Naked hypocrisy: In the UAE's Dubai, cancer awareness clashes with immoral decency (photo courtesy of Jad Aoun).
In court records, he's identified as "RN." His first name is Raffi. He's 28, Lebanese, living and working in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Or was, until he became the latest victim of the UAE's fetid brew of repressive and rarely justifiable sanctimony.
Raffi worked as a brand manager for Chalhoub Group ("Ambassador of Luxury Lifestyle in the Middle East"), which markets products by designer Marc Jacobs in the Middle East. Jacobs designed T-shirts for a skin-cancer-awareness campaign that features celebrities posing almost nude (their nethers are tastefully and discreetly covered) under the caption, “Protect the Skin You’re In.” Profits from sales of the T-shirts go to New York University's Melanoma Cooperative Group. The campaign has raised $1 million for NYU. (Full disclosure: I'm a Lebanese-born NYU graduate who supports skin-cancer research, especially when it involves near-naked celebrities, who are generally less interesting or useful fully clothed.)
As a result of what? An unfortunate encounter with an Arab descendant of the Salem witch trials who took it on himself to turn vigilante on Raffi's T-shirt. It's not as if Dubai residents couldn't use a little education about skin cancer, though they have a more insidious cancer to worry about. On one hand the UAE, its own hypocrisy aside, has no issue with enslaving migrant workers in abject conditions, shorn of labor rights and decent pay. More than 80 percent of the UAE's population is made up of foreign workers, who also generate most of the emirates' wealth. On the other, the UAE never hesitates to smash the hands that feed it, as was the case with Raffi. The two strategies aren't really contradictory. They're the essence of regimes too imperious, too blind to see the degeneracy of their own phony morals. In the UAE, you're a prole in good standing as long as you comply with the regime's rigid, capitalist gospel. Or dollar-sauced-Sunna. Public, let alone free, expression, no matter how edifying, interesting or necessary, interferes with the regime's only aims: to make money, and to to do so under Islamic pretenses of decency and propriety.
At the core of it all burns the biggest indecency of all, veiled and confined to the rulers' palatial boudoirs: duplicity so rich that an alphabet's worth of scarlet letters wouldn't do it justice. Raffi is the latest victim.
See Also:
- Tale of Two Rapes
- Sex on the Beach in Dubai: Voyeurism of Orientalism
- Dubai, Philadelphia of the Arab World
- Tennis and Bigotry in the UAE
Comments
Nice try, but Rafi knew exactly what he was doing, and he should not pretend he didn’t know the t-shirt would have been seen as offensive to the locals. As an expat he should have been more respectful of the country’s traditions, as on would anywhere, end of story. And please, don’t make this a story about repression, for it simply ISN’T. It’s about poor taste and bad judegment.
Poor taste and bad judgment, yes–by the Emirate regime, as repression always is. And whether Rafi knew what he was doing or not (I very much hope he did know) makes no difference. A country’s norms aren’t to be respected if they are offensive to the the basic, universal decency that is the respect for an individual’s right to wear and say what he pleases. What he wore, the image above, was not offensive. If anyone finds it so, then his or her threshold of tolerance and taste is somewhere between Kandahar and Mullah Omar’s beard–which is no standard. There’s a point where “local norms” degenerate into local idiocy and backwardness. That’s the point of Rafi’s story. As for expats in the UAE: I thought I made it clear that they form 80 percent of the country’s population. As such, they have at least equal, if not more, rights to say what they please and be what they wish to be than Emiratis do, since the UAE owes them its wealth and newfound “prestige” in the world.
Do you even live in Dubai or are you just an ignorant European living in a world where you think you are always right. This country belongs to the Emirates and they have invited the ex-pats to come work here. Ex-pats choose to work here because their own countries are so screwed up that the majority of people cannot earn a decent living. I should know – I am an ex-pat from a screwed up country. When you life in Dubai (or any other country) as a foreigner you HAVE TO RESPECT THE LOCAL CULTURE, regardless if you agree with it or not. What happened to Rafi is unfortunate but has nothing to do with the fact that the country’s laws have to be honoured; otherwise this country will just be another USA, UK, or most other European country. Moral laws are strictly upheld for a reason and unfortunately sometimes people are made to pay the price for not abiding by those laws, but laws are to be followed. But I’m sure in little lonely Pierre’s world laws are meant to be broken. Such a pity!
