ReportWire

Tag: Persian Gulf tensions

  • Abrahamic House in UAE houses a church, synagogue and mosque

    Abrahamic House in UAE houses a church, synagogue and mosque

    [ad_1]

    ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — On the shores of the Persian Gulf, a new complex houses a Catholic church, a Jewish synagogue and an Islamic mosque in the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

    The Abrahamic Family House offers a concrete, marble and oak manifestation of the UAE’s publicized push toward tolerance after hosting Pope Francis in 2019 and later diplomatically recognizing Israel in 2020. Worshippers have already prayed and communed at the site on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island, while the general public will be allowed in next month.

    However, the UAE still criminalizes proselytizing outside of the Islamic faith. Security also remains a concern as well for Jewish worshippers in this new outpost on the Arabian Peninsula, whether from Israel’s regional enemy Iran or from those angered by Israel pursuing settlements on land Palestinians seek for their future state.

    Organizers declined to speak on camera Tuesday to The Associated Press about the project, even as they led journalists around the site.

    The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, announced plans for the Abrahamic Family House in 2019 during the country’s “Year of Tolerance.” Designed by the British-Ghanian architect Sir David Adjaye, the site includes the three houses of worship and a center connecting them for future events.

    The site itself stands out as a stark, white-marble place of worship in a capital more known for its oil industry, ongoing arms fair, glass towers and beachfront hotels. The three houses of worship — the St. Francis of Assisi Church, the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue and the Imam al-Tayeb Mosque — stand at triangle points, each a structure of about 30 cubic meters (1,060 cubic feet).

    Triangular fountains lay set inside parts of the grounds, providing a bubbling background against the sound of construction taking place elsewhere on an island that is already home to the domed Louvre Abu Dhabi, a museum opened under an agreement with France. Behind the site, the massive falcon wings of the under-construction Zayed National Museum rise overhead as workers climbed through its scaffolding on Tuesday.

    While each house of worship is the same size, all appear different on the inside. In the church, eastward windows with morning light frame a marble altar and lectern with a crucifix above it. Oaken pews sit inside for the faithful under suspended wooden columns hanging from the ceiling.

    The synagogue has similar pews, with the Ten Commandments inscribed in Hebrew at the front. A room for the Torah is located behind the front. Bronze netting hangs from the ceiling, playing with the light from the windows and a skylight above.

    The mosque has shelves for the Quran and also outside, for the faithful to remove their shoes, hidden behind Islamic geometric designs. Gray carpeting covers the floor, with two microphones under and one above on the minbar, the platform where the imam stands for Friday prayers. Moveable walls separate the men’s and women’s sections.

    Officials gave no figure for the cost of construction of the site, though the materials alone likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

    Still, proselytizing outside of the Islamic faith remains illegal in the UAE and Islam is enshrined as the official religion in the country’s constitution, with government websites even offering online applications to convert. Conversion from Islam to another religion, however, is illegal, as is witchcraft and sorcery, the U.S. State Department has warned.

    Blasphemy and apostasy laws also carry a possible death sentence — though no such execution is known to have been carried out since the UAE became a nation in 1971. Despite facing restrictions, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and others in the UAE have never faced the violence that has targeted their communities in Syria and Iraq during the rise of the Islamic State group and other militants.

    Security appears to be a major concern for the site. Though hidden as much as possible, metal detectors screen those coming into the facility. Security cameras can be seen at every major corner, both inside and outside the houses of worship. On Tuesday, black-suited private security guards also ran mirrors around vehicles to check their undercarriages for explosives — a measure rarely seen in the Emirates.

    Hard-line media in Iran have previously described the UAE as a “legitimate” target, given its recognition of Israel.

    ___

    Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • EXPLAINER: Qatar’s vast wealth helps it host FIFA World Cup

    EXPLAINER: Qatar’s vast wealth helps it host FIFA World Cup

    [ad_1]

    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Qatar is home to some 2.9 million people, but only a small fraction — around one in 10 — are Qatari citizens. They enjoy massive wealth and benefits fueled by Qatar’s shared control of one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas.

