I followed in horror last week as the international media continuously featured Dubai in their headlines on television and online. It was not good news. Markets from Mexico, Brazil, Germany and the UK as well as Australia have all been affected by the announcement that Nakheel, the property arm of...

To his supporters he is a voice of reform in a stagnant country. To his detractors he represents the ruling elite responsible for the stagnation of the Arab world's most populous nation. However one looks at it, there is no denying that Gamal Mubarak is a powerful force in the...

I had the honour this year of introducing and interviewing Dr Abdul Khaleq Abdullah on stage to a packed auditorium of around 1,350 UAE nationals. The occasion was a UAE National Identity summit held in the Higher Colleges of Technology, Sharjah Women's College campus. Emirati students were there from across...

When I was a student in Paris in the mid 1990s and people asked where I was from, I would reply that I was from Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah or any other emirate that the person asking me would recognize. It was never an issue, because I felt secure that...

Over the past few weeks two unfounded rumors about the United Arab Emirates have snowballed on the pages of some newspapers in the Arab world and have even been picked up by newswires. Some media organizations seem so inclined to print negative news about this country that once they have...

It's an impossible variable to quantify, but it could be argued that Canada's most important export to the Middle East is hope. It manifests itself in the substantial number of Canadians of Arab heritage who have chosen to return to the region their families left for work or a better...

Dr Elias Zerhouni's story was not so different from many Arab youths, growing up as he did in 1960s Algeria at a time in which his country was struggling for independence from French colonialists. In 1975, at the age of 24, he made his way to the United States where...

The evil bombings continue and so do the kidnappings and terror but Iraq is slowly coming out of the woods. It has already shown that it is able to produce more than the one-man shows that we have in many Arab countries today.

Iraqi's current leaders differ from their...

Should the Gulf countries maintain contacts with Israel if this would make life easier for Palestinians? Could having such ties propel the Middle East peace process forward?

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr, prime minister and foreign minister of Qatar, spoke on al-Jazeera recently about last winter's Israeli war on...

There are 22 countries in the Arab world and not a single one is a true constitutional democracy. Almost every leader in the region seems to find a good reason to amend their national constitutions as and when they see fit: apparently there is always a "special case".

In Syria,...

Every once in a while, somewhere in the world, we come across a case that proves either overtly or implicitly that men can get away with things that women can't.

When I was a student in France in the 1990s, I recall reading often about President Francois Mitterrand's mistress, Anne...

Members of the six UAE ruling families (who number in the thousands, many of them youngsters), members of the Federal National Council, Government ministers, ambassadors and envoys, advisers to the rulers and tribal sheikhs and their families are all entitled to a red travel booklet that carries the country's national...

Since the 1979 revolution Iran has tried its best to maintain a sense of normality. But it is a classic example of a country that has not come to terms with itself, and that poses a challenge for the Gulf countries in trying to decipher how to deal with its...

Last year after writing We have our own heroes, we don't need other people's in The National I received an e-mail from a director in the Watani programme that began: "Dear Dr Sultan". I must admit that I thought it was a nice compliment, but the thought stopped there...

I was amongst the fortunate people who attended the UAE's debut at the 53rd edition of the Venice Biennial, without a doubt a very prestigious event and a milestone for a country that has come so far not only in terms of economy, business and trade, but now in terms...

Around the Arab world, it is just known as the Obama speech. You don't need to mention in which venue or country it took place. People just know. Arabs and Muslims who have generally been ruled by autocrats have heard the US president Barack Obama speak directly to them twice...

Depending on what time of day it is and in which direction you are traveling, a journey from Dubai to its sister Emirate, Sharjah, can take anywhere between 20 minutes and two hours. Sharjah, whose name means "easterly" or "shiny" and has a population of 800,000, is sometimes unfairly referred...

Baghdad, Monday, February 29, 2010, almost ten months in the future, and Israel has attacked Iran's nuclear facilities. What might the consequences be...

The shutting down by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard of all maritime traffic crossing the Straits of Hormuz, through which 17 million barrels of oil or nearly 25...

In its spring 2008 issue, Foreign Policy, a US-based political magazine, published a list of the world's 100 top public intellectuals in alphabetical order. The magazine then asked its readers to vote for those they deemed most deserving of the highest honors -- 500,000 public votes later, an interesting fact...

The accusations of corruption within the ruling Egyptian National Democratic Party (NDP) manifested themselves in two very different ways last summer. In July 2008 an Egyptian court stunned the Arab world when it acquitted NDP member Mamdouh Ismail, the owner of the 35-year-old ferry boat, Salam Boccacio 98, that sank...