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Abudhabi, American Liberty, Canada, Christianity and Islam, Christopher Caldwell, Civilisation, Civilization, Counter-Jihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Dubai, KFC, Middle East, Multiculturalism, No to Turkey in the EU, Qatar, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Rihanna Muslim, United Arab Emirates
What is ‘Civilisation’?
Some people, typically on the Political Left, claim (and presumably believe) that ‘Civilisation’ is fundamentally indistinct from ‘affluence’.
By implication then, ‘Civilisation’ is at base just a commodity, available for purchase to every culture and people the world over. The essence of a ‘Civilised country’ meanwhile isn’t Literature, Human Rights, Liberty, or Justice, but simply skyscrapers, fast cars, cable TV, and KFC Restaurants.
These people are wrong of course, and no better pursuasion of this can be found than the modern City-State of Dubai.
This blog is called ‘Defend the Modern World’. I should probably clarify then, exactly what I classify as ‘Modern’.
Imagine if you met an apolitical simpleton and showed him two photographs, the first of the small town of Fleming, Saskatchewan in Canada, and the second of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
If you then asked him which city of the two is more ‘ modern’, the simpleton would almost certainly pick the latter.
He’d be wrong.
Modernity for me, has little to do with technology or convenience. While I would gladly live in a Scandinavian village without electricity, I could never live happily in Abu Dhabi or Qatar. This is because the first would doubtlessly be more ‘modern’ and Civilised than the latter (with the first term here qualified by the criteria above).
Every year, Great hordes of Westerners (permanent settlers among them) travel to Dubai or Abu Dhabi. Their reasons for doing so (and this needs clarifying) have only a little to do with tax, and a lot to do with immorality.
In Dubai, after-all, you can not only exercise the mod-cons of a millionaire, but the cruelty of a medieval King.
Dubai has an entire class (by some estimates making up a majority of those resident in the country at any given time) of East and South Asian slaves. Yes, that’s right, slaves…
But maybe that’s unexeptional. Many African countries – after-all – still operate systems of slavery and then there’s the ‘caste system’ of India etc….
Where Dubai is different is in the way the slaves are treated by their masters, and by the laxity of the law in protecting them.
Regard the words of the Guardian’s Tanya Gold:
“There are 250,000 foreign workers in Dubai, drawn mostly from India and Bangladesh. They are indentured servants, in other words, slaves. The usual way to recruit them is to draw them a picture of joy — great wages, fabulous working conditions — and charge them an enormous recruitment fee. Then, when they arrive, the construction companies often steal their passports, deny them their wages and say they must work endlessly to pay for their return home, while living 10 to a room and working in the terrible heat. In Dubai, they cannot change jobs, and they cannot strike; those who do face violence or deportation. Last year, 113 Indians committed suicide in Dubai, or one every three days.”
To return to the photo comparison thought-experiment, when was the last time a migrant worker jumped off an unfinished building in Canada?
Alongside slavery, Dubai also offers lengthy prison sentences for adultery, kissing on the beach, homosexuality, transvestism, and possession of such horrific drugs of abuse as Benadryl. These prohibitions too, demonstrate a great lag in cultural time, perhaps (relative to the West) of more than a century.
Civilization, to conclude, is not a commodity. It cannot be bought. It develops inside the psyche of a population over many centuries. The desert Sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf then, skyscrapers and underwater hotels aside, have a long distance to travel.
D, LDN.
Omg, racist! I love it!
Wow, such a brilliant analysis, so cogent and refined.
Having visited Dubai just when the boom started, I can attest to the bi-polar nature of the place. Yes, there are big glitzy buildings, a dazzling gold souk, fountains with colored lights and green swaths of very expensively watered lawns in this desert mirage of a place. The most obvious thing that struck me as not quite being a mirage was the preponderance of a slave class—they are everywhere—people who live in squalor and fear and pretty much build and service this playground for the obscenely rich. Everyone has a servant or several, and I was lucky enough to witness the brutality shown towards them firsthand in a middle class Pakistani home. Upon arrival, I happened to withness a stick being applied across the back of a kitcen helper accompanied by much shouting in Urdu. Tea must’ve been a few minutes late! Absolutely barbaric. Nothing was mentioned about it and everyone just carried on as if nothing at all had happened… all smiles and phoney small talk. The scowls and body language of outright aggression towards the servants gave it all away, however. It was enough for me. I can only imagine the horrors visited upon the help in the absence of guests. Dubai is a guilded dump of a place, and yes, utterly lacking in civilization as you have so succinctly put forth in this post.
I agree with this, of course. The people of Dubai only have wealth anyway because of geological fluke, not in the least because of hard work or skill. The sooner we can utilise alternative energy sources, the better, then we can leave them alone and see how well they do.
What is especially sad is to see these Arab countries take over our own homelands, with the encouragement of our government. I raised this topic here: http://forum.theodoredalrymple.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=2371
They wouldn’t have much without oil money.
As London goes, so shall the rest of the Anglophone West. We are in for some seriously deep shit. Sold out by our capitalist “benefactors” and government under pressure from “international financial concerns”. Huh? A correction is long overdue. The fan is spinning and it won’t be long now before that proverbial collision of shit and fan.