Working for God (and Country): Religious Education and Economic Diversification in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

While the role of state formation, British withdrawal, and the discovery of oil in transforming social life in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has received considerable attention, scholars have focused less on the role the state has played in leading particular forms of social change. In this chapter, we explore how the Emirati state has attempted to cultivate certain values among its citizens to support its goal of economic diversification. We find that the state has reformed its national education curriculum in an effort to equip Emirati youth with both the requisite skillset for transitioning to a knowledge economy and the mindset necessary to accommodate such a transition. Analyzing 24 Islamic education textbooks, totaling nearly 5,400 pages, we find that the revised curriculum reflects a concerted effort on the part of the Emirati state to develop a Muslim work ethic by framing capitalist values such as productivity and hard work as divinely ordained.

1 Introduction

The United Arab Emirates has experienced significant economic growth since the union was formed in 1971, resulting in massive social change in a span of a few generations. In tandem with this transformation, the UAE has also worked to diversify its economy, shifting from an emphasis on hydrocarbons¹ and preparing itself and its people for the coming post-oil future (Ewers, 2016). In 2010, the UAE identified the lynchpin of its diversification plan as transitioning to a “competitive knowledge economy” (United Arab Emirates Government, 2018a), a system that depends less on natural resources and more on human capital, thus requiring an “educated and skilled population” (World Bank, 2013). Such a transition has been challenging for the UAE, because, lacking a sufficiently skilled citizenry of its own, it has relied heavily on foreign labor since the country was formed.

The influx of foreign labor into the UAE following the first oil boom established a unique demographic landscape in which expatriates, who have consistently outnumbered nationals, comprise nearly 90% of the country’s population (Malit & Al Youha, 2013; World Population Review, 2021). In addition to being imbalanced, the UAE’s labor market is  also profoundly segregated, with foreign workers competing for jobs in the private sector while citizens are largely employed in the high-paying, public-sector positions reserved for them (Herb, 2019). Such a starkly divided labor market is the norm in the Gulf, where rulers, as part of a “distributional bargain,” have long cultivated loyalty to the state by providing citizens with well-compensated government jobs (Forstenlechner & Rutledge, 2010).²

The generosity of the Emirati state, sustained by the country’s abundant natural resources and small citizen population, has paid off in many ways: Citizens generally appreciate the country’s leadership and are loyal to the state, allowing the country to remain relatively stable.³ And yet, while such generosity has encouraged allegiance to the state, it has also fostered an increasing sense of privilege among the citizenry, giving rise to a generation of what Calvert Jones (2017) has called “entitled patriots.” With the citizen population growing, natural resources diminishing, and hydrocarbon revenues declining, even the wealthiest rentier states in the Gulf have recognized that guaranteeing public-sector employment for nationals is unsustainable. As such, most Gulf states list increasing the number of nationals employed by the private sector as integral to their recently introduced national plans for social and economic development.⁴

2 Labor Nationalization and “Work-Readiness”

The UAE’s decades-long attempts to promote private-sector employment among its citizens have been only mildly successful (Hertog, 2014).⁵ In 1980, the UAE created a department within the federal government tasked with locating job opportunities for nationals and helping to connect them with prospective employers. A 2002 law promised “a special pensions fund” to nationals working in the private sector, while also guaranteeing them additional benefits (Davidson, 2013, p. 264). Then, in 2005, a quota system imposed on private-sector employers stipulated that companies with more than 100 workers employ a specific number of nationals (United Arab Emirates Government, 2021c)—after which, in 2009, private-sector employers were restricted in exercising discretion in terminating the employment of Emiratis (Sarker & Habibur Rahman, 2020, p. 181). Such strategies initially seemed promising but were unsuccessful and ultimately phased out, only to be reintroduced in a new form over a decade later.⁶