Oh and would you mind answering what this article has to do with Dubai having phony cancer morals? This article has nothing to do with cancer morals but rather your one sided opinion about the laws and ethics of a Muslim country where ex-pats are guests. There are many who publicly give our support to cancer and we are all supported and none are prosecuted by any law. Change the title of your article because your article has nothing to do with cancer morals.
The cancer I’m referring to, the cancer affecting Dubai and every repressive Middle Eastern regime like it, Arno, has nothing to do with physical health. The denial of civil liberties is justifiable under no flag, no religion, no tradition, no law.
Well, how about you tell Richard Humphreys of Portland how repressive the UAE regime is. After all Rafi has received a WHOLE month in prison for wearing a T-Shirt that the UAE culture finds to be offensive, while in 2002, Humphreys received a meager THREE-YEAR prison sentence for telling a “burning bush” joke to trucker at a Sioux Falls bar. Darn these UAE dictatorial and repressive towel heads……
Not so fast Ying Yang. News reports on the Humphreys case also got me all outraged. But the reports were one-dimensional and misleading. When you read the actual legal opinion surrounding his case, you get a different perspective. He was tried and convicted by a jury. He appealed. The federal 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the sentence and noted that it wasn’t just what Humphreys said in a bar, but had repeatedly said, and written, leading up to a visit by George W. Bush to Sioux Falls, SD, where Humphreys was at the time.
As the legal opinion states:
“Humphreys contends the chat room statements were not threatening and were
not meant to be taken seriously. In the online chat, Humphreys stated: (the caps are in the original opinion)
HE IS NOW, HE FEARS ME SOMETHING TERRIBLE, GORE DOES TOO BECAUSE I PRAYED FOR A TIE IN THE ELECTION AND GOT IT WHEN THE GORE PEOPLE TOLD ME THAT IF I WANTED JUSTICE I NEEDED A DIFFERENT CANDIDATE, SAID TO THEM, “SO BE IT” GOT THE TIE AND DIFFERENT CANDIDATE, NOW
GOING TO ASK BUSH FOR JUSTICE, AND IF I DON’T GET IT I AM GOING TO PRAY FOR A BURNING BUSH. GET IT? SO IF YOU HEAR THAT A MAN RUNS UP AND THROWS GASOLINE AND A MATCH TO BUSH YOU WILL KNOW THAT GOD DID SPEAK THROUGH THE BURNING BUSH. LOL
“Even if “LOL” indicates Humphreys was “laughing out loud,” as he contends, the
district court did not commit clear error in finding Humphreys’ chat room statement
threatened the President. Humphreys knowingly and willfully made the statement
and a reasonable person could view it as a serious expression of intent to inflict
bodily harm.”
One more thing: the court found that Humphreys was not exactly in his right mind, and had him confined in a medical facility rather than a regular prison. Again from the 8th Circuit’s opinion:
“We recommend to the Bureau of Prisons that Humphreys serve his term in the Federal Medical Center,
however. The record shows Humphreys suffers from a bipolar disorder and has had
several periods of hospitalization because of his delusions. His symptoms are
treatable with medication. Hopefully, medication over a significant period of years
will result in his being able to live outside the prison confines, free of delusions and
the type of behavior he exhibited here.”
You can read the full opinion of the 8th circuit here. Needless to say, the Humphreys case and the Dubai case have nothing in common.
UAE is nothing but a big lie & a waste of time. Anything that makes money is ok and they only impose there stupid slavery rules on expatriates!!!!!!!
uae has the rules. where there are no rules, it must be chaotice land. those who want uae not apply the rules to offences and violations of morals and ethics and dignity of human life and God’s Laws, are people should be living in drunken clubs and not hjuman society.