Shaikh Mohammed : Come and see the real Dubai

His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has stressed the need to strengthen cooperation between the UAE and China not only in the field of trade, but also in other fields like science, technology and clean and renewable energy. 

In an interview with Wang Liwen and media team of Beijing Youth Newspaper, Shaikh Mohammed emphasised on the importance of UAE-Chinese relations and discussed matters relating to his vision and his definition of success, his views about the youth and their role in his institutions, as well as the role of women in development.

Beijing Youth Newspaper is part of Beijing Youth Media Group, which owns 11 newspapers and five magazines and is considered to be the bestseller in the Chinese capital.

According to Wang Liwen, interviewing Shaikh Mohammed was a very enjoyable experience, and he could get a glimpse of his thinking from his answers to the questions.

 

Excerpts from the interview:

Q: China is also a fast-developing country. What do you foresee for economic cooperation between our countries in the future?

A: That is an excellent question. I hope your readers in China come to Dubai and see it for themselves. What you hear is an illusion; what you see is real.

In fact contact between Chinese and Arabs began in the 7^th century. I myself have visited China on a couple of occasions, and I enjoyed seeing your cities and your culture first hand. China’s remarkable growth is a success story that we have observed with great interest. Dubai is like the ancient Chinese capital of Chang’an, a global cosmopolitan city, where people from 200 countries live and work together.

Dubai was a hub on the Silk Road then. More recently Dubai has made it more convenient for industry to spread to Central Asia, North Africa and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Two thirds of the world’s population can fly to Dubai in eight hours or less. In the past 20 or 30 years, investors from all over the world have flocked to Dubai.

Our two countries both have shining histories and cultures, and our peoples have a relationship of friendship and equality. I hope that our countries have even greater cooperation in the future, not only in trade, but also in science and technology and in renewable and clean energy.

In the future we will consider sending students from the UAE to China to study. These issues were discussed during Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to UAE in January 2012 to participate in the World Future Energy Summit.

Q: When did your thinking come together?

A: About 10 years ago. When I was in Europe and the United States, I saw racetracks and subways, and I wondered when Dubai could have all that.

Q: Your Highness, what is the secret of your success?

A: There are no secrets to the success we have achieved. I will summarise three key points: First is the vision. You have to have a vision that would benefit the people and help them achieve their dreams, and you must believe in your ability to achieve the vision.

Second is the team. You need to choose a dedicated team that believes in the vision and has the positive energy and outlook to accomplish it.

Third, keep building. Do not stop from building on the vision. It is an inspiration for all around you, and is your catalyst to work towards your goals diligently every morning, doing and achieving something new that benefits your people.

Q: You once said that no one remembers dreamers and they only remember people who turn their dreams into reality. Do you think you have turned your dreams into reality?

A: Some people daydream all day and when they go to sleep they continue to dream. This is just dreaming and they have no way to turn their dreams into reality. The way we turn our dreams into reality is: when other people talk about working, we actually work; when other people are making their plans, we carry out our plans; and when other people are having doubts, we move boldly ahead.

There is a saying in Europe, “Let the lion lead the sheep.” My thinking is: If I am a lion and I am leading, I should be leading lions. I encourage talented young people to love their work. They shouldn’t be punished for their mistakes. Making mistakes is the best way to learn to do something.

What do the young people of the UAE need most? Success! I feel proud of everyone who works together with me to achieve our goals.

Q: In your book My Vision you make a special point to discuss the different influences positive and negative energy have on people. If someone says, if you have an influential position, power and financial resources, it’s easy to have positive energy, how do you respond?

A: In fact no one can be totally happy. There are a lot of countries and people with ample financial resources, but that doesn’t mean they can maintain positive energy. On the contrary, many people stop progressing because they are already well off. A leader needs to have positive energy. With positive energy comes optimism, and with optimism, anything becomes possible. However, people who constantly face challenges can face them bravely and overcome them because they accumulate the ability to do so day by day. It is very important to maintain a cheerful disposition day after day, month after month, year after year. When people see someone succeed, they often say that person was lucky. In my mind, luck favours people who are prepared. If there is always a hesitant voice in your heart saying, “It’s not possible” then it is really impossible for you. But me, I always encourage people to try again, and maybe try to do it differently. Conquering “the impossible” means refusing to give up hope. You have to think, “Somewhere there is a way to find a solution. Let’s work together to find it.”

