Seattle Is More Islamic than Dubai

This weekend, I had a brief but interesting talk with a Lyft driver who, though originally from Baltistan (a place I had never heard of until I was in his car), lived for many years in Dubai. One of his daughters was born there, and the other here in Seattle, the city his family moved to two years ago. Why Seattle and not some other city, I asked? He explained that he and his wife did some research and came to the conclusion that Seattle was the best place in the US to practice their faith in peace. (There are an estimated 30,000 Muslims in the greater Seattle area.)

“This city is even more Islamic than Dubai,” he said, moments before reaching my destination. “In Dubai, if you are poor and a Muslim, they treat you like dirt. Rich people can kill you and the police do nothing… You have no rights there. That is not Islam.”

Though the taxi driver’s view of his religion is consistent with the message (“peaceful co-existence”) promoted by the American organization Why Islam?, which currently has a billboard on Martin Luther King Jr Way, I also feel it was shaped by experiences in Islamic countries. Certainly, a good number of the mechanisms that shaped those experiences were less religious and more economic. As Daniel Brook explains in his excellent book A History of Future Cities, Dubai is a city that offers no opportunities for citizenship and very weak rights to its migrant workers. The reason for this is simple and universal: the less power labor has, the cheaper it is.

Islam can offer its adherents a solution to the meaning of life, but, like Christianity, no conclusion to class struggle. Protests are very rare in the Islamic city of Dubai.