Earlier strategies were stymied by the fact that government incentives failed to motivate citizens to pursue private employment⁷ and that private-sector employers showed little enthusiasm for the mandated quotas, resorting to various tactics to avoid employing Emiratis.⁸ Resistance to hiring nationals stemmed in large part from a mistrust of citizens’ “work-readiness” (Al-Ali, 2008). As Al-Waqfi and Forstenlechner (2010) have described, managers in the private sector, including those who were themselves Emirati, regarded nationals as generally inefficient, unproductive, and unambitious. Indeed, a survey of nearly 250 recruiters and hiring managers found that the perception of Emiratis as relatively unmotivated “had the largest bearing on reducing a given employer’s willingness to recruit” nationals (Forstenlechner et al., 2012, p. 414). The fact that many Emiratis chose to collect unemployment benefits from the state rather than pursuing work in the private sector likely reinforced this stereotype.⁹

Employers were not the only ones to associate those from the UAE with a lack of drive and discipline; across the board, Emiratis, especially those old enough to recall the harsh realities of life before the discovery of oil, voiced complaints about rising entitlement and listlessness, especially among younger citizens (Bristol-Rhys, 2010).¹⁰ The country’s leadership expressed similar concerns, state officials referencing a “lost generation” of Emiratis (Jones, 2017, p. 50), and senior members of the ruling families voicing frustration with the country’s youth and even publicly criticizing their sense of privilege and indolence.¹¹

Troubled by the increasing prevalence of “rentier mentality,”¹² and aware of the obstacle this mindset could present to the country’s plans for diversification, the UAE’s leadership embarked on a vigorous social-engineering project to cultivate a new generation of citizens equipped with the necessary skills and training for a transition to a knowledge economy as well as the commitment and motivation such a transformation would undoubtedly require (Jones, 2017).

3 The Ideal Citizen and Educational Reform

The UAE seeks to cultivate a new generation of citizens who are industrious, self-reliant, and dedicated—individuals who demonstrate the “vigorous entrepreneurial spirit” required to build “a productive and fulfilling future for themselves and their nation” (United Arab Emirates Cabinet, 2010, p. 4). Guided by such capitalist values and neoliberal ideals, this new generation will aspire to “work harder, be more innovative, [and] more organized,” while also helping to facilitate the country’s transition to a “sustainable,” “competitive,” and “highly productive” knowledge economy (United Arab Emirates Cabinet, 2010, p. 16, 18).

While the UAE has introduced numerous changes to support this project, some of the most important have occurred in the field of education. UAE Vision 2021 emphasized educational reform by stating that to “successfully encourage Emiratis to play an active role in society as self-directed and responsible citizens, … a progressive national curriculum” would be initiated (United Arab Emirates Cabinet, 2010, p. 23). To this end, the government has invested heavily in restructuring the country’s national education curriculum.¹³ Foreign experts and Emirati officials educated in the West played an important role in directing these reforms,¹⁴ which, in addition to focusing on increasing students’ proficiency in English and exposure to the sciences, have also targeted elements of rentier mentality by attempting to fashion Emirati youth into responsible, entrepreneurial, and achievement-oriented citizens invested in the country’s future.¹⁵

In developing this progressive national curriculum, reformers have been challenged by the UAE’s “educational dualism,” which requires that the secular national curriculum respect what has historically been the primary purpose of the country’s education system: fostering proper Islamic belief and practice (Findlow, 2008).¹⁶ Thus, in prioritizing practical components of the curriculum, such as English and the sciences, which are essential to creating a skilled and creative workforce suited to the knowledge economy, the state must fend off the perception that it has relegated religion to the periphery.

How have education reformers navigated this tension? What has been their vision for socioeconomic change in the UAE? Through an examination of revised Islamic education textbooks and Ministry of Education (MoE) documents, we argue that education reformers have not neglected religious education in the revised national curriculum despite the “quiet effort to reorient citizens’ priorities away from religion and toward labor market skills” (Jones, 2017, p. 135). Reformers have, instead, “put Islam to work” (Starrett, 1998) by leveraging religious teachings to promote values central to elites’ ambitions for social change, specifically the country’s economic diversification plans. Following a Weberian logic (Weber, 1958), education reformers have coupled their efforts to develop students’ skills in the service of capitalism with their attempts to cultivate a “Muslim” work ethic.

4 Islamic Education as a State Instrument

State-sponsored Islamic education textbooks in the Middle East have historically “objectified” Islam (Eickelman, 1992) by limiting religious knowledge to “a defined set of beliefs,” practices, and values (Starrett, 1998, p. 9). But the state-sponsored Islamic education textbooks are also intended to serve as an important state tool in disseminating national visions of Islam (Doumato & Starrett, 2007).

