Don't Teach, Inspire

Universities in the United Arab Emirates and around the world have wrapped up their academic year with graduation ceremonies for the class of 2011. Some of which have been televised others appeared as a collection of photos in newspapers across the country. The overwhelming number of graduates ushered into the professional world indicates the success which UAE universities have achieved in educating and preparing the young minds of tomorrow.

Watching the ceremonies this year has led me into a subconscious comparison with the ones taking place in the West. Universities in the UAE have been rehearsing pretty much the same choreography for their ceremonies as far as I can remember. The graduating class of year so and so, usually sits through a speech from a government official, then another address from the Dean and lastly a speech given by the class valedictorian. The following routine is an essential part of university protocol which must take place but it leaves one wondering, where is the inspiration?

As the graduating class eagerly awaits their degrees they are at their most enthusiastic which is the exact moment in time when the utterance of some encouraging words or the sight of an inspiring figure could make the most impact on them.

In the United States graduation ceremonies are mostly remembered for their commencement speeches, which are usually given by a well-known public figure of the university’s choice. These public figures can be politicians, actors, CEOs, generally any public figure, who has made a difference in his field or profession. So there you have a graduating class going through the normal processions and then getting the opportunity to not only meet but also be addressed by a public figure, who has accomplished what any one of those graduates might aspire to be. 

The idea is to expose these graduates to role models who have truly excelled, and to allow their words to resonate in the minds of those in need of courage and confidence to brave the world of 2011. This year the University of Massachusetts went as far as the stars, literally, to give their graduates a ceremony to remember. The university chose NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman, who delivered her speech via video from the International Space Station orbiting the Earth. 

In other universities across America President Barack Obama thanked the graduates for inspiring him, Arianna Huffington proclaimed there is no leader on a white horse the leader is to be found in the mirror, Stevie Wonder sang You are the Sunshine of My Life and Conan O’ Brien delivered a half hour hilarious speech that left the graduates in tears.

We live in a time where degrees no longer mean much, where job opportunities are scarce and with a generation, which believes that fame, and fortune is achieved as easily as being discovered on Youtube. This makes it all the more essential for graduates, who have chosen to pursue education over other options, to see before them a product of their country who has reached great heights by hard work and persistence. 

Universities in the UAE should consider the idea of inviting guest speakers to their ceremonies every year. The choice should be theirs although it is imperative to emphasise on the local talent. An international speaker is great but a more effective one would be a figure who is a product of the UAE, one who has lived within the same culture and environment as they have. It would be much easier to relate to such a person’s experiences than to one hailing from a different part of the world. Universities can release the names of their chosen speakers ahead of time where a list can be compiled for publication. This decision benefits both the graduates and the universities as well. The proper choice of commencement speaker can get any school’s name listed among the top tier ones and allows for great exposure. 

Graduation ceremonies are one of the few occasions in life where a person can truly believe that anything is possible. Educators have a responsibility to capitalise on this moment and inspire their students until the very end of their journey together, in order to usher them into the world with enough inspiration and motivation to change it for the better.

This article was published in The Gulf Today on June 19th, 2011.

Too much Twitter

A few days ago I posted this statement on my Twitter account: 

“Most used term this year, social media. I’ve about had it! And yes I realise the irony of tweeting this statement so don’t even.” 

We have been reading about the social media ever since its inception but after it has somehow been given all credit for the revolutions happening in the Middle East, social media has become the subject of the year. Endless debates and analyses of websites such as Facebook and Twitter’s role in the Arab revolutions flooded the region drowning other important elements in its wake, hence my Twitter outburst.

Yes, the social media sites have aided in exposing parts of the revolution that governments tried relentlessly to keep hidden and a Facebook page might have set a revolution in motion, but those were nothing but tools used in the building of a national dream. 

Believe it or not revolutions did take place prior to Facebook. 

In 1952 Egypt there was no ‘Free Officer’s Movement’s’ Facebook page calling to overthrow the British backed monarchy. Gandhi’s non-cooperative movement did not ‘tweet’ about its struggle with ending the British rule in India. Neither Castro nor Guevara uploaded videos of their forest march to Cuba onto Youtube and although there was no live-stream of Martin Luther King Jr. from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the entire world still heard his dream. 

Throughout history revolutions did take place and ruthless governments have been overthrown. So before we go overboard in giving credit to the social media we should evaluate what it really did for today’s revolutions. 

Social media sites did not create these revolutions they merely advertised them, in the same way pamphlets and underground newsletters did in the past. They are a medium, granted they have a wider reach, but they are a medium nonetheless. Credit for the revolutions must always be given to the people and the people alone, they are whom we need to be debating and analysing in this case not Zuckerburg’s Facebook and Dorsey’s Twitter.

The exaggerated attention given to social media sites has resulted in an infatuation that has led users to believing that their existence on them is more important than their existence in the real world.

