplogroup J as do the peoples of northern Europe especially Britain and northern Germany. It's lower in southern Europe.
So we're all cousins after all!
Masalamah
Yahya
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
There's some people on the pitch
Assalamu Aleikum!
"There's some people on the pitch. They think it's all over. It is now!"
I went to our local professional football team's match last night. We were second to bottom of the league at start of play with only one victory all season. The tension was obvious as we moved towards the stadium. Bus loads of kids had arrived in the yellow buses they travel to school in. The drummers/cheer leaders had settled themselves into the stands next to the glass enclosure that held the shaykhs. Worried looking men were dragging on cigarettes. The player's wife (singular!) fashionably dressed with a headscarf strategically placed over her head took her place in the posh seats.
We had our usual frisk at the gates for any weapons. The police were taking no chances! A little boy of about 3 was frisked as I was. Fortunately no offensive weapons were discovered. Then we took our seats and settled down to a game of 2 halves. By the end of the first half our team was 3-0 up and there the excitement ended. The second half produced no shots on goal but a lot of players falling down injured only to jump up a minute later after the opposition had sportingly kicked the ball out of play.
The final whistle blew and our team jumped into each other's arms. The new Egyptian coach, looking like Gareth Southgate in a smart suit, ran over and congratulated his players on only their second win of the season. As I was watching this the person next to me spotted something else going.
"Look over there! This win means a lot to them."
I followed the direction he was pointing and saw hordes of kids invading the pitch. But rather than the parkas the Hereford fans wore when their team beat Newcastle in the early 70s these kids were all wearing the kandoora (long white shirt). The glee in their faces was palpable. And yet within those gleeful expressions was a look of steely determination. As if they had a greater motive than just celebrating their team's win.
Then it dawned on me. "The balls!"
Too late the footballers realised that they had left the balls that they had been warming up with on the side of the pitch. Each boy made a grab for a ball. Some stuffed them under their kandooras and dashed out of the ground looking like pregnant 10 year olds. Others launched them over the fence to waiting compatriots. By the end of 2 minutes the ground was cleared of footballs.
Free to watch and you get a football to take home with you. I wonder if it'll catch on in the UK?
Masalamah
Yahya
"There's some people on the pitch. They think it's all over. It is now!"
I went to our local professional football team's match last night. We were second to bottom of the league at start of play with only one victory all season. The tension was obvious as we moved towards the stadium. Bus loads of kids had arrived in the yellow buses they travel to school in. The drummers/cheer leaders had settled themselves into the stands next to the glass enclosure that held the shaykhs. Worried looking men were dragging on cigarettes. The player's wife (singular!) fashionably dressed with a headscarf strategically placed over her head took her place in the posh seats.
We had our usual frisk at the gates for any weapons. The police were taking no chances! A little boy of about 3 was frisked as I was. Fortunately no offensive weapons were discovered. Then we took our seats and settled down to a game of 2 halves. By the end of the first half our team was 3-0 up and there the excitement ended. The second half produced no shots on goal but a lot of players falling down injured only to jump up a minute later after the opposition had sportingly kicked the ball out of play.
The final whistle blew and our team jumped into each other's arms. The new Egyptian coach, looking like Gareth Southgate in a smart suit, ran over and congratulated his players on only their second win of the season. As I was watching this the person next to me spotted something else going.
"Look over there! This win means a lot to them."
I followed the direction he was pointing and saw hordes of kids invading the pitch. But rather than the parkas the Hereford fans wore when their team beat Newcastle in the early 70s these kids were all wearing the kandoora (long white shirt). The glee in their faces was palpable. And yet within those gleeful expressions was a look of steely determination. As if they had a greater motive than just celebrating their team's win.
Then it dawned on me. "The balls!"
Too late the footballers realised that they had left the balls that they had been warming up with on the side of the pitch. Each boy made a grab for a ball. Some stuffed them under their kandooras and dashed out of the ground looking like pregnant 10 year olds. Others launched them over the fence to waiting compatriots. By the end of 2 minutes the ground was cleared of footballs.
Free to watch and you get a football to take home with you. I wonder if it'll catch on in the UK?
Masalamah
Yahya
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