The United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched the Al Amal satellite on the morning of July 20 aboard a Japanese rocket from the Tanegashima Launch Centre in Japan. The satellite is on a mission to orbit the planet Mars which, if all goes well, will reach in February 2021. Al Amal was designed and built by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai in collaboration with American institutions. It is being controlled by a mission centre in Dubai with collaborators in other parts of the world.
The ambitious project was announced around six years ago. It was indicative of the vision of UAE leaders who wish to foster a culture of learning, including in science and technology, as part of the rapid transformation of their society. This process of swift change is moving ahead well and some of the country’s youth are taking to paths very different from the desert tribal mores of their fathers. In this perspective the Emirati people are taking justifiable pride in launching the first Arab satellite to undertake an interplanetary journey.
The Al Amal project is truly remarkable if it is considered in the background of the fact that the country came into being only on December 2, 1971 when six Trucial States along the Arab side of the Gulf formed a federation; Ras Al Khaimah, the seventh state, joined a few months later. They had formally been British protectorates till a day earlier. The leading emirate was and continues to be Abu Dhabi which has vast oil resources and the second in position was and still is Dubai with limited oil but a flourishing port. In the past a great deal of informal trade in contraband goods took place to India, Pakistan and Iran from Dubai. That contributed to its primary acquisition of capital.
The Abu Dhabi ruler Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan became the President while the Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed was appointed the Vice President. Between them and despite their innate rivalry they guided the UAE wisely to consolidate the federation. Sheikh Zayed used the vast oil revenues well to take the desert Arab society into the modern era without destabilising it. This, despite the enormous influx of foreigners who built the country’s infrastructure and ran its services.
I am tempted to relate a personal experience which illustrates the great transformation which has taken place in the UAE. I served in the Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi as a young diplomat from 1979 for three years. A few months after I reached the city an Indian Member of Parliament came on a visit and I was asked to accompany him to a couple of meetings with local dignitaries. When these meetings were over, he asked me to show him some historical buildings or sites. We were driving along the sea front and passing two eight-storey high octagonal shaped contemporary buildings which were constructed in 1972.
Pointing to these buildings I said that these were historical in Abu Dhabi. Surprised, he asked “When were these built”? I told him “1972”. He got angry and thought that I was pulling his leg. At this stage I told him that a mud ‘fort’ which was a structure going back a hundred and fifty-years was the oldest building in the city and these two were the second oldest structures and therefore could be considered historical. He was not convinced and remained angry. It was only because my superiors, at the embassy, confirmed as true what I had told him that I avoided a complaint for being rude and misleading an honourable MP!
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the current ruler of Dubai who is Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE said in relation to Al Amal, “Arab civilization played a great role in contributing to human knowledge, and will play that role again”. The Dubai based ‘Khaleej Times’ noted that the Arabs had been responsible for “perfecting everything from algebra to astronomy, calculus to chemistry, and philosophy to medicine while making the world richer with their culture and literature”. There is no doubt that there was a period of great efflorescence in knowledge encouraged by among others Caliph Harun-ul-Rashid who established the ‘House of Learning’. Under him ancient works of learning of other civilizations in different intellectual disciplines were translated and intellectualism flourished. Baghdad had its ups and downs over the next few centuries but it was a centre for the evolution of ideas.
Why did all this collapse? The Mongol invasions of the 13th century which included the sacking of Baghdad in 1258 had much to do with it. The Mongols also destroyed other areas of the Muslim world including what is modern day Afghanistan. But the Islamic world recovered and by the 16th century the three great empires were the Ottoman, the Safavids and the Mughals.
The people who became moribund were the Arabs and large swaths of their territories came under Ottoman rule. The energy they had demonstrated in the early centuries of Islam had dissipated. In the past hundred years though the Arab world has shown movement and has produced some widely acknowledged progressive political leaders as well as intellectuals across different disciplines. The oil wealth of some Arab states has given them influence. But ultimately the true wealth of a people lies in the possession of scientific and technological knowledge. Clearly, the UAE leadership, understanding this, is investing in these areas. This is a good augury for the future of the Arab world.