A social media site is designed to make you believe that the more followers you have the more important you ought to be. Therefore, the more followers you have the higher the need becomes to retain them. Every user is given the opportunity to become a critic and many have seized it.

Some users act like politicians running for the Twitter presidency, addressing certain sections of the world, hashtagging, re-tweeting and monitoring fluctuations in their followers’ numbers. Contrary to what our Twitter users/politicians believe the reality of social media remains that you gain followers and you lose them. You really do not need to be developing alter egos to better suit your cyber world persona. It’s not science, it’s Twitter.

To our social media addicts I pose a question: “If a tree falls outside of Twitter, does it make a sound?” 

If you took time mulling this question over then, in the immortal words of Tyra Banks, congratulations you are in the running to becoming Twitter’s next top user. 

Indeed the numbers might be pointing towards a life lived solely through the social media but statistics do not always reflect the ways of the world. There are indeed millions using these sites but there are billions of people walking this earth who are not. Of the many activists that have taken to Twitter and Facebook during the Middle Eastern revolutions hundreds have died on the streets with no social media account to their names. 

The question is are we being led to believe that if some people choose not to be on such websites that we should neglect their actual existence? 

If they are writers do we not read their works? If they are politicians do we not hear their views?  If they are activists do we not pay attention to their cause? Do we leave them behind while we set sail on our fancy boat of modernity, christened ‘Social Media’?

The term social media is in fact an oxymoron for there is nothing social about this media. There is nothing socially satisfying about tweeting to no one in particular. It is not a revolution, it is just a way for us to vent out and hope that someone in the cyber world is listening to what no one in our real world actually wants to.

This article was published in The Gulf Today newspaper on 12th June, 2011.

Writing a Wrong

Historically the Western mind has been mesmerised by the Middle East often painting pictures of it as a land of mysteries browned by the desert sun. In the United Arab Emirates, our parents recall during the British occupation that Englishmen stood the children in line and took photos of them. These very Englishmen would later put the photos in their books as they penned the history of our country. This was also the case for the rest of the Middle Eastern region, an Arab history conveyed to the rest of the world through foreign eyes.

Edward Said, the late Palestinian literary theorist and powerful political voice coined this phenomenon ‘Orientalism’, describing the Western study of Eastern cultures. In recent years, the Arab world’s fluency of the English language has allowed the West to hear our own description of our past and our concerns for our future. We no longer needed the Englishman to tell our stories and no longer did the philosophy of the Arab mind need to be translated by the West.

Nowadays, Arab writers and commentators writing in the English-language are a plenty. The language barrier has ceased to exist. The true crisis lies in failing to identify the thin line between writing in a foreign language and writing with a foreign tongue. It is sad to see that many intelligent Arab writers are adhering to the Western perspective and echoing its same rhetoric in return for international recognition. 

In the past we have seen such antics working especially in the literary world. Salman Rushdie, the Indian novelist, had written four novels prior to his Satanic Verses but it was this book, that portrays a skewed perspective of Islam which catapulted him into the farthest heights of fame, winning him awards and even having him knighted by the Queen of England for his “services to literature”. Selling out on one’s ideology and beliefs in return for the West’s approval is shameful.

Many Arab writers have been blinded by the glaring lights of Western fame and have found that Arab opinions dressed in a Western man’s suit can get them far, but at what cost? We possess the language that now bridges the gap in perspectives but instead of using it to tell our story we are telling theirs. While we are grateful for their work, it is painful to see writers like Noam Chomsky and Norman G. Finkelstein, both Jewish Americans, fight for Palestinian rights and the Arab perspective more passionately than many Arabs do.

For years, anytime an Arab writer or publication expressed their opinions the Western commentators played the ‘Arab victimisation’ card and dismissed them as just that. On the other hand, if writers such as Chomsky or Finkelstein discuss the same issues they are labeled ‘truth-tellers’. Still, it is one thing for the Arab voice to be suppressed by the West but it is a whole other issue for it to be choked by our own hands. When Arab commentators repeat Western rhetoric then our voice becomes redundant thereby rendered useless.

This month, Al Jazeera English will receive Columbia University’s top journalism award for “singular journalism in public interest”. One of the substantial reasons that Al Jazeera news channel gained momentum and weight for its news coverage is because, regardless of its own agendas, it never followed a Western one. Its notoriety came not from adhering to a certain Western standard, but for standing up against it and revealing to the world the other side of the political coin.

Writers, especially of politics, should never take information at face value and steer facts towards a logic that goes against their beliefs. In journalism and intellectual commentary one should not take certain issues to the merest truisms.

In politics, the pen is at its heaviest because it is weighed down by the collective responsibility it holds towards its people and their future in the eyes of the world.

It is best to retire one’s pen than succumb it to a life of self-betrayal.

