@Fufumuji
Also all these people going on about women being treated as second class citizens.. in my experience in the gulf it normally applies to locals
Oh well, as long as you can be a rich white woman in Dubai, I guess that makes Dubai a fabulous place.
Yes, but you also need to be a rich white woman who doesn’t get in trouble with the law — which is Sharia-based and very different to the UK. Be sure you understand the law, especially decency laws and bankruptcy laws before you move to the UAE.
And don’t get raped and report it or you risk being prosecuted for extramarital sex, don’t get in a traffic accident where the other car belongs to an Emirati, in fact don’t get into any form of altercation with an Emirati, not even to one jumping a queue, don’t report a burglary if you’re not married to your partner. Don't assume things are the same in Dubai and Sharjah. Don’t have domestic help who gets in trouble with the law because, incredibly, you are legally responsible for her actions under the exploitative khafala system.
Don’t forget you are not living in a democracy, but a tribal dictatorship with a veneer of westernness because it needs foreign workers and tourists — it needs not to look like Saudi Arabia. You are living in one of the most surveyed countries in the world. The Emirati authorities are increasingly locking up their own citizens without fair trial, and confiscating their passports and harassing their families for the crime of criticising the regime. The press is heavily self-censoring, and any coverage of the royals is press releases and puff pieces.
Remember the media focus in the UK on the imprisonment and forced-abduction from the Indian Ocean of Princess Latifa, daughter of the UAE PM and ruler of Dubai in 2018, especially when the BBC screened a documentary? Not a mention in the UAE press. And, though not white, Latina is extremely rich and from the most privileged and powerful family in the country. Her sister Shamsa was also abducted back to Dubai years before after she escaped from family property in Newmarket.
See also Princess Haya, the Jordanian second official wife of Sheikh Mohammed, the same PM, who was divorced by him under Sharia law without her knowledge in 2019, escaped to London with her children and started court proceedings against his attempts to have the children returned to Dubai, and a forced marriage protection order for their young daughter (who was 12), while he claimed legal immunity to High Court judgements and am embargo on publication of court proceedings. The High Court Family Division found in March 2020 found that he had orchestrated the abduction of his other two daughters, as well as a campaign of intimidation and harassment against his ex-wife before and after she left Dubai. Again, this woman is a Jordanian royal and a multimillionaire.
Have a read up also on Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan from the Abu Dhabi royal family, who was videoed raping and torturing, with several uniformed members of the Abu Dhabi police, a man he felt had overcharged him on a business deal. He apparently liked to have such things recorded so he could watch them later. When the tape was released in the USA, and caused an outcry, the Abu Dhabi authorities reluctantly had a formal trial, and found Issa not guilty (no reason given) and the victim of a conspiracy. The Palestinian former advisers who released the tape were both tried in absentia and sentenced to five years for allegedly drugging Issa and recording the ape to blackmail him.