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In recent years, the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, especially the UAE, have recognized that trusting foreign governments, such as the United States, cannot offer them the best possible protection. The US has had a presence in the Persian Gulf since the 1990s and the Gulf Arab countries have relied on it to provide security. However, events in recent years have shown that the Gulf Arab states cannot rely solely on Washington.

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Such developments include the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan amid the US withdrawal; the US pivot to Asia; the US retraction of most advanced missile defense systems and Patriot batteries from Saudi Arabia; and the lack of a US military response to threats, missile and drone attacks on Saudi oil bases by the Houthis in Yemen.

This has encouraged the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf to pursue security autonomy. The UAE, in particular, has sought to transform its strategy from dependence on the US and Saudi Arabia to a combination of self-reliance and multilateral cooperation.

Self-Reliance Security Strategy

Although the UAE is an important ally of America in the Persian Gulf, over recent years, the US has sought to push the Emiratis toward security. Sociopolitical events in the Middle East over the last decade following the Arab Spring of 2010-11 have made it clear to the UAE that the primary goal of ensuring national security, in addition to benefiting from international cooperation, should be the use of national facilities and resources.

Hosni Mubarak’s ouster from Egypt during the Arab Spring protests and the reluctance of the US to defend him as an ally — which led to the rise of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood — further demonstrated to Abu Dhabi that it should not exclusively depend on the US for security assistance. Thus, the UAE began to develop a professional army.

The UAE‘s self-reliance strategy is divided into different branches, but most of all, its military security efforts have been given the highest priority. The UAE‘s determination to create an independent and professional military is evident from its years of investment in the defense industry.

Indeed, security is a top priority for the United Arab Emirates, and defense spending continues to make up a large portion of the national budget. The UAE’s defense typically accounts for 11.1% to 14% of the total budget. In 2019, the UAE’s defense spending was $16.4 billion. This was 18% more than the 2018 budget of $13.9 billion.

The UAE has invested heavily in the military sector and defense industry in recent years. In November 2019, the UAE formed the EDGE Group from a merger of 25 companies. The company has 12,000 employees and $5 billion in total revenue. It is also among the top 25 advocacy groups in the world, ahead of firms such as Booz Allen Hamilton in the US and Rolls-Royce in the UK.

EDGE is around five clusters: platforms and systems, missiles and weapons, cyber defense, electronic warfare and intelligence, and mission support. It comprises several major UAE companies in the defense industry, such as ADSB (shipbuilding), Al Jasoor, NIMR (vehicles), SIGN4L (electronic warfare services) and ADASI (autonomous systems). The main of EDGE is to develop weapons to fight “hybrid warfare” and to bolster the UAE’s defense against unconventional threats, focusing on electronic attacks and drones.

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The UAE has also come up with detailed plans to improve the quality of its military personnel, large sums of money each year on training its military recruits in American colleges and war academies. It also founded the National Defense College; most of its students are citizens of the UAE, because of its independence in military training. In addition, in 2014, the UAE introduced general conscription for men between the ages of 18 and 30 to increase numbers and strengthen national identity in its military. As a result, it gathered about 50,000 people in the first three years.

Contrary to traditional practice, the UAE’s growing military power has made it eager to use force and hard power to protect its interests. The UAE stands ready to use military force anywhere in the region to contain Iran’s growing influence and weaken Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Participating in the Yemeni War was a test of this strategy.

The UAE‘s military presence in Yemen began in March 2015. It a brigade of 3,000 troops to Yemen in August 2015, along with Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab countries. Over the past five years, the UAE has an ambitious strategic agenda in the Red Sea, building military installations and securing control of the southern coasts of Yemen along the Arabian Sea in the Bab al-Mandab Strait and Socotra Island. Despite reducing its military footprints in Yemen in 2019, the UAE has consolidated itself in the southern regions. It has continued to finance and impart training to thousands of Yemeni fighters drafted from various groups like the Security Belt Forces, the Shabwani and Hadrami Elite Forces, Abu al-Abbas Brigade and the West Coast Forces.