This article was published in The Gulf Today newspaper on May 15th, 2011.

Obama Kills Osama to Remain Alive

Almost a decade after Osama Bin Laden’s inauguration as the most wanted man on the planet it took American soldiers 40 minutes to kill him. Today the American people rejoice with the feeling of utter relief for the bogeyman hiding in the dark closets of their minds is gone.

The truth is, it cost the United States billions of dollars and thousands of human lives to eliminate a man who was apparently hiding in plain sight. After years of scouring dusty caves it was revealed that Bin Laden had in fact been residing in a mansion in Pakistan. Osama Bin Laden’s death comes as no shock to the Arab world. We believed it inevitable but it was the timing that was unforeseen.

Had Bin Laden been killed only a few months earlier the reactions of the Arab world would have been resentful and possibly more heated. But as the news comes to us at a time where the plates of the Middle Eastern political world are shifting, Arabs seem more subdued and indifferent. Osama Bin Laden neither had a presence in the Arab revolutions nor reacted to them.

Ten years after the September 11 attacks Bin Laden’s status and influence on Al Qaeda has dwindled. While killing him nine years ago would have been credited as eliminating a leader, killing him today is viewed more as the death of an iconic figure for Al Qaeda, a mascot if you will.

The timing of Bin Laden’s death is nothing short of genius. With the Arab uprising in full swing there seems to be a list of dictators/villains to take his place. Bin Laden filled in the spot vacated by Saddam Hussein’s death and so the question is who will succeed Bin Laden on America’s most wanted Middle Eastern face of evil?  

The American presidential elections have to also be factored into this equation, which resulted in the quick sudden death of the world’s most feared man. George W. Bush Jr. declared the war on terror to secure his second term at the presidency and while President Barack Obama proved the impossible by being the first black President of the United States at the end of his first term his promise of ‘change’ hasn’t yet made a huge impact on the average American. And while Obama tried his best at playing the peace card he finally realised that Bush Jr. had played it right all along knowing that nothing matters more to the American people than regaining their throne as the most powerful and untouchable country in the world. 

Revenge was the final dish on Obama’s table, served cold, the American people ate it graciously. Has this move secured Obama’s second term at presidency just as it did for his predecessor? We await the answer in 2012.

This article has been published in The Gulf Today newspaper on May 4th, 2011.

Cupcake and Abaya Nation

Emirati women have always been leaders in the pursuit of self-actualisation. With the birth of the Emirates they saw their dreams manifesting into realities at the hands of our father and the founder of our beloved country the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. It is because of his extraordinary efforts in encouraging women’s education throughout the Emirates that we are here today.

In the 1970s Emirati women sought knowledge with an insatiable thirst and had the courage to venture into worlds previously unknown to them. Nevertheless they ploughed their way through male dominated arenas and proved their abilities admirably. From being mothers in their homes they became teachers in our schools, filling positions that prior to their involvement saw only hired teachers from across the Middle East. Our pioneering Emirati women of the 70s were role models then and remain ones today.

By the 1980s, Emirati women constituted 6.2 percent of the UAE’s workforce. Today this figure has risen to well above 50 percent proving beyond any doubt that their long sought-after dream of financial independence had been achieved.

Today, in a bold yet welcomed step many Emirati women have decided to leave their jobs and seek private business ventures instead. Soon after, we began to see local businesses entirely owned and run by Emirati women. At first these business ventures came in the form of abaya stores. The abaya is the Emirati woman’s national dress and therefore understandably it became her first outlet for fashion expression.

It was indeed refreshing to see Emirati women designing their own national dress for who better to translate the experience of wearing abayas into fashion than the women that live in them on a daily basis. This move transformed a staple of UAE society into the ultimate fashion accessory, pushing its prices upwards from a few hundred dirhams in the 1990s well into the thousands today. This proved that abaya stores are great business models and profitable ventures. Soon every women stopped wanting to buy abayas and started making them. The country became littered with abaya stores and, in an odd twist on the theories of supply and demand, the more stores there were and the higher the prices got, the more people demanded them.

Once the national black cape market had been saturated our Emirati woman moved on to something a little bit sweeter, dessert making. In a decision reminiscent of the 1950s American woman’s pie baking ventures the cupcake craze was born in the UAE. Some opened up cupcake stores, others baked them from home and delivered them to designated locations. This also proved to be a venture too sweet to fail and with that the skies of the Emirates filled with the smell of freshly baked cupcakes.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with replicating business models that have proved successful, it seems that Emirati women have backed themselves into an icing slathered corner. If you ever had an opportunity to walk around university fairs that showcase students’ business models you might get the impression that ideas have stagnated and become sandwiched between food and fashion.