These national visions of Islam are “tailor-made,” each designed “to cater to the historical, nationalist, and moral visions of particular regimes,” while still presenting themselves as “universally valid” (Adely & Starrett, 2011, p. 355, 358; Doumato & Starrett, 2007). In many cases, national Islamic education curricula are designed to promote loyalty to the state and to cultivate particular beliefs, values, and ideals among Muslim citizens (Adely, 2007; Doumato & Starrett, 2007; Kaplan, 2006; Ozgen & Hassan, 2021; Starrett, 1998). Thus, given the emphasis on economic development in the Middle East, “the values of hard work, obedience, and productivity are phrased as divinely ordained” in Islamic education textbooks throughout the region (Adely & Starrett, 2011; Doumato & Starrett, 2007). We observed a similar endeavor within the UAE while analyzing state-sponsored Islamic education.

5 Data and Methods

The data for this chapter, which draws on our previous work on the subject (Ozgen & Hassan, 2021), consist of 24 official Islamic education textbooks assigned for the 2020–2021 academic year. These books were developed for Muslim students in Grades 1 through 12, with two books assigned per grade. In Spring 2021, these textbooks, totaling approximately 5,400 pages, comprised the most up-to-date religious education materials and thus best encapsulated the reformed national curriculum. We accessed scanned copies of these textbooks through a public online forum created by Islamic education teachers in the UAE.

We also analyzed a 449-page document, authored by the developers of the Islamic education textbooks and published by the MoE in 2014, which articulates the function and goals of the curriculum as well as the purpose of the curricular reform. We coded and analyzed the data in MAXQDA, a qualitative data-analysis software, and relied on the grounded theory approach, that includes open coding, axial coding, and selective coding (Corbin & Strauss, 1990).¹⁷ During the analysis process, we identified a number of themes, which we coded as modern science, rational thinking, strategic planning, lifelong learning, hard work, human capital, technological advancement, and environmental sustainability. Centered around issues of education, employment, and economic development, we assigned these codes over 900 times, making them among the most consistent themes in the Islamic education curriculum.

To be sure, the textbooks also address a variety of traditionally religious topics. A significant portion of the chapters instructed students in the technicalities of Quranic recitation, encouraged the memorization of scripture, emphasized the authority of Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), discussed the lives of previous prophets and nations, highlighted the biographies of notable Muslim figures, explained the rules of ritual worship, and promoted observance of Islamic etiquette in daily life. The textbooks also included discussions on a variety of nonreligious topics, such as the importance of national identity, dangers of extremism, urgency for environmentalism, and so on. For our purposes, we did not code those portions, focusing instead on the instances where the curriculum advanced the vision for economic development as promoted by state elites.

6 Vision of Progress and the Textbooks

To support the state’s vision of developing a competitive knowledge economy, the MoE has been tasked with cultivating ideal Emirati youth “driven by science, technology, and innovation” (United Arab Emirates Ministry of Education, 2017). Following this vision, Islamic education textbooks extol the virtues of exercising critical thinking, seeking knowledge, acquiring modern science, maximizing productivity, and investing in development—all central tenets of neoliberal market capitalism.

In the “Islamic education National Curriculum Standards from Kindergarten to Grade 12” document, published by MoE, the developers of the curriculum¹⁸ stress that the new curriculum prepares youth for the “requirements of the labor market” and focuses on developing “skills to enhance the productivity and effectiveness of the workplace” (United Arab Emirates Ministry of Education, 2014).¹⁹ Furthermore, the developers explain that the reformed curriculum emphasizes the connection between “work and worship in Islam” because it is a means to reach perfection in one’s faith. To ensure clear articulation of this message to students, the developers encourage teachers to show “films showing the importance of work to build[ing] society” in class, present “examples from the Messengers’ biographies regarding their professions” to students, and dedicate time to watch “programs about loyalty in work” or “documentary films on globalization and knowledge econom[ies].” The developers also explained that the MoE had comprehensively revised the Islamic education curriculum due to the subject’s “active and prominent role” in building individuals “loyal to homeland” and contribute to the “development and advancement” of the nation. In the following subsections, we outline how the textbooks seek to cultivate an appreciation for scientific advancement, learning and knowledge, professionalism and hard work, economic development, and environmental sustainability (Fig. 23.1).