The UAE‘s goal in adopting a self-reliance strategy is to increase strategic depth in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. Thus, along with direct military presence or arms support for groups engaged in proxy wars, it affects the internal affairs of various countries in the region, such as Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt and Libya. With its influence, the UAE can turn the tide in its favor in certain areas.

Multilateralism Security Strategy

The United Arab Emirates faces a variety of security in the Middle East, and addressing them requires cooperation with other countries. Currently, the most significant security threats in the UAE are: countering Iranian threats and power in the Middle East, especially in Arab countries under Iranian influence, such as Yemen, Syria and Lebanon; eliminating threats from terrorist groups and political Islam in the region, the most important of which — according to the UAE — is the Muslim Brotherhood; and economic threats and efforts to prepare for the post-oil world.

In its multilateral strategy, the UAE seeks to counter these threats with the help of other countries in the region or beyond. It has used soft power through investments or providing humanitarian aid, suggesting that economic cooperation is more important than political competition and intervention. In this regard, the UAE has cooperated with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Britain and France, as well as normalized relations with Israel.

On August 13, 2020, the UAE became the first Gulf state to normalize relations with Israel. The UAE‘s goal in normalizing relations with Israel is to counter threats from Iran and the region. The Abraham Accords have not only a security aspect, but also an economic one. Following the signing of the accords, on October 20, 2020, the US, Israel and the UAE the establishment of the Abraham Fund, a joint fund of $3 billion “in private sector-led investment and development initiatives,” aimed at “promoting economic cooperation and prosperity.” In addition, it outlined a banking and finance memorandum between the largest banks in Israel and Dubai, and a joint bid between Dubai’s DP World port operator and an Israeli shipping firm for the management of Israel’s Haifa port.

Through the Abraham Accords, the United Arab Emirates seeks to invest and transfer Israeli technologies to the UAE through mutual agreements. The UAE has discovered that Israel is one of the bridges to the US economy and high technology. If the UAE intends to have an oil-free economy in the future, Israel may be the best option to achieve this by pursuing a strategy of multilateralization.

UAE relations with Turkey also have a multilateral dimension to reaching common security goals. The two countries had good relations until the Arab Spring protests ties between them. Abu Dhabi and Ankara began to defuse tensions after a phone call in August 2021 between UAE Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The nations mainly have differences around issues in Libya, Syria and Egypt. The UAE is trying to resolve its disputes with Turkey by investing in the country.

Turkey is the largest backer of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region. The Turks claim the UAE participated in the failed coup of July 2016 against the Turkish government. Nonetheless, the UAE wants to end frictions with Turkey and has attracted Ankara by investing and increasing commercial ties. The Turkish lira has depreciated in recent years and Erdogan’s popularity has plummeted due to mismanagement in Turkey. Erdogan will not miss this economic opportunity with the UAE and welcomes Emirati investments. In this way, the UAE will likely easily resolve its differences with Turkey.

The current tendency to use force is contrary to traditional Abu Dhabi policy, yet increasing the strategic depth of the UAE is one of Abu Dhabi‘s most achievable goals in its strategy of self-reliance. This plan is the exact opposite of multilateralism. Unlike the use of force and hard power, Abu Dhabi seeks to achieve its objectives by using soft power, investment and humanitarian aid. In this situation, the tactical exploitation of economic cooperation takes precedence over political competition and military intervention in the region.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔčÏ’s editorial policy.

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Throughout the war, international policymakers have overemphasized the role of the private sector in addressing Yemen’s severe food crisis, insofar as they have tirelessly insisted since the late 1960s that opening the local market to unrestricted food imports would feed a growing population and drive economic growth. Commercial staple food imports — as well as food assistance — are vital during the war.

