Naughtiness in Dubai

It seems the summer sex scandal this year is about the young lady who has been arrested in Dubai for hanky panky on a public beach. This story is interesting from a couple of angles. One is the way that the British media has concentrated on the female involved while the young man has had little or no attention paid to him. There is almost a hint of a suggestion that he was an innocent party while writhing on a sunbed with a very naughty lady. Come on Britain, are we still judging women as tarts while men are admired for their sexual conquests?

Another slant on the story, particularly the 2 page feature in Saturday's Daily Mail, is that of decadent Brits who don't know how to behave in a foreign country. Give a Brit a lot of booze in a hot country and they run amok. There was a comparison with British yobbish behaviour in Spain in the seventies.

The real story, which was discussed in the Mail article, is the tension between the Dubai government's drive to encourage Westerners to play a much bigger role in the economic development of the Emirate. The development of the UAE in the last 30 years has been brought about because of a reliance on foreign labour. Up until 2002, foreigners could only have residency in the UAE if they were employed. Now residency can be granted when buying property. Unlike Abu Dhabi and the other Emirates, Dubai has been proactive in jumping on the property development bandwagon. As I have reported in earlier blogs, the city of Dubai has changed dramatically in the last five years as the infrastructure is developed at the same time as huge areas of villas and apartment blocks are built to sell. The city of Dubai has a reputation for being more liberal than other parts of the UAE. Something as simple as a lady wearing a strappy top - OK in Dubai, but frowned upon in most other parts of the Emirates, including Al Ain where I live. The rulers of Dubai see themselves as visionaries - movers and shakers who are dragging the rest of the country into the 21st century to maximise the potential of a global market place. Now there are voices of dissent from the Emirati people. They feel that they are losing their identity and their cultural heritage. Well, yes of course it's bound to happen if they choose to open their doors to foreigners in order to make money.

I don't approve of the behaviour of this man and woman. I wouldn't be happy if they were cavorting on a beach in Norfolk somewhere in my vicinity. However, if the government of Dubai allows hotels to offer 'drink as much as you can' brunches on a Friday, then it could be argued that expats are encouraged to behave in a decadent manner. Much has been made of the fact that Friday is a holy day in Islam, so their behaviour was insensitive in the extreme. Yes, but Friday is also the first day of the weekend in the Emirates and, for us Brits, it's traditional to let our hair down and relax. Dubai is rich with luxury hotels, shopping malls and nightclubs. I've always thought that it's a brilliant place for young Brits to go to work and enjoy life to the max. However, there are strings to this wonderful hedonistic life. While the UAE is one of the most liberal of the Gulf countries, it is still a muslim country. Emirati women are expected to cover up completely. My employer has given strict instructions about how I am to dress and behave. It's not difficult most of the time. One of the rules that I have found most difficult to accept is that of chasteness at all times. This means that people of the opposite sex should not touch in public. There are men somewhere in the Emirates who spend all day using a black marker pen to scribble out 'offensive' bare flesh on pictures of women in magazines. Kissing, even a chaste kiss in a costume drama, is edited out of films and TV programmes imported from the US and UK. Any parcels sent to me from abroad are opened routinely before I get them to check the contents for naughty things. I don't approve of that either, particularly when violence in films is applauded. There seems to be a lack of balance. However, it doesn't matter what I think because those are the rules of the country in which I have chosen to live and therefore I will comply. Besides which, as I'm over fifty, fat and, ye gods, have just discovered a whole set of lines that have appeared in the last 2 weeks, my chances of cavorting on a beach are nil.