Q: Concerning your ideas on developing the country, what is the source of your thinking other than learning from your father?

A: I am the son of Arab tribesmen. The sons of Arab tribesmen get their knowledge, wisdom and vision mainly from family members and not from schools. Aside from my university education, most of what I learned from Shaikh Zayed, the late president of the UAE, and my late father Shaikh Rashid. I studied their administrative experience, and learned a great deal from them. Also, I learned a lot from occasional small mistakes.

Q: What kind of mistakes?

A: For example, several years ago we were planning to build a golf course on the coast, but we put it off in the face of objections. When we finally got around to building it, we had lost a lot of valuable time. That’s why we often say “the clock ticks life away”. We don’t have time to hesitate. That is the cause of giving up something in the middle.

Q: Your Highness, why do women play such an important role in UAE society?

A: I am very proud of the strong role that women play in our society. They have complete equality. Today, 70 per cent of all our university graduates are women. More than 65 per cent of all jobs in our government are held by women. Thirty per cent of them hold managerial positions. More than 80 per cent of staff in my own office are women. We do not just talk about the important role women should have in our society; we deliver.

In his article Wang Liwen states that if one is lucky he can meet Shaikh Mohammed on the street, and can say hello, shake his hand, and have a picture taken with him just like the people of Dubai can. The probability of this happening is much greater than winning the lottery because he enjoys mingling with the people. You could meet him at the mall, a popular restaurant or a concert hall. He enjoys shopping, dining and listening to music just like you and I do, and he never has a large entourage of people with him.

His personal assistant told me that he doesn’t need bodyguards because the people of Dubai are all willing to fill that role. Many ordinary citizens know all to well how difficult life was for their fathers’ and grandfathers’ generations when they lived in tents without running water or electricity, and they have witnessed the enormous miraculous changes their country has undergone. They say, “Forty years ago we were just a small country with scant resources and nothing but our dreams”. But now with all the changes that have taken place, they are willing to believe that they can achieve the dream of becoming a strong country in 10 years like their ruler says they will.

Another person I met, described the Shaikh thus: “He trusts his government employees, but he never relies solely on their written or oral reports. He walks very fast, and no one dares to lag behind.”

In order to improve the quality of service, he has a third party from the secretarial pool to carry out oversight work. Sometimes, you can see him with a stopwatch at the airport recording how long it takes for visitors to clear Customs and Immigration. He believes that raising work efficiency is always a good thing, and he wants visitors to feel they are getting fast and high-quality service when they enter the country. He says that if visitors expect it to take an hour to clear customs and immigration, we should get them through in 30 minutes. That’s good-quality service, but not best-quality service. If you don’t keep improving your service to your customers, for example by cutting the time down to 20 minutes, you aren’t providing best service. Sometimes he files complaints in the guise of an ordinary citizen just to see how fast and well they are dealt with.

Shaikh Mohammed graduated from Mons Officer Cadet School in England, and was appointed Defence Minister of the UAE in 1971, and he said he wanted to make sure that Dubai earns its title of the safest city in the world.

He worked with interior decorators on the decor for the great hall of the airport, and has had a hand in the design of many public spaces. He was a principle designer of the opulent Bab Al Shams Hotel. He says the pursuit of beauty is in the DNA of the Arab people.

He has travelled all over the world, and every time he sees something beautiful he hopes that one day Dubai can have one just like it. He was delighted to learn that when French officials come to Dubai, they always buy French perfume to take home because it’s cheaper there due to Dubai being a duty free port. He says Dubai has the capability of becoming a major market for merchandise it doesn’t manufacture itself.

He hopes that Dubai will be a world-class trade, tourism and service city in the 21^st century, and he is building the necessary infrastructure and creating an ideal environment to make that happen.

Shaikh Mohammed is a poet who has published several volumes of poetry, and also an accomplished horseman who has won the European Championship.