Fig. 23.1

Illustration in an Islamic education textbook assigned to elementary school students in the UAE

6.1 Religion and Science in Harmony

A common narrative across the textbooks is that cultivating religious faith and acquiring modern science are not in conflict. Textbooks suggest that “science and faith are inseparable” (10a:31)²⁰ because their findings are complementary (11a:27), and they justify this claim by suggesting that Islam “does not differentiate between” different kinds of knowledge. To the contrary, Islam supports knowledge from any discipline so long as it “serve[s] a religious purpose or lead[s] to a worldly benefit” (6b:127). The relationship between revelation and reason moves in both directions: Islam supports science and science validates the teachings of the Qur’an, thereby affirming the “inimitability of Allah’s sayings” (11a:93). Thus, students are taught that Islam obliges individuals to “specialize, research and produce knowledge” (6b:127), and such instances bolster the assertion that acquiring modern science is a divinely sanctioned endeavor.

As Gregory Starrett (1998) argued in his work on Islamic education in Egypt, such purported “interdependence of Islam and science is stressed in order to avoid the pitfall of implying that secular knowledge is inseparable from secularism” (p. 139). In balancing Islam and science, the state tries to circumvent a tension: On the one hand, the government must equip its citizens with the necessary skills and knowledge to build a knowledge economy less reliant on foreign labor, therefore the reformed national curriculum prioritizes secular school subjects over religious education (which receives only 90–180 min per week of class time) (Bakali et al., 2018, p. 10). On the other hand, the state needs to avoid appearing to privilege secular instruction because the monarchy legitimizes its rule through religion. Therefore, the UAE must present the pursuit of all kinds of knowledge—especially knowledge that advances the state’s economic interests—as an essentially Islamic endeavor, blessed by the Divine (Ozgen & Hassan, 2021, p. 1194).

6.2 Work and Worship

The value of hard work is another common narrative through which the textbooks attempt to harness religion for economic development. The textbooks stress this narrative in three interrelated ways. First, they highlight how Muslims have, throughout history, advanced different disciplines (6b:132; 10a:126) and exhort students to follow in the footsteps of their pious and studious ancestors. Second, they encourage emulating the Prophet. In a second-grade textbook, for example, the Prophet is depicted as someone who “loved to work” and “was keen on earning a living from his own work”—so much so that he served as a shepherd to provide for and thereby dignify himself (2a:85). Similarly, the textbooks stress that “[t]he Prophets and Messengers of Allah used to work hard to earn their living” (7b:81), a point underscored by an exercise that instructs students to research “the professions of Prophets Moses, David, and Shoaib” and to present their findings to classmates (2a:91).

Third, textbooks re-present the act of working as a type of devotion, arguing that students should both “work hard in seeking knowledge” and apply that knowledge to “make [their] Lord pleased with [them]” (8b:298). This attempt to define academic endeavors as spiritual strivings is reinforced pedagogically in the assessment sections that typically come at the end of each unit. In the “I Assess Myself” surveys found in most lessons, for example, students are asked to rate how well they tend to perform certain tasks or embrace particular values. As such, in a fifth-grade textbook, students are asked to evaluate their success in “performing [their] prayers on time,” along with how much they “desire[d] to improve [their] scientific level” (5a:122).

The notion of hard work is also tied to patriotism and citizenship. In many chapters, students are urged to “work hard to make progress in [their] studies out of love for country” (4b:61). A third-grade book presses this point through a fictitious character named “Rashid the Thinker.” Rashid is an Emirati boy who loves learning, thrives in his studies, and goes on to become a doctor. According to the textbook, “being a Muslim who is aware of his religion and [being] a successful doctor who serves his country and society” (3b:15) go hand in hand. Studiousness, in this regard, both pleases God and serves one’s country, goals that frequently appear interconnected in the textbooks. The effort to connect work with worship is further demonstrated in a series of student assignments. In a seventh-grade book, for example, students are asked to compose an essay on “the negative effects of unemployment on the individual and on society” (7b:79), while also listing “the biggest possible number of professions that the United Arab Emirates needs in the twenty first century” (7b:80), including their justification for each selection.