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However, be that as it may, the role of commercial food importers in postwar, post-neoliberalism Yemen must not be blown out of proportion. Reducing Yemen’s deep agrarian and rural social crisis to wartime and postwar commercial food import issues shows that the root causes of the country’s severe food crisis continue to be gravely misunderstood or deliberately overlooked.

To begin with, Yemen’s absurd, inordinate dependence on staple food imports is but a consequence of . Regrettably, it was a policy that failed to preserve the rural sector’s productivity, let alone stimulating it and accumulating wealth. Rehashing past failed agricultural development policies is evidence of two distributing realities.

The first is Yemeni elites’ lack of capacity to imagine alternative paths of development in Yemen. The second is international policymakers’ position that developed countries  can adopt national agricultural policy frameworks that avowedly control food supply through production and import controls and pricing mechanisms, whereas developing countries cannot do the same to support their agriculture sector.

Inspiration and Lessons

To end this long deadlock between Yemen’s autonomy and global capitalism, perhaps one ought to draw attention to India’s  for inspiration and lessons.

It is not in Yemen’s national interest to continue ignoring its small and marginalized farmers. In a rural society like Yemen, they are the engine of a healthy economy. The vast majority of the population continues to live in rural Yemen. Current official  put Yemen’s rural population at about 70%. This reality limits the role of the private sector in sustaining rural livelihoods. While some might argue that Yemen’s private sector should not be viewed as a monolith, consisting only of large conglomerates, to lump smallholding agriculture and agricultural commercialization together under the umbrella of the private sector is fundamentally flawed.

Small farmers in Yemen are subsistence households, each representing a domestic unit of agricultural production that is economically self-sufficient and combines production and consumption functions. This rural social organization is not the same as one where farmers are reduced to landless, wage earners. Thus, small and marginalized farmers cannot be pigeonholed as private sector actors. Worse is to drop them from the economic equation altogether, especially in so-called developing countries.

Without making this fundamental distinction between smallholding agriculture in Yemen and private sector activity, and without understanding why domestic food production is a matter of national priority to Yemeni citizens, Yemeni elites and international policymakers alike will continue to bungle the task of putting the country on the right path to development.

Food Sovereignty and Security

Many seem to think of Yemen as a big chicken farm that only needs to be fed somehow. They do not understand, or do not want to understand, that at issue is food sovereignty as well as food security. Yemen is a sovereign nation. Yemenis are a people who have the right, needless to say, to choose what to farm, how to farm and how to define the relationship between their local market and the international market. Choosing whether to eat homegrown sorghum or imported wheat is a fundamental national question of utmost importance, not a trade finance problem.

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Private sector activity is not an economic activity that occurs in an empty space; it occurs within social spheres. It impacts domestic production, changes the modes of production within a society and, consequently, remolds all social formations and economic relations. Agrarian changes are . One cannot discuss private sector activity and commercial food imports in isolation from their long-term social impacts. This is lesson number one from five decades of steady economic decline and social regress. It is Yemen’s rural population that has marched down the road to impoverishment and starvation, and they know exactly how — but not why — they got there in the first place. In rural Yemen, lives and land are at stake.

Millions of people in Yemen are famished neither because of the war nor because the private sector is unable to import enough staple foods, in spite of significant and critical wartime challenges. Yemenis are starving because the country has systematically lost its long-standing ability to produce food, particularly staple grains. The magnitude of production losses in Yemen’s agriculture sector has fundamentally limited the economy’s resilience to shocks. Economic  is the ability of the country’s main productive forces to cope, recover and reconstruct. How can you cripple a country’s most tangible, corporeal and immediate branch of production and, at the same time, foster resilience? Speaking of resilience of an incapacitated agriculture sector is a logical fallacy and is, therefore, meaningless and a distraction from the real problem.