He says that writing poetry enables him to look at the things around him from a new perspective, and that the source of inspiration lies in beauty, accomplishments and dreams. He believes that his poetry draws him closer to other people.

During my interview, he told me he was preparing for an endurance horse race.

He has a powerful desire to make his country rich and strong, and he wrote the book My Vision: Challenges in the Race for Excellence, in which he summed up his vision about leadership and life in simple yet moving language. This book led a former teacher of his in England to write to him, “I’ve written 12 books, but none of them achieved the fame yours did.”

Shaikh Mohammed wrote back, “Your books are theoretical, mine is practical.”

How atomic Iran could trigger accidental Armageddon

One of the arguments often made in favour of bombing Iran to cripple its nuclear program is this: The mullahs in Tehran believe it is their consecrated duty to destroy Israel and so are building nuclear weapons to launch at Tel Aviv.

It’s beyond a doubt that the Iranian regime would like to bring about the destruction of Israel. However, the mullahs are also men determined, more than anything, to maintain their hold on absolute power.

Which is why it’s unlikely that they would immediately use their new weapons against Israel. An outright attack on Israel - a country possessing as many as 200 nuclear weapons - would lead to the obliteration of Tehran, the deaths of millions, and the destruction of Iran’s military and industrial capabilities.

The mullahs know this. But here’s the problem: It may not matter. The threat of a deliberate nuclear attack pales in comparison with the chance that a nuclear-armed Iran could accidentally trigger a cataclysmic exchange with Israel.

The experts who study this depressing issue seem to agree that a Middle East in which Iran has four or five nuclear weapons would be dangerously unstable and prone to warp-speed escalation.

Here’s one possible scenario for the not-so-distant future: Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy, launches a cross-border attack into Israel, or kills a sizable number of Israeli civilians with conventional rockets. Israel responds by invading southern Lebanon, and promises, as it has in the past, to destroy Hezbollah. Iran, coming to the defense of its proxy, warns Israel to cease hostilities, and leaves open the question of what it will do if Israel refuses to heed its demand.

Dennis Ross, who until recently served as President Barack Obama’s Iran point man on the National Security Council, notes Hezbollah’s political importance to Tehran.

“The only place to which the Iranian government successfully exported the revolution is to Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Ross told me. “If it looks as if the Israelis are going to destroy Hezbollah, you can see Iran threatening Israel, and they begin to change the readiness of their forces. This could set in motion a chain of events that would be like ‘Guns of August’ on steroids.”

Imagine that Israel detects a mobilization of Iran’s rocket force or the sudden movement of mobile missile launchers. Does Israel assume the Iranians are bluffing, or that they are not? And would Israel have time to figure this out?

Or imagine the opposite: Might Iran, which will have no second-strike capability for many years - that is, no reserve of nuclear weapons to respond with in an exchange - feel compelled to attack Israel first, knowing that it has no second chance?

Bruce Blair, the co-founder of the nuclear disarmament group Global Zero and an expert on nuclear strategy, told me that in a sudden crisis Iran and Israel might each abandon traditional peacetime safeguards, making an accidental exchange more likely.

“A confrontation that brings the two nuclear-armed states to a boiling point would likely lead them to raise the launch- readiness of their forces - mating warheads to delivery vehicles and preparing to fire on short notice,” he said. “Missiles put on hair-trigger alert also obviously increase the danger of their launch and release on false warning of attack -- false indications that the other side has initiated an attack.”

Then comes the problem of misinterpreted data, Blair said. “Intelligence failures in the midst of a nuclear crisis could readily lead to a false impression that the other side has decided to attack, and induce the other side to launch a preemptive strike.”

Blair notes that in a crisis it isn’t irrational to expect an attack, and this expectation makes it more likely that a leader will read the worst into incomplete intelligence.

“This predisposition is a cognitive bias that increases the danger that one side will jump the gun on the basis of incorrect information,” he said.

Ross told me that Iran’s relative proximity to Israel and the total absence of ties between the two countries make the situation even more hazardous.

“This is not the Cold War,” he said. “In this situation we don’t have any communications channels. Iran and Israel have zero communications. And even in the Cold War we nearly had a nuclear war. We were much closer than we realized.”