6.3 Cultivation of the Earth

In addition to scientific progress and hard work, the textbooks highlight the narrative of economic development. To embed the idea of production and development as spiritually authentic, textbooks draw on the Islamic concept of emarat al ard (construction of the land) (10a:17; 10a:28), which derives from a collection of verses in the Qur’an (2:30; 6:165; 9:105; 67:15) wherein believers are taught that God placed man on Earth in order to try him and thus man must cultivate and build upon the land, thereby serving as God’s designated successor or vicegerent (khalifa). The concept of emarat al ard expressed in these textbooks encourages students to be ambitious, productive, and forward-looking citizens, such as in the teaching that “it is the duty of a Muslim to build a strong economy based on knowledge as a necessary factor in achieving economic growth and prosperity” (12b:290). In this way, the UAE’s Islamic education curriculum appeals to Islamic ethics and mobilizes Islamic teaching in the service of the state’s economic interests and pro-market principles.

The state’s economic vision rests on the coupling of development and sustainability. For example, textbooks link environmental responsibility to attaining God’s pleasure by stressing that “Muslims work, produce and develop in obedience to Allah and also avoid aggression on the resources of the environment in obedience to Allah” (11b:93). The textbooks also delineate Islam’s approach to environmentalism, which rests on “the pillars of reconstructing the land, maintaining its cleanliness, preserving natural resources, and maintaining human beings’ health” (4b:221). This message is, additionally, reinforced through the discourses of founding fathers. In an assignment for sixth graders, students are prompted to write an essay explaining their understanding of the following statement: “The founding father Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan once said: ‘Protecting the environment should not be a matter that concerns only the government and official authorities... but every individual in our society” (6b:166). Through these narratives and exercises, textbooks mobilize Islam as an instrument to foreground certain principles and to cultivate knowledge that furthers the state’s vision of social change.

7 Conclusion

Islamic education textbooks have been deployed to promote the state’s goal of transitioning to a knowledge economy. The textbooks support this goal by reinterpreting specific Qur’anic verses, Hadith, and edificatory stories from Islamic history as supportive of the principles of progress and productivity. We argue that, broadly speaking, Islamic education textbooks emphasize science, learning, hard work, and development for two primary reasons. First, the state must cultivate these principles and associated skills among the citizenry in order to meet both the demands of the global capitalist economy and its own developmental goals. As described above, these goals were set forth in the UAE Vision 2021 and Vision 2030, which pointed to “a reduced reliance on the oil sector as a source of economic activity and a greater focus on knowledge-based industries” (United Arab Emirates Government, 2021d). But this goal cannot be attained without an educated domestic workforce required to “assure the functioning of the institutions of the modern state” (Al Sayegh, 2004, p. 112) and without reducing reliance on skilled foreign labor.

Second, an indirect emphasis on critical thinking supports the state’s broader interest in alleviating the social and psychological consequences of the rapid enrichment following the first oil boom. In a span of one generation, oil wealth jolted nomadic Bedouin tribes out of poverty and turned Emirati society from one of the poorest in the region to one of the richest in the world. Generous rentier benefits—free housing, education, and health care—certainly improved Emiratis’ standard of living and helped achieve national stability, but these benefits came with sociopsychological costs, such as “listlessness, depression, [and] isolation,” while also encouraging, especially among younger generations, an unwillingness to be self-reliant or hard-working.²¹

In closing, it is important to recognize, as we have noted elsewhere (Ozgen & Hassan, 2021), that the Islamic education curriculum in the UAE has been mobilized not only in promoting certain values among young citizens but also in projecting a particular image of the country to the international community, which has, since 9/11, increasingly scrutinized Islamic education curricula for clues about the values, aspirations, and allegiances of Muslim-majority countries. Thus, with its keen interest in being a part of the global capitalist economy, the UAE, in its official religious education materials, makes a sustained effort to present acquiring modern science, engaging in hard work, and practicing critical thinking as not merely Islamically permissible but indeed required. These representations are crucial to the image the state projects both inwardly toward citizens and outwardly toward the global community. Seen this way, with ambitions that are reciprocal and outcomes that are mutually reinforcing, working for God is working for country.