    The tiny country on the eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula juts out into the Persian Gulf. There lies the North Field, the world’s largest underwater gas field, which Qatar shares with Iran. The gas field holds approximately 10% of the world’s known natural gas reserves.​

    Oil and gas have made the 50-year-old country fantastically wealthy and influential. In a matter of decades, Qatar’s roughly 300,000 citizens have been pulled from the hard livelihood of fishing and pearl diving.

    The country is now an international transit hub with a profitable national airline, a force behind the influential Al Jazeera news network and is paying for the expansion of the largest U.S. military base in the Mideast.

    Here’s a look at Qatar’s economy and how this tiny country was able to spend so much to host the FIFA World Cup:

    QATAR’S ECONOMIC STRENGTH

    For most of its existence, the tribes of Qatar relied on pearl diving and fishing for survival. Like other parts of the Gulf, it was a harsh and bare existence. The discovery of oil and gas in the mid-20th century changed life in the Arabian Peninsula forever.

    While much of the world grapples with recession and inflation, Qatar and other Gulf Arab energy producers are reaping the benefits of high energy prices. The International Monetary Fund expects Qatar’s economy to grow by about 3.4% this year.

    Despite a massive spending spree to prepare for the World Cup, the country still earned more than it spent last year, giving it a cushy surplus that is continuing into 2022. Qatar’s riches are likely to grow as it expands capacity to be able to export more natural gas by 2025.

    Its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, manages and invests the country’s financial reserves.

    QATAR’S WORLD CUP SPENDING

    Qatar has spent some $200 billion on infrastructure and other development projects since winning the bid to host the five-week long World Cup, according to official statements and a report from Deloitte.

    Around $6.5 billion of that was spent on building eight stadiums for the tournament, including the Al Janoub stadium designed by the late acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid.

    Billions were also spent to build a metro line, new airport, roads and other infrastructure ahead of the matches.

    The London-based research firm Capital Economics said ticket sales suggest that around 1.5 million tourists will visit Qatar for the World Cup. If each visitor stayed for 10 days and spent $500 a day, spending per visitor would amount to $5,000, the research firm said. That could amount to a $7.5 billion boost to Qatar’s economy this year. However, some fans may fly in just for the matches while staying in nearby Dubai and elsewhere.

    QATAR’S LAVISH BENEFITS

    Like other rich petro-states in the Gulf, Qatar is not a democracy. Decisions are made by the ruling Al Thani family and its chose advisors. Citizens have little say in their country’s major policy decisions.

    The government, however, provides citizens with vast perks that have helped to ensure continued loyalty and support. Qatari citizens enjoy tax-free incomes, high-paying government jobs, free health care, free higher education, financial support for newlyweds, housing support, generous subsidies that cover utility bills and plush retirement benefits.

    The country’s citizens rely on laborers from other countries to fill jobs in the service sector, such as drivers and nannies, and to do the tough construction work that built modern-day Qatar.

    QATAR’S MIGRANT LABOR FORCE

    The country has faced intense scrutiny for its labor laws and treatment of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, mostly from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and other South Asian countries. These men live in shared rooms on labor camps and work throughout the long summer months, with just a few hours of midday respite. They often go years without seeing their families back home.

    The work is often dangerous, with Amnesty International saying dozens may have died from apparent heat stroke.

    Rights groups have credited Qatar with improving its labor laws, such as by adopting a minimum monthly wage of around $275 in 2020, and for dismantling the “kafala” system that had prevented workers from changing jobs or leaving the country without the consent of their employers.

    Human Rights Watch, however has urged Qatar to improve compensation for migrant workers who suffered injury, death and wage theft while working on World Cup-related projects.

    ___

    Follow Aya Batrawy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ayaelb.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Christian monastery possibly pre-dating Islam found in UAE

    Christian monastery possibly pre-dating Islam found in UAE

    [ad_1]

    SINIYAH ISLAND, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An ancient Christian monastery possibly dating as far back as the years before Islam spread across the Arabian Peninsula has been discovered on an island off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, officials announced Thursday.