The answer to this predicament is to deny Iran nuclear weapons, but not through an attack on its nuclear facilities, at least not now. “The liabilities of preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program vastly outweigh the benefits,” Blair said. “But certainly Iran’s program must be stopped before it reaches fruition with a nuclear weapons delivery capability.”

Ross argues that the Obama administration’s approach -- the imposition of steadily more debilitating sanctions -- may yet work. There’s a chance, albeit slim, that he may be right: New sanctions are just beginning to bite and, combined with an intensified cyberwar and sabotage efforts, they might prove costly enough to deter Tehran.

But opponents of military action make a mistake in arguing that a nuclear Iran is a containable problem. It is not.

(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for the Atlantic. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Islamists poised to redefine society in the Arab world

• Image Credit: ©Gulf News

The success at the polls of Islamists (as political activists who draw on the Quran as inspiration for their social ideology have come, willy-nilly, to be known) tells us little about Islam and much about Arab society today.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, Islamists have flexed their muscles in countries as far apart as Morocco, Palestine and Yemen, and won handily at the polls in Egypt and Tunisia. Of the 22 legal political parties in Algeria, six are Islamist, and Islamists make up the most influential opposition force in Jordan. And in a remarkable display of prowess that would have seemed unthinkable a mere 12 months ago, the Muslim Brotherhood, in its guise as the Freedom and Justice Party, has secured in post-revolutionary Egypt the most seats in the country’s parliamentary elections. And last Monday, with the clear mandate they had gained at the polls, their parliament speaker, Mohammad Sa’ad Katatni, opened the inaugural session of the lower house of parliament.

Even in Syria, where the irrelevant phantasm of Baathism — an ageing concoction of pan-Arabist and Euro-nationalist ideology dreamed up by a Levantine secularist in 1940 — has retained its grip on government, the power of Islamists, albeit so far underground, is evident. There is not, in other words, a single country in the Arab world that does not have an Islamist vanguard.

These folks, as we speak, are preparing to play a dominant role in drafting new constitutions in their countries reflecting the new ideology of hope engendered by the Arab awakening, a movement that seeks to define a citizen’s right to live freely and independently not as a luxury but as a rigorous need. That indeed would be, well, yes, a revolutionary transformation for societies that, since independence well over six decades ago, have been broken in back and spirit, and whose people had for generations been socialised on an ethic of fear, defeat and despair. And it looks like the Islamists will be the agents of that transformation.
How do we explain this phenomenon, then, and what does it portend for the future?
To be sure, the Islamist revival in the Arab world may have begun, should we assume a point of departure for it, as far back as 1967, in the wake of the devastating military defeat of the June War, when Arabs collectively felt betrayed by the hodge-podge of secular ideologies they had put their trust in throughout the first three quarters of the 20th century, ideologies like Nasserism and Baathism, Communism and Greater Syria nationalism, socialism and pan-Arabism, that now were exposed as having been hollow and meaningless, essentially worthless imports from the West. As a massive silence descended upon Arabs at the time, which became a kind of rhetoric in its way, it seemed that there was no better ideology to turn to than the one that had grown out of the very bosom of their own culture — Islam.
Understandably, the activists who pioneered the Islamist movement, at the least in countries in the Levant and the Maghreb, were born again Islamists, originally secular ideologues who had turned to Islam after their secular ideologies began to appear impotent and irrelevant. These activists’ mass appeal became evident, even in traditionally secular societies such as Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Jordan, after they buttressed their vision with intimate responsiveness to peoples’ discontent with, disdain for and alienation from the ruling elite. And, above all, to peoples’ everyday, pedestrian needs.
When Uncle Ahmad, for example, the name we give the common impoverished Arab in these countries, needed a good school, a reliable clinic, a warm coat, adequate food and a summer camp for his kids, he did not turn to corrupt officials, who cared little about him in the first place, to address these needs. He turned instead to the mosque, seeking representatives of the Islamist group nearest him who he knew, from observing their modest life-style and moral rectitude, were above reproach. And a strong affinity inevitably developed between care-giver and the common man. The latter remembered all that when he went to cast his vote.

