October 28, 2020 - 11:40am
When a newborn baby was found abandoned in a bathroom at Doha Airport on 2nd October, Qatari officials acted swiftly. Women on a flight bound for Sydney, all of whom had briefly had access to the bathroom, were hauled off their plane, escorted to waiting ambulances, and strip searched. Women of childbearing age were also searched internally.
Despite these efforts, the mother wasn’t found. As The Times reports:
This isn’t the first time that Westerners — particularly Western women — have run afoul of draconian laws while travelling through the Gulf. In 2016, a British woman who had been gang raped by two fellow travellers reported the crime to Dubai police and was arrested for breaking Emirati laws against extra-marital sex. In 2018, another British woman was jailed in Dubai for several days, allegedly for drinking wine on her flight from London.
As a British-Australian, I’ve often travelled through Gulf airports, most regularly Dubai — which alone attracts half a million British tourists a year. Muscat, Abu Dhabi, and Doha have also experienced a tourism boom over the last decade, offering visitors shopping, five star hotels, and plenty of sunshine.
These Gulf states have worked hard to present themselves as a playground for rich Westerners. Dubai Airport, in particular, has been carefully designed to cultivate a very particular Westernised image. Everywhere you look, there are luxury brands, British restaurant chains, and clocks sponsored by Rolex.
You’d never know, as a casual visitor, that these oil-rich states are very far from fully Westernised. Sharper-eyed tourists might wonder why almost all of the airport and hotel workers are South Asian, as are most of the ‘virtual slaves’ who work in construction or as domestic servants. They might also notice the treatment these workers are subjected to.
A family friend who recently stayed in an Abu Dhabi hotel noted the presence of a woman whose only job seemed to be to crawl around on the floor, wiping up the splashing water from a nearby fountain. She spent all day on her hands and knees, disregarded by most passing visitors. Such women are acutely vulnerable to abuse by their employers, particularly sexual abuse, which is one reason for the large numbers of abandoned babies.
The relationship between Westerners and the Gulf states is one of convenience and, for airlines, Doha and Dubai provide useful refuelling stops, particularly on the route between Europe and Australia.
But new direct flights from London to Perth may put an end to this arrangement, and many Australians of my acquaintance will be relieved. Because occasionally the mask slips, as in this latest dreadful incident, and we are reminded that a superficial imitation of Westernisation is only an illusion. These Gulf states have appropriated only the worst elements of the West, while rejecting the best.
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SubscribeInteresting. I have never had the slightest desire to visit these places and I think I am correct in that. (I was once lucky enough to visit NZ but we flew via LA). But that is their way, and it will be our way too if we continue to allow the influence of Islam to undermine the West.
Many just pass through doing their duty free shopping at the airport or cocooned in their luxury hotel..
Sadly the Duty Free is not particularly good value these days either. Direct flights that skip the entire region are the way ahead. I have been there many times for work and been treated very well, but I would not even think about going as a tourist – it’s all very glitzy but totally fake.
When a religion believes a man who fell for a 6 year old who still played with doll, and who used to play children’s game with her and her fellow child friends until she got to 9, where he raped her, and had 9-13 wives including a sex-slave, is the perfect man for all times, this is the result.
I’m afraid a study of the religion in an objective ways shows these people are doing nothing except living identically to the way Muhammad and his cult followers acted.
After watching my favourite sport showcasing UFC fights in Abu Dhabi, I did think, with all the great architecture and modernization taking place there, the Islamic world would be changing.
Sad to hear these stories. Life for women in those countries is truly horrific.
There are vast number of non-Western nations that are miles ahead of these slave-states in terms of quality of life and respect for human rights.
Things will never change in Islamic countries. If you thought the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia have changed – behind the glitter the dark hand of Muhammad reigns supreme, You have been deluded.
Don’t be simplistic. Not Muhammed, it’s anthropology 101, a people stuck in a nomadic tribal culture phase, …or at least that part of it -the ‘royal’ families- gifted the power after the great wars. There are backwards Xtians who still believe Jehovah sanctioned Solomon’s 700 wives.
This is an honest to god patriarchal culture. Note the contrast with ours.
Awash with oil and thus strategically vital to the US, the Gulf monarchies realized they could modernize their countries while retaining their traditional tribal structures. Qatar is a good example of this pattern. A minority of wealthy Qatari sits at the top of the social hierarchy barely interacting with foreigners. Western and East Asian high-skilled workers run the show, acting as the intendants of the system. Finally a mass of Asian and African migrants form the underclass.
What the Gulf monarchs did was to make theirs the material dimension of Western modernity but left out the political philosophy and critical thinking which gave birth to the said modernity.