Causing Alarm

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database (FAOSTAT), Yemen on its domestic soil on average 98% of its grains during 1961-65; namely, sorghum, millet, barley, maize and wheat, in this order. Sorghum production in Yemen peaked at 921,000 tons in 1975. In sharp contrast, the country domestically produced on average only 18% of its total supply of the same grains during 2011-15 and imported the rest. By 2015, the production of  had plummeted to 221,510 tons. To make an already alarming situation unmanageable, the ongoing war more than halved Yemen’s total domestic grain production. Most notably, sorghum production reached a record low of 162,277 tons in 2016, followed by another record low of 155,722 tons in 2018. Yet, some still argue that this decline is due to population growth, not policy.

In a country that primarily produces and consumes sorghum — the traditional staple of man and beast in Yemen — millet and barley, an over 80% dependency on imported wheat is evidently catastrophic during war and peace. This is a well-documented socioeconomic problem. In its 2004  of “The State of Food and Agriculture,” the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) noted that the long-term damaging impact of the loss of domestic food production and exposure to price volatility on individual countries outweigh the plausible short-lived collective benefits: “Lower international prices have moderated the food import bills of developing countries, which, as a group, are now net food importers. However, although lower basic food prices on international markets bring short-term benefits to net food-importing developing countries, lower international prices can also have negative impacts on domestic production in developing countries that might have lingering effects on their food security.”

The heart of the matter is that the agriculture sector is the country’s main productive force. Unchecked private internationally integrated capital has destroyed Yemen’s rural capital and silenced the interests of the country’s sizable rural population. Further, the malintegration of Yemen’s local food market with global markets has jeopardized the country’s economic independence and prevented any real development in Yemen.

The Issue

There is great, non-monetary economic and social value in reclaiming and revalorizing Yemen’s domestic food production and rebuilding its basic rural infrastructure. Domestic food production is too important to Yemenis to be addressed as an afterthought. At issue is not how to procure wheat from international markets, but how to stop the hemorrhage of surpluses out of the agriculture sector.

What serves Yemen’s national interest is to refrain from calling for increasing the country’s dependency on speculative, volatile international food markets; imposing in the guise of development and economic resilience policies that undermine the country’s ability to domestically produce adequate food for local consumption; overstating the benefits of export-oriented agriculture and cash cropping more broadly; and overlooking or downplaying the role of smallholders in generating abundant jobs and sustaining rural infrastructure. In a nutshell, any serious discussion of Yemen’s food security crisis must take into account ecological sustainability, rural livelihoods and both food security and sovereignty in the long term.

Yemeni farmers do not yet fully understand why policymakers and development practitioners insist on promoting imports and more broadly large commercial activity, at a time when the whole world is prioritizing the opposite of these dictates: strengthening self-reliance, planning and regulating limited resources, and minimizing local markets’ exposure. Yemeni struggle has not yet reached the level of political awareness seen in India during its 2020-21 farmers’ protests. To get there, we must understand one point: tying the rural sector’s destiny to large commercial organizations cannot lead to any real growth and prosperity of the entire population.

Indian farmers inspire us to rethink development paradigms in Yemen, for there is more to farming than exporting bananas and onions to Saudi Arabia, and there is more to the role of the private sector in national development than flooding local markets with wheat from Australia, Russia, the United States, France and other international source markets, or even import substitution.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔčÏ’s editorial policy.

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Sovereignty: International Courts and Tribunals

Sovereignty is a legal concept that expresses the power of a country participating in the international system to exercise great and perpetual authority over its territory. To uphold this, the post-war international legal order created a variety of institutions for the resolution of disputes among nations. These range from “traditional” practices to a multiplicity of international courts and tribunals, each operating within their own specialized regime. In response to the economic and diplomatic, Qatar has used both to exercise effective control over its territory.

From an international law perspective, Qatar’s sovereignty has been expressed through the initiation of legal action against the blockading countries: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. In doing so, Qatar has chosen a strategy of filing multiple claims before various international courts and tribunals. These include the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and other fora.