Truth be told, this state of affairs is characteristic of all deprived societies in which authority had callously turned its back on its people. In other words, when the state becomes corrupt and ineffectual, when it demonstrates its unwillingness to meet ordinary folks’ needs, civil society will in time establish an alternative order within the state, a shadow state, if you will.

All of which reminds us of the first scene in Godfather I.

Godfather I relevant to our theme here? Yes, very much so, I say. In that scene in Godfather I, an iconic film in American cinematic art, Amerigo Bonasera, a lowly mortician from New York’s Little Italy, fills the screen as he despairingly tells Don Corleone: “I believe in America, but ...” The Italian immigrant believed in America, but its justice system had failed him miserably. His daughter’s honour had been violated by two local boys who — after being apprehended and brought to court to stand trial — were acquitted on a technicality. To rub salt into his wounds, the boys even snickered at him as they walked out, free men. He wanted justice, and he wanted the Godfather to mete it out.
There is a zoom-out on the Don, played by the indomitable Marlon Brando, head of the Cosa Nostra Corleone family, who responds reproachfully in one of the most textually telling lines in the film: “Why didn’t you come to me first?”

Bonasera should have known better than to go to the authorities in the first place. Italian immigrants at the time, in the 1940s, were still anchored in their Sicilian culture and its norms: to settle a dispute or to right a wrong committed against you, you did not turn to the cops, who were corrupt and uncaring, but to that network of local Cosa Nostra chiefs who knew how to take care of their own. That is how it was in Italy in those days, and Italian immigrants brought that tradition with them to the New World. Cosa Nostra was born at the same time as the modern Italian state in the late 19th century, a weak state that could not, or would not, protect its citizens and guarantee them jobs and services, let alone social justice.
That’s also how it was, as well, before civil rights acts were legislated in the US, for African-Americans, who often turned to their church leaders because there was no one else to turn to for representation of their political and civil rights. And that’s how it was for Iranians, on the eve of the 1979 revolution, who had turned to their mosques to seek equity because the state had prevented them from, or punished them for, agitating for what was due to them.

Guess what? There are times when that shadow state, probably by fiat of the imagination inherent in history, comes to power. And when that shadow state itself becomes the state, you have to talk to it. No two ways about it. When you don’t, as the US did not in 2006 after Hamas became the ascendant authority, everybody ends up paying a heavy price in human suffering so that Washington will sustain a dysfunctional political system rejected by its people in fair, free and open elections.

Today Islamists are all over the place, all over the Arab world, poised to pre-empt and then define their societies’ tomorrow. And what the devil whimsical foreign policy will the US pursue then? Stay tuned.

Fawaz Turki is a journalist, lecturer and author based in Washington. He is the author of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile.