    The monastery on Siniyah Island, part of the sand-dune sheikhdom of Umm al-Quwain, sheds new light on the history of early Christianity along the shores of the Persian Gulf. It marks the second such monastery found in the Emirates, dating back as many as 1,400 years — long before its desert expanses gave birth to a thriving oil industry that led to a unified nation home to the high-rise towers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

    The two monasteries became lost to history in the sands of time as scholars believe Christians slowly converted to Islam as that faith grew more prevalent in the region.

    Today, Christians remain a minority across the wider Middle East, though Pope Francis arrived in nearby Bahrain on Thursday to promote interfaith dialogue with Muslim leaders.

    For Timothy Power, an associate professor of archaeology at the United Arab Emirates University who helped investigate the newly discovered monastery, the UAE today is a “melting pot of nations.”

    “The fact that something similar was happening here a 1,000 years ago is really remarkable and this is a story that deserves to be told,” he said.

    The monastery sits on Siniyah Island, which shields the Khor al-Beida marshlands in Umm al-Quwain, an emirate some 50 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of Dubai along the coast of the Persian Gulf. The island, whose name means “flashing lights” likely due to the effect of the white-hot sun overhead, has a series of sandbars coming off of it like crooked fingers. On one, to the island’s northeast, archaeologists discovered the monastery.

    Carbon dating of samples found in the monastery’s foundation date between 534 and 656. Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was born around 570 and died in 632 after conquering Mecca in present-day Saudi Arabia.

    Viewed from above, the monastery on Siniyah Island’s floor plan suggests early Christian worshippers prayed within a single-aisle church at the monastery. Rooms within appear to hold a baptismal font, as well as an oven for baking bread or wafers for communion rites. A nave also likely held an altar and an installation for communion wine.

    Next to the monastery sits a second building with four rooms, likely around a courtyard — possibly the home of an abbot or even a bishop in the early church.

    On Thursday, the site saw a visit from Noura bint Mohammed al-Kaabi, the country’s culture and youth minister, as well as Sheikh Majid bin Saud Al Mualla, the chairman of the Umm al-Quwain’s Tourism and Archaeology Department and a son of the emirate’s ruler.

    The island remains part of the ruling family’s holdings, protecting the land for years to allow the historical sites to be found as much of the UAE has rapidly developed.

    The UAE’s Culture Ministry has sponsored the dig in part, which continues at the site. Just hundreds of meters (yards) away from the church, a collection of buildings that archaeologists believe belongs to a pre-Islamic village sit.

    Elsewhere on the island, piles of tossed-aside clams from pearl hunting make for massive, industrial-sized hills. Nearby also sits a village that the British blew up in 1820 before the region became part of what was known as the Trucial States, the precursor of the UAE. That village’s destructions brought about the creation of the modern-day settlement of Umm al-Quwain on the mainland.

    Historians say early churches and monasteries spread along the Persian Gulf to the coasts of present-day Oman and all the way to India. Archaeologist have found other similar churches and monasteries in Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

    In the early 1990s, archaeologists discovered the first Christian monastery in the UAE, on Sir Bani Yas Island, today a nature preserve and site of luxury hotels off the coast of Abu Dhabi, near the Saudi border. It similarly dates back to the same period as the new find in Umm al-Quwain.

    However, evidence of early life along the Khor al-Beida marshlands in Umm al-Quwain dates as far back as the Neolithic period — suggesting continuous human inhabitance in the area for at least 10,000 years, Power said.

    Today, the area near the marshland is more known for the low-cost liquor store at the emirate’s Barracuda Beach Resort. In recent months, authorities have demolished a hulking, Soviet-era cargo plane linked to a Russian gunrunner known as the “Merchant of Death” as it builds a bridge to Siniyah Island for a $675 million real estate development.

    Power said that development spurred the archaeological work that discovered the monastery. That site and others will be fenced off and protected, he said, though it remains unclear what other secrets of the past remain hidden just under a thin layer of sand on the island.

    “It’s a really fascinating discovery because in some ways it’s hidden history — it’s not something that’s widely known,” Power said.

    ___

    Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

    [ad_2]

    Source link