Article

Comment

Freedom of Belief

Islam

Middle East

7 March 2024

7 min read

Beyond the glitz: the Gulf States and belief

Religious tolerance amid the skyscrapers.

Andrew Thompson

Andrew Thompson MBE is an Anglican priest who served in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

A large, modern cubiod building with a series of thin external pillars is seen from low down against a sunny blue sky

St Francis Church, Dubai.

Abrahamic Family House.

The Arabian Gulf conjures up images of sandy deserts, oil and gas and robed Arab sheikhs. Western (orientalist) academic imagination portrays the tribal culture of the Arab as rooted in a timeless Islamic world, one which suggests an atavistic conservatism which imposes severe restrictions on women and people of other faiths.

The reality, however, in a country like the United Arab Emirates is utterly different. This is a country which has more women in the government cabinet than any other country in the world. Emirati women hold more PhDs than their male compatriots. The UAE government has a Minister for Artificial Intelligence, a Minister for Coexistence and Tolerance, and (my favourite) a Minister for the Future. They examine the emergence and use of new technologies which would enhance human existence. A good example is Masdar city, a whole residential area which is built from the ground up to run on sustainable and renewable energy. The paradox of using oil and gas revenues to invest in future forms of renewable energy is one of many. This is a Gulf country which has wholeheartedly embraced living for the future; yet at the same time, they have held onto the ancient Islamic faith as a vehicle which carries their values in the here and now.

A visitor to Dubai can only marvel at the speed at which the city has morphed from a sleepy backwater just one generation ago, to being one of the world’s leading cities and tourist destinations. In the last 12 months, 17 million tourists visited Dubai alone.

Even more impressive is the Gulf’s use of ‘soft’ power in which they use the wealth of the oil industry in projecting Arab influence in spheres ranging from space exploration and sport. We have witnessed Gulf states hosting world cups, mixed martial arts tournaments, and Formula One through to the performing arts including opera, musicals (Hamilton is currently playing there) and K Pop.

In the current crisis between Hamas and the Israeli government we have seen Qatar come to prominence as peace negotiators and the lobbyists of countries locked into the Abrahamic Accord - a groundbreaking peace deal between Israel and Gulf States ending decades long diplomatic détente. That Saudi Arabia are offering to join the Abrahamic Accord if Israel commits to the two-state solution signals a shift in Middle Eastern politics which is unprecedented in the region’s history.

Amid these developments is the presence of a large, international and flourishing church community. There has been little written about the religious space in the Arabian Gulf; much of the attention has been focused on the oil industry and the resulting politics. Yet, there are many Christian communities in the region. The Christian church in the Gulf has recently been visited by Pope Francis. The papal visits are the first ever in the region. The first one in 2019 witnessed a staggering 180,000 worshippers attending a mass in a football stadium provided by the president of the UAE. This was followed by a trip to Iraq and then to Bahrain.

The discourse regarding tolerance has become a feature of soft diplomacy across the Arabian Gulf, with numerous interfaith initiatives receiving government backing. The UAE is leading the way with the construction of the first purpose built Gurudwara, a Hindu Temple and a much-celebrated Abrahamic Family House; a single campus which hosts a mosque, church and a synagogue (also the first to be built in the region).

At a time when Islamophobia and Antisemitism are escalating, Muslims in the West are feeling the need to retreat from the public space to feel safe. Ancient hostile narratives are being resurrected to paint the Islamic community as an alien enemy whose values are antithetical to Western ones. This was seen most recently during the World Football tournament in Qatar where the Western media relentlessly pushed stories which distorted and misled their audience on Arab culture and context. For example, the figures of high death rates reported by the media, of Nepali workers building football stadiums neglected to mention that these statistics included the deaths of all expatriates of all nationalities resident in the country, and that most of the deaths reported were due to natural causes (heart attack and cancer), road traffic accidents and so on. Another story implied that there was no alcohol permitted in the country and everyone had to go ‘dry’. This was patently false as fans who visited the country can attest to. Alcohol was available and accessible to those who wanted it. These negative reports reinforced existing prejudices against the Muslim Arabs. I would like to counteract some of this hostility based on my experience of living in the Arabian Gulf over several years as an Anglican priest.

A fourth century letter from a bishop who was dealing with the issue of whether Christian pearl divers should work on a Sunday.

Christianity in the Arabian Gulf predates Islam. Churches and monasteries functioned on the trading routes from Baghdad, travelling along the South-eastern coastline all the way through to Oman. Many of the prominent tribes in northern and eastern Arabia were Christians.