A watchman who started a free school from his savings

A mighty heart

By Megha Pai

Friday, January 27, 2012

Sharjah resident Abdul Mannan Jamaluddin wasn’t exactly rolling in money when he started a free school in his hometown in Bangladesh but, as he says, when your heart is set on doing good, help is never far away. Student strength today: 200 and counting… It is perhaps much  easier to be giving and charitable when you have a cool six figure in your bank balance and your next seven generations are taken care of (unless, of course, you are the progeny of Ebenezer Scrooge). But starting a free school in your hometown when you are a security guard living on a Dh1, 200 per month salary, is something to marvel about. So when we heard the story of Abdul Mannan Jamaluddin, we knew we had to meet him and hear his story. Al Qasba is a well-to-do locality in the plush Buhaira Corniche in Sharjah. Not well-versed with the area and relying mainly on a somewhat malfunctioning GPS (at one point it instructed us to go off the road and drive into the water!), we decided to seek the help of a shopkeeper for directions to Bulbul Apartments, where Abdul is a security guard. “Oh! You want to meet Abdul!” came the reply. Surprised as we hadn’t mentioned his name, we asked him how he guessed. “He is a bit of a local hero,” the shopkeeper smiled. “After all, how many watchmen do you know who start a free school from their savings?” Good point. Following the much more reliable directions of the kindly shopkeeper — no need to jump into the Corniche, we were assured — we reached our destination, passing through the graffiti-riddled by-lanes. Abdul was standing at the gate, dressed in casuals, as it was his day off. He invited us to his office, which also serves as his living room and bedroom and offered us tea. A Bangla channel ran on mute on the television. On a shelf above his bed was a small stack of books in Bengali. After some casual banter and lovely chitchat and tea, we came down to discussing Abdul’s extraordinary feat. He tells wknd. the story — from being a high school dropout to starting a free school in his native village, Belchura, in Bangladesh, where he has educated 200 children in the last six years. As a child, I used to dream of becoming a lawyer but I wasn’t able              to continue my studies after the tenth grade as my father couldn’t afford it. After my father passed away, the burden of my entire family fell upon my shoulders. I came to the UAE in 1989 at the age of 26. The only job that I could find was as a watchman. Due to my lack of education, I was not able to move up in life. That’s when I decided that I didn’t want the same fate for my next generation. But there was no school in my village and the new highway that was supposed to connect our village to other places, separated us from the only nearby school. Here, in the UAE, parents drop and pick up kids or there are bus services to take the kids to and fro. But it is not so in my village. The parents have no time to keep a tab on the children. The fathers go to work in the fields every morning and the mothers are busy with the housework. So the children go to the school of their own accord — if at all. Despite making several requests to the government, no provisions were made to provide learning opportunities to the village kids. Every time I saw the excellent lives of the children here in Sharjah, I couldn’t help but wish that the children in my hometown could also have such opportunities. Education is the first step to development. So when I visited home in 2001, I decided to start a free school and I had a few months to do it in before returning to Sharjah. Initially, my wife didn’t approve of my initiative. I had my own three children to take care of. But I didn’t let that fact deter me from starting the school. I thought to myself, if every person thought only about oneself, there would be no goodness left in the world. Besides, I have very little expenses in Sharjah and I own a small garment business back home that takes care of my family’s needs. So I decided to put in all my savings and most of my salary into the project. Now all I needed was land. When you have set your mind on doing good, help is never too far away. One day, I happened to mention my intention to one of the village elders. He very generously offered to donate a piece of land that belonged to his family. Amazed at how easily the situation was resolved, I got cracking on building the school. With the help of the local labourers, I managed to put up a basic building in four months and with the aid of a teacher from the local mosque, I had the school up and running. Slowly but surely, children started coming in too. Soon there were several students in the first grade. I appointed a few more teachers and everything seemed great for a month. That’s when catastrophe hit. The elder who had donated the land hadn’t asked all the family members before making the decision. Out of spite, the family members demolished the school building and there was nothing that I could do.  I was back to square one. It was time for me to return to the UAE. But I hadn’t given up. I took it as God’s way of testing my determination. For the next four years, I continued to save. It was not a matter of salvaging my image. My cause was bigger than that. I couldn’t fail as the future of the children was at stake. After four years of saving and planning, when I went home in 2005, I wanted to include the entire village in the work as I knew I couldn’t do it without their help. But the moment I mentioned anything about the school, the people weren’t interested. So I had to come up with something more novel. I invited the entire village for a feast to announce a wedding. I knew they wouldn’t say no to free food. And they would be curious to know who is getting married as there isn’t anyone of marriageable age in my family. After the villagers had had tea and snacks, I told them that I had bought land where I intended to build the school and also told them that I didn’t expect them to contribute monetarily. However, I was surprised when a few of them offered whatever they could. Some gave money, while others gave sacks of cement, and some others simply put in hours of labour for the construction. Before it was time for me to return to the Gulf, the ground floor of the building was ready, and the first batch of 70 students attended class at the school, called Hazrat Abu Bakar Siddique ® Sunni Madrasa. The taste of sweet success at last was like nothing else. Those who had been sceptical and discouraging, including my wife, were now beginning to realise how good this was for the community. Since we started in 2005, we have been adding one grade to the school every year. The number of students has grown from 70 to 200. This year we begin Grade 7. My aim is to see that the school expands all the way to Grade 12. Also, I intend to buy a bus for the school so the children from the village and the surrounding villages can be fetched easily. The day we have 100 per cent literacy in my village, I will have achieved my purpose. For now, the fact that my kids and the rest of the children in the village will never have to live the kind of life that I had to live is reward enough for me. I intend to start a trust so that the progress is maintained even after I am gone.

