Dubai’s Burj Khalifa: The world’s tallest skyscraper

The world’s tallest skyscraper has risen in the desert of the tiny Gulf Emirate of Dubai, the richest among the group of UAE. The young Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al-Maktoum has turned his oil rich kingdom into a jungle of high rise buildings most of which are lying vacant due to a massive financial crunch.

Nevertheless the Sheikh has become the proud owner of the world’s tallest glass and steel tower rising 828 meters (2717 feet) out of the desert sand which has been named Burj Al-Khalifa in honor of the UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahiyan. He came to Dubai’s help late last year giving it $ 10 billion to bail out its builders who were facing default of billions of US dollars. Dubai hopes that with opening of the tallest building created by man will dispel the image of its crippling debt woes.

The construction of this half a mile tall building took six years and costs USD1.5 billion. The building was designed by an American company Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and built by Dubai’s builders Emar Properties. It is indeed a great achievement of Dubai to build the world’s tallest building in 2010 while New York’s Empire State building which is half the height of the Dubai skyscraper was built in 1930. The next tallest building is Taipei 101. So it is not an earth shaking achievement of this century or any century for that matter. God in his mercy has given so much oil wealth to Muslim countries in the Middle East that apart from tall buildings and huge palaces they can also build great buildings to promote knowledge of science and technology. They can build palaces of wisdom and knowledge like Harvard and MIT, like Oxford and Cambridge to educate their youth to become great scientists, doctors and engineers to serve their people and the people of the world . The Holy Prophet is reported to have said; “Acquire knowledge even if you have to go to China”.

These are great words of wisdom. Once I went to China in early seventies when it was an under developed country. One could see that after the cultural revolutions, the nation was depressed and poor. Mao Tze Tung had taken out the word Palace from Chinese dictionaries. It was only used for children’s schools which were called Children’s Palaces where they were raising their young generation to be the builders of a new China. And what a nation they have built; highly educated in modern sciences, driven to make their nation a super power. The world is aghast at their phenomenal progress which the Chinese people have achieved through their hard work, their love for their motherland and most all education. It is surprising that Islam has emphasized, more than any other religion on knowledge and wisdom but Muslim nations have ignored this divine guidance and therefore have been left behind in the race for progress and prosperity. Even those whom God has given abundant wealth are still so backward, poorly educated in this age of computers and internet groaning under the yoke of corrupt dictatorships which have deprived them of human rights and enlightenment of knowledge. A UNDP report has identified three cardinal obstacles to human development in the Arab world; the widening deficit in freedom, women’s rights and knowledge.

God’s command to acquire knowledge of all things that he has created in the universe, the symbolic beginning of the Holy Book with the command to “Read” and the superiority of Adam over the angels because he was given knowledge and wisdom; are all too obvious but the followers of Quran have not paid any attention to it. God says. “He giveth wisdom to whom he will, and unto whom wisdom is given he truly has received abundant good”. But none remember this except men of understanding. Since most Muslim nations are users of technology rather than its creators like the western nations, they are dependent for all their technological needs, including military equipment on western countries no matter how much wealth they have and how many tall buildings or palaces they build.

Their planners, architects and builders and the material used in their construction all comes from western countries. An Arab analyst writes in Al-Ahram, “The Gulf States’ dependence on American security umbrella is slated to increase, especially in the light of developments inside Iran and Iraq. The eventual neutralization of the Iranian nuclear facilities and possible destruction of its industrial infrastructure will scare the Arab psyche and accelerate the demise of moderates without necessarily empowering the radicals. Following America’s withdrawal from Iraq the ensuing civil strife will keep Iraq busy with itself, while other regional powers will ensure the remaining Iranian power gets sucked in the Iraqi stalemate.

In short, the coming Arab world will have little to contribute to the world at large economically, culturally or in the domain of scientific knowledge. The Arab agenda will be dominated by more frustration and resentment than it is today. The Arab nations need to ponder over these comments.

Burhanuddin Hasan

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on Jan 22 2010. Filed under Editorials, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry