Everyone is impressed with the achivements of Dubai and its rapid development that is unmatchable in any other city around the world. Dubai has turned from a small normal Arabian city into a modern advanced city that rivals the biggest cities around the world. At the same time, Dubai is turning into a global hub for trade and tourism that adds to its expansion and development.

While an excellent leadership is a necessity for making such success, no one denies the effect of the oil revenue in helping the development process. If there is moeny, then anything is possible. The oil prices is breaking records everyday, and with each broken records, more and more money are recieved by the already rich Arabian gulf countries. The success of Dubai is triggering a sense of competition in the region, and other cities are following its lead.

As an Arabian man, I do admire the model of success in Dubai and is proud to see it leading the awakening of Arabia, the advancements in every possible field do give back some hope to our national dream of getting back the leadership of the world.

At the same time, there is part of me that is really worried of that possibility and its impact on the worlds culture and the level of human rights achievements.

We all know that technology and science is easily imported, and with the amount of money we have, it can be even an easier process, just look at Dubai as a living model. But then, we all know as well that social development is not that easy, and well earned human interaction concepts and legalization that western societies have worked hard to achieve and lead with are much harder to import.

Would our gaining the lead of the world in terms of technology, money and power be accompanied with catching up the universal human rights concepts and building on it? or it would be only a materialistic lead where those concepts are stepped over and re-shaped to match with our heritage of Arabic culture and thus causing a step back to the worlds achievments of human development?

Let’s face it, and taking the same Dubai as a model of measurment, how much it is still behind in terms of democracy, equality of its citizens, freedom of speech, and human rights legalizations?

Can we really make the leap while maintaining the most important factor in every civilization – which is its people?

Or this is all just a pre-mature talk for we need ages to make such leap?