Why 'waste' money in space?

The launch of a new space mission, and even more so the failure of a spacecraft (as we witnessed recently), invariably leads me to face the following question from students and acquaintances: why do we waste that kind of money in space pursuits when we have so much poverty and suffering that we should be trying to alleviate here on earth?

That's a good, well-meaning question, and it deserves a good answer. There are several arguments that one can bring up in addressing this concern.

First, one must examine more closely just how much money is being "wasted" in space projects and compare that with other human expenditures.

The total space budget of all nations on Earth is less than $40 billion (Dh147 billion). Nasa's budget for 2012 is $19.5 billion (that is 0.5 per cent of the entire US budget); ESA's (the European Space Agency's) budget was $5.65 billion in 2011; the Russian space budget amounted to about $2.5 billion; China's is $2 billion; India's is $1.6 billion; plus small amounts for smaller countries.

The whole human expenditure on space projects, including all satellites, rockets, spacecrafts and the hundreds of thousands of people who work on that, increases by less than 1 per cent each year!
Contrast this with the world's spending in the military sector (armament and personnel): a whopping $1.6 trillion in 2010, the US part representing 42 per cent of that! That's 40 times more than the worldwide space budget, and that amount increases by about 5 per cent each year.

Destructive expenditure
 
Now, lest anyone think that they are not responsible for any of this (neither the space money ‘waste' nor the scary military budget), I would like to mention a few other kinds of expenses, these being more at the personal level. Each year in Europe (for which we have statistics), people spend about $50 billion a year on cigarettes; Europeans, who constitute only 10 per cent of humans, spend $150 billion a year on alcoholic drinks, $24 billion on pet food, $200 billion on cosmetics, and $1.4 trillion on entertainment and media (music, cinema, TV shows, electronics, newspapers and magazines)!

At this point of the discussion, my interlocutors usually respond with: yes, we humans are clearly wasting large sums of money on destructive items (weapons, cigarettes, alcohol), but does that mean that we should throw away more money in space? There are two ways to counter this argument. One line is to list the numerous and diverse spin-offs that have resulted from space research. Indeed, because space places different sets of constraints on any project, be it a new satellite or a trip to Mars, new tools often need to be developed, and these almost always find applications in our lives here on Earth.
There are, without exaggeration, hundreds of spin-offs, ranging from bio-medical techniques to digital systems, from imaging technology to robotics, where important uses have been found in medicine, meteorology, environmental monitoring (of potential or unfolding disasters), information and communication technology, remote sensing, surveillance, and many other fields.
What must be stressed is that such applications do indeed lead to helping address and alleviate the poverty and human suffering, which the sceptics of space projects insist that we focus on.

Another line of argumentation against the idea that "space projects are a luxurious waste and should at most be left to very rich countries" is more cultural and educational. Indeed, the pursuit of such ‘lofty' projects strongly reflects the intellectual attitude of a given nation: the more we look upward the more future-minded and less materialistic we prove to be. And the more governments push their people to seek discoveries of all kinds (space-bound or earth-focused), the more people will tend to pursue scientific and cultural careers and lift the whole society up in various ways. In many parts of the world, including in this region, students are fleeing the scientific disciplines, seeing them as difficult and not financially rewarding — compared to administrative and business careers. We must do everything to encourage our children and students to invest themselves in those fields, for they are not only fascinating but extremely important. Let us not forget the strategic importance of space, where powers engage in espionage and ‘monitoring'.

Encouragement for students to take on this field and its applications must come in the form of strategic projects, where governments and companies invest for the future. Salaries and rewards must be substantial. But most importantly, society in general, and the vital education and media sectors in particular, must project a bright image of those fields and of the people who pursue them.
It is a shame that hardly anyone can name an Arab or Muslim astronaut (yes, a few have gone up to space), but many can name entire sports teams or movie casts. We need to change this, for our future and our children's.