....................................
 Q-News March 2005, Issue 361

Diary >> Affan Chowdhry

The New Statesman suffers from historical amnesia

The Height of Opulence in Abu Dhabi

Where the wine flows like lassi

Q in the News

Iran's mystery DJ

Women slipping thru’ the gaps >> Samira Ahmed

The Rock Star and the Mullah >> Fareena Alam

"A modern day hippie in search of love" >> Abdul-Rehman Malik

Handing Victory to the Terrorists >> Shami Chakrabarti and Megan Addis

Who is Sania Mirza? >> Siraj Wahab

Democracy Inside Out:
The Case of Egypt >> Louay Safi

Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years >> Isla Rosser-Owen

Raising Aspirations >> Raihan Alfaradhi

Bleedin' Islamophobia >> Yakoub Islam

Disappeared in America

The Muslim Blogosphere >> Shahed Amanullah

Blogger's Manifesto >> Haroon Moghul

The politics of
common purpose >> Ian McCartney

Waking up to Progressive Muslims >> Nazim Baksh

The Shariah Firestorm in Canada >> Faisal Kutty

Renewing Our Faith in Common Ground >> James Abdulaziz Brown

Hafiz Gulammohammed Bora >> Fuad Nahdi

Chicken Soup for the Muslim Soul >> Sana Khatib

Mourning the Unknown >> Abu Anon

Youssou N'Dour wins world music award

Fun times for Oxbridge Muslim Alumni

Deenport Mania

Book views
 ..

The height of opulence

Page 10
Q-News, Issue 361
March 2005

At a cost of £2 billion, the Emirates Palace Hotel is the most expensive ever built. Owned by the Government of Abu Dhabi and managed by the Kempinksi Group, the Emirates Palace is set on 1 million square metres of land on a 1.3 km tract of sandy beach. As The Sunday Times reported, the statistics are staggering: an entrance arch that is just smaller than the Arc de Triomphe; a lobby atrium with a dome larger than St Paul’s Cathedral topped by a two-metre finial made of 20kg of solid gold; 6,040 square metres of gold leaf used throughout; 110,000 cubic metres of marble; 1,002 Swarovski crystal chandeliers; 2,600 employees and a yearly flower bill that rings in at £1.2 million. And that’s just the beginning. The hotel will never make money and in the tourist desert that’s Abu Dhabi there isn’t really much to do, except enjoy the luxury of the Emirates Palace hotel if your credit card can bear the burden. If you can’t afford to stay there, then you can rest comfortably in the knowledge that those who can will be carried around in golf carts. The building itself takes one hour to walk around.

Hang on, how much did Abu Dhabi and the UAE contribute to tsunami disaster relief? The Christian Science Monitor reports around $20million. Given the size of their contribution compared with the cost of their new hotel, maybe they will offer rooms to some of the hundreds of thousands of homeless who are looking to other donors to rebuild their communities.