These ancient Christian communities had a seminary, several bishoprics and prominent theologians who produced commentaries and liturgies still in use today. They were involved in several trades, including the pearling industry. A fourth century letter from a bishop who was dealing with the issue of whether Christian pearl divers should work on a Sunday; left it to the individual conscience of the pearl diving community.

It was trade, not persecution, which was the main factor leading to the decline of the church by the ninth century. By then Islam had coexisted with the Christians peacefully for at least 200 years. The archaeological sites of churches in the Gulf today show no sign of violence and destruction, rather, their building materials were used to build nearby homes long after the monks had left.

It is sobering to discover that some of the worst religious encounters in terms of violence and intolerance in the region, came not from the Islamic communities but rather the militant western Christian powers who were expanding their empires to the East. First came the Portuguese who were vicious in the use of the mutilation of noses and ears as a tool to subjugate Arab tribes. This was followed by the British and the assertive use of gun boat diplomacy. To this day the residents of Ras Al Khaimah in the northern emirates recount their town being shelled by the British Royal Navy in the late 1800s.

The pages of the Gospel often come to life to me when I visit a Muslim home and I recognize similar patterns of culture.

Given this negative history, it is astonishing that the culture of tolerance prevailed towards non-Muslims in the coastal cities of Arabia. Today in the UAE, over forty centres of Christian worship offer a spiritual home to close to nine per cent of the population. Though not quite to the same extent, other Gulf countries have similar provisions of hospitality for the Christian community. Saudi Arabia, long regarded as the most intolerant of the Arab states, is including church buildings in their ambitious project The Line.

The gift that the Arabian Gulf offers is a model in which diverse neighbours can learn to encounter each other in a space in which is neutral and rewarding. My own faith as a Christian has been deeply enhanced by learning about and experiencing Islamic spirituality and hospitality. It astonishes me how few take up that opportunity, despite being many years in the region.

The Arabian Islamic culture echoes and at times has preserved the culture that would have been familiar to Jesus Christ. The pages of the Gospel often come to life to me when I visit a Muslim home and I recognize similar patterns of culture, I am reminded that Jesus was a child of the Middle East.

One project the church in the UAE initiated was to make local employment laws available to workers in their native languages.

Western media often highlights negative stories from the Arabian Gulf regions. Human rights issues and migrant labour abuse are some of the common issues. Without diminishing the real suffering of victims in these stories, the reality is that these are global issues.

The UK witnessed multiple deaths of the Chinese cockle pickers in Blackpool; in addition, migrants in the UK can recite a long list of unjust hostile actions taken against them by the British Home Office.

The Gulf has modified their laws to criminalise abuse of labourers and domestic workers, although critics point out that the laws are not consistently enforced. One project the church in the UAE initiated was to make local employment laws available to workers in their native languages, both in writing and on an audio device.

This then is the alternative narrative. The Arabian Gulf, at its best, can model interfaith and intercultural encounters in a way which promotes a safe and cohesive society. Islam, at its best, can provide a counterpoint in the religious landscape in which non-Muslims can worship without fear.

An antidote to the ‘Arab-bashing’ which seems to prevail in the West is to move away from promoting hostile narratives and instead, in the words of Paul in the New Testament, to seek that which is true, honourable, pure, lovely and excellent.

Article

Comment

Justice

Leading

Politics

7 July 2025

5 min read

The consequences of truth-telling are so severe our leaders can’t admit their mistakes

When accountability means annihilation, denial is the only way to survive

Leah Brown

Leah is a campaigner for restorative practices and founder of The WayFinders Group.

Baroness Casey.

BBC.

Why do our leaders struggle so profoundly with admitting error?

Media and inquiries regularly report on such failures in the NHS, the Home Office, the Department of Work and Pensions, HMRC, the Metropolitan Police, the Ministry of Defence, and so many more public institutions. Often accompanied by harrowing personal stories of the harm done.

In a recent white paper (From harm to healing: rebuilding trust in Britain’s publicly funded institutions), I defined “harm” as a holistic concept occurring where physical injury or mental distress is committed and sustained and explained that harm is generally something that is caused, possibly resulting in injury or loss of life.

When we look at harm from an institutional perspective, structural power dynamics inevitably oppress certain groups, limit individual freedoms, and negatively affect the safety and security of individuals. But when we look at it through the lens of the individuals who run those institutions, we see people who often believe that they are acting in good faith, believe that their decisions won’t have a significant impact, who don’t have time to think about the decisions they are making, or worse still, prefer to protect what is in their best interest.