Based in The Hague, the ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations and, as such, at the epicenter of the international legal order. Still, the court does not have mandatory jurisdiction over all disputes arising between two or more states. Rather, according to the ICJ Statute, states must have a concrete legal basis to introduce a case.

In June 2018, Qatar instituted proceedings against the United Arab Emirates in the ICJ under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). In doing so, Qatar requested the court to order provisional measures to protect Qatari citizens expelled from the UAE after the commencement of the blockade in June 2017.

On July 23, 2018, the ICJ issued its order on provisional measures requiring the UAE to: (1) allow families with mixed nationalities to be reunited; (2) give Qatari students in the UAE affected by the measures the opportunity to complete their education or obtain their educational records if they wish to continue studies elsewhere; and (3) grant Qataris access to tribunals and other judicial institutions. After this ruling, the UAE filed its own request for provisional measures relating to actions that Qatar had filed before the United Nations’ CERD committee and elsewhere. On June 14, 2019, the ICJ denied the UAE’s request for provisional measures. A date for a hearing on the merits of the Qatar v. UAE case has not yet been set. 

In addition, the blockading countries have brought forward a separate action in the ICJ under Article 84 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation regarding a decision of the council of the ICAO, challenging their closure of airspace to Qatari traffic. In June 2018, the council issued a ruling that was largely in favor of Qatar’s complaint. The public hearings in the blockading states’ appeal of the ICAO decision were held before the ICJ in December 2019 and a final decision is pending.

Sovereignty: Other Means to Peaceful Resolution

Apart from courts and tribunals, international law provides for a category of dispute settlement methods that include mediation, together with negotiation, conciliation and inquiry. These means of peaceful settlement of international disputes are mentioned under Article 33 of the UN Charter.

Mediation involves the participation of a third party with the aim of helping parties to the dispute come to a commonly agreed solution. Given the nature and rather informal character of the mediation process, it is exclusively up to the disputing parties to resolve the dispute. To assist, Kuwait has played a visible role in trying to mediate a solution to the blockade and recently reiterated its commitment to do so.

Qatar has also taken multiple steps to protect the rights of its citizens at the political, diplomatic and legal levels. At the level of politics and diplomacy, there are two possible approaches: bilateral and multilateral. Bilateral action involves engaging in direct dialogue with the governments of the blockading countries. The state of Qatar can also raise issues before the relevant multilateral international political fora, such as the institutions of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the UN General Assembly. In this respect, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani raised the issue of the blockade before the General Assembly, most recently at its opening session on September 24, 2019. 

Initially a political crisis, the blockade against Qatar has been increasingly played out over multiple legal disputes. The hope is that the law will also provide a bridge for the resolution of the political issues. 

*[Dr. George Dimitropoulos is an associate professor at the College of Law at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the university’s official stance.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔčÏ’s editorial policy.

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The risk of war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the most powerful Muslim nations, has never been greater. Their rivalry can be understood in two ways. The first is simply as two powerful nations facing each other on either side of the Persian Gulf, equals in the sense that they both possess massive petroleum reserves. The second is as spiritual powers, as together they represent the two dominant traditions of Islam: Sunni and Shia. They are divided by language (Arabic vs. Farsi), an ancient theological rift dating back to the struggle for the succession of the Prophet Muhammad, and their competing ambition to support regional political causes outside their own territory.

At a conference attended by parliamentary representatives from Islamic countries, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has responded to the increase in tension by . These were his words: “The world of Islam, with such a large population and plenty of facilities, can certainly create a great power within the world and become influential through unity. Such warmongering among the world of Islam must be stopped and we should not allow that a safe haven be created for the Zionist regime.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Unity:

An imaginary idea or fanciful hope of solidarity between people who have more reasons historically to be rivals or even enemies than to be allies

Contextual note

The recent rise to power of Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) in Saudi Arabia, coupled with the daring politics of American real estate autocrat Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has put pressure on every nation in the region to redefine loyalties. The US invasion and military occupation of Iraq produced a paradoxical outcome. After toppling Saddam Hussein’s Baathist (Sunni) regime, the victorious US established a Shia regime, thereby enabling the consolidation of a horizontal band of Iranian influence across Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. This could only displease Sunni Saudi Arabia, which has long been the closest ally of the US in the Middle East.