What happens to the remaining business sectors? Have they become barely visible through the rows of abayas and the ensuing sugar rush? Young Emirati women should realise that there lies great potential and room for profits in different business areas offering them not only ease of entry but also an opportunity to be female pioneers.

Innovation is a word we live by in the UAE. Always seeking new heights, always pushing forward, we must not lose this passion for excellence. Daring to be different has its risks but brings with it change and variety. Emirati women have proven that they are worthy competitors in the work place and must now aim to prove that in all private business sector too.


This article was published in The Gulf Today newspaper on 17th April, 2011.

Make Way, the Arabs are coming

We humans are a curious bunch and it is this curiosity that allowed us to document our every endeavor. Every now and then events happen which we deem monumental to our existence, choosing their final resting place to be among the pages of our cherished history books.

At times the world seems to move in the same cycle, uttering the same words and displaying the same images year after year.

This is not one of those times.

This is a time when intense events are unfolding at a speed that has flung the Arab world spiraling out of its hamster wheel.

The Arab nation had been abused and forced to keep this corrupt wheel turning for far too long. For decades it lay comatose and suddenly its eyes opened. Its people have been pushed to limits that no human should have to endure, limits that made death seem a better option than the world they live in.  Basic human rights have become a luxury that only a few could boast about. Even dreams of a better life were murdered by the realities of government corruption that seeped to the very core of their societies. The only dream that is packaged and sold to ambitious folks around the world is the American one, an Arab version does not exist.

Political debates and arguments are now taking place in every living room and coffee shop around the Middle East. Some proud of the revolutions snow-balling through the Arab world, others hesitant, fearful of embracing them, programmed to believe that no good can come from any Arab decision. The discussions are always political, yet if we peel away the layers of criticism and attempts at the rationalization of events, we will see that this revolution is not about politics at all. It is about the citizens of countries that without them would seize to exist. It is about the every day people who make the world go around.

This revolution started with a single spark that ignited Mohamed Bouazizi’s body in the middle of a dusty Tunisian street. Bouazizi was not a politician. He never dreamed of his death as being a tool in any political agenda’s toolbox. He did not imagine that the burns on a street vendor’s body could raise the prices of oil or impact the economy. He was just a young man who wasn’t even allowed to dream of a better tomorrow.

What shocked the world was that the people who related to Bouazizi’s desperation came out in the millions. Millions of people chose to face death rather than go back to their hopeless lives. They chose to walk bare-chested under a sky raining bullets rather than endure the blatant disregard of their humanity. They were willing to make that sacrifice because they knew that the road to freedom is soaked in gallons of blood yet the destination is worth every drop.

They are being sniped from the rooftops, driven over by cars, bombed from fighter jets, and massacred by the very images that hung framed over their desks as they worked day in and day out. Presidents who when tested have excelled at failing. Living in complete denial until the very end, holding on to the last splinter of the chair that once kept them high above the rest. Refusing to bow down to the wishes of the world, deaf to the cries of rejection and willing to sacrifice more innocent souls for their egos to remain intact. Thirty years are not enough, forty years, still not enough, for power is a beast that grows within man feeding on everything in its path.

This contagious revolution will eventually find its way to our history books as being the era when the Arab political face was reconstructed by its people. When political alliances were revealed to be nothing but false promises and misplaced trust. When tyrants fell in slow-motion as the world watched. This time will be remembered as the moment when the idea of an Arab dream was conceived. 

This article was published in The Gulf Today newspaper on 27th Feb, 2011.

Egypt spoke, the world listened

On January 25^th, 2011, we heard that a group of young Egyptians have started a protest against their government. Slowly but surely and along the duration of the day more and more people found their feelings resonating in the voices of these youngsters. By the end of that fateful day the protest had morphed into an escalating revolution from which the Egyptian people never looked back.

As the world witnessed the bravery of every man, woman and child in the now world-famous Tahrir Square we were unconsciously attending a lesson in life taught to us by the people of Egypt. We watched attentively and listened carefully to every news piece or image we could get our hands on. And when it was all over and our eyes welled up at the sheer joy emanating from the centre of Cairo on February 11^th, 2011, the world learned the greatest lesson in modern history.

The political world learned that its ship could in fact be steered by the people. Aspiring dictators learned to keep looking over their shoulders. Current dictators learned that their delusions of grandeur are indeed just that. Citizens of every nation learned that peaceful protests could indeed be fruitful. The world learned that there is power in numbers. And the lesson we are indebted to Egypt for, our future generations learned that in the face of oppression silence is never golden.

Egypt has always been the school where Arab nations went in search of knowledge and inspiration. Today and in only eighteen days Egypt schooled the entire modern world on the true meaning of freedom and solidarity. Egypt will continue to give as long as it speaks with the voice of its courageous people who will continue to inspire as they keep fighting for a better tomorrow. 

This comment was published in Panorama magazine on 18th February, 2011.