Even well-intentioned leaders can become complicit in cycles of harm - not just through malice, but through their lack of self-awareness and unwillingness to put themselves in the shoes of the person on the receiving end of their decisions.

Martin Luther King Jr supposedly said, “the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” In contemporary politics, leaders are neither selected nor (largely) do they remain, because of their humility. Humility is synonymous with weakness and showing weakness must be avoided at all cost. Responsibility is perceived as something that lies outside of us, rather than something we can take ownership of from within.

So, why do leaders struggle so profoundly with admitting error?

The issue is cultural and three-fold.

First, we don’t quantify or systematically address human error, allowing small mistakes to escalate.

We then enable those responsible to evade accountability through institutional protection and legal barriers.

Finally, we actively discourage truth-telling by punishing whistle-blowers rather than rewarding transparency. Taken together, these create the very conditions that transform errors into institutional harm.

Nowhere is this plainer than in Baroness Casey’s recent report on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse that caused the Government to announce a grooming gangs inquiry. In this case, the initial harm was compounded by denial and obfuscation, resulting not just in an institutional failure to protect children, but system-wide failures that have enabled the so-called “bad actors” to remain in situ.

Recently, this trend was bucked at Countess of Chester Hospital where the police arrested three hospital managers involved in the Lucy Letby investigation. Previously, senior leadership had been protected, thus allowing them to evade accountability. Humble leadership would look like acting when concerns are raised before they become scandals. However, in this case, leadership did act; they chose to bury the truth rather than believe the whistle-blowers.

Until we separate admission of error from institutional destruction, we will continue to incentivise the very cover-ups that erode public trust.

The answer to our conundrum is obvious. In Britain, accountability is conflated with annihilation. Clinging onto power is the only option because admitting error has become synonymous with career suicide, legal liability, and is tantamount to being hanged in the gallows of social media. We have managed to create systems of governing where the consequences of truth-telling are so severe that denial is the only survival mechanism left. We have successfully weaponised accountability rather than understanding it as the foundation of trust.

If Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council had admitted even half of the failures Alexis Jay OBE identified in her 2013 report and that Baroness Casey identifies in her 2025 audit, leaders would face not only compensation claims but media storms, regulatory sanctions, and individual prosecutions. It’s so unthinkable to put someone through that that we shrink back with empathy as to why someone might not speak up. But this is not justice. Justice is what the families of Hillsborough have been seeking in the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill: legal duties of candour, criminal offences for those who deliberately mislead investigations or cover-up service failures, legal representation, and appropriate disclosure of documentation.

Regardless of your political persuasion, it has to be right that when police misconduct occurs, officers should fear not only disciplinary action and criminal charges. When politicians admit mistakes, they should face calls for their resignation. Public vilification is par for the course. Being ejected from office is the bare minimum required to take accountability for their actions.

The white paper shows that the cover-up always causes more damage than the original error. Institutional denial - whether relating to the Post Office sub-postmasters, the infected blood scandal victims, grooming gang victims, Grenfell Towers victims, Windrush claimants, or Hillsborough families - compounds the original harm exponentially.

In a society beset with blame, shame, and by fame, it is extraordinary that this struggle to admit error is so pervasive. Survivors can and will forgive human fallibility. What they will not forgive is the arrogance of institutions that refuse to acknowledge when they have caused harm.

The white paper refers to a four-fold restorative framework that starts with acknowledgment, not punishment. The courage to say “we were wrong” is merely the first step. Next is apology and accountability followed by amends. It recognises that healing - not just legal resolution - must be at the heart of justice, treating both those harmed and those who caused it as whole human beings deserving of dignity.

Until we separate admission of error from institutional destruction, we will continue to incentivise the very cover-ups that erode public trust. I was recently struck by Baroness Onora O’Neill who insisted that we must demand trustworthiness in our leaders. We cannot have trustworthiness without truth-telling, and we cannot have that without valuing the act of repairing harm over reputation management. True authority comes from service, through vulnerability rather than invulnerability; strength comes through the acknowledgement of weakness not the projection of power.

We must recognise that those entrusted with power have a moral obligation to those they serve. That obligation transcends institutional self-interest. Thus, we must stop asking why leaders struggle to admit error and instead ask why we have made truth-telling so dangerous that lies seem safer.