Even more paradoxically, the response to growing Iranian influence has been to encourage a rift within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in the form of a blockade on Qatar, a Sunni state deemed too friendly with or too dependent on Iran, and then the forming of a close alliance — engineered by the US — between Saudi Arabia and Israel. At the same time, MBS has begun to put pressure on Iraq in an effort of possible realignment but without promising or even suggesting any form of unity. MBS, backed by Trump and aligned with Israel, wants to be the top dog and unique power broker in the region.

This confusion of alliances and loyalties has provided Khamenei with the perfect pretext for comparing a holy alliance within Islam with an unholy alliance with Israel and the United States. In classic populist fashion, he has directed his appeal to the diversity of populations making up (nation or community) across the region. In their diversity (Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Persians, Shias, Sunnis and possibly others, including Druze though probably not BahĂĄ’Ă­), all these people have an historic connection to Islam and aspire to conditions of peace after decades of wars that have always turned around the economic and political interests of the West.

Historical note

At the same time as Ayatollah Khamenei shuffles the deck in the Middle East, in the Far East, South and North Korea have surprised everyone, and especially the US and Japan, by agreeing to unify their representation at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games and compete under a single flag. With its usual understatement, that “the diplomatic thaw complicates President Donald Trump’s efforts to impose ‘maximum pressure’ on Pyongyang.” The worst outcome imaginable for the US would be an eventual reunification of Korea, though if it were to happen it would be a long way off. The prospect would remove the main foundation of its military power on the Asian side of the Pacific and seriously weaken it if productive talks even got under way.

But the unification of the two Koreas would be even more uncomfortable for the Japanese, who have begun to complain about it, possibly in the hope that the US will find a way of preventing the scenario from developing. has disparaged the peaceful initiative as a mere “charm offensive” in attempt to play the wise mentor for the South Koreans, warning them not to get in bed with the big, bad wolf. But for historical reasons, Koreans, North and South, have little inclination to allow themselves to be guided by Japan. And while Trump claims that the pressure he has put on North Korea has led Kim Jong-un to begin negotiating with his neighbors to the south, he has taken self-contradictory positions concerning negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington. He clearly doesn’t know which way to turn, but by calling this his strategy of not giving away his cards in a game of poker.

So, unity is an ideal to be invoked in both the Middle East and the Far East. But the current landscape in both regions offers us a picture of total confusion as different actors: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, the US (Donald Trump vs Rex Tillerson vs the Pentagon, all singing in a different key), Israel, Syria, North and South Korea, China and Russia have all joined a chaotic poker game with an absent or invisible dealer.

And that’s just the East, Near and Far. What about Europe and Britain? What about Africa?

And what about the West as a whole, under American leadership? A “confirms some of the worst fears of foreign policy analysts in the US and Europe that Trump’s “America first” approach, combined with his volatile and irascible personality, is weakening cohesion among western democracies.” The post-World War II order produced what appeared to be an enduring consensus among developed nations that relied for its cohesion, its “unity,” on the leadership role of the US. “The survey of opinion in 134 countries showed a record collapse in approval for the US role in the world, from 48% under Obama to 30% after one year of Donald Trump — the lowest level Gallup has recorded since beginning its global leadership poll over a decade ago.”

Clearly the unity of the past is behind us, probably unrecoverable. What will be the unity — or multiple unities — of the future?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔčÏ’s editorial policy.

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The characteristic scent of Arabic perfumed oils linger around the entrance of Selfridges, a high-end Central London department store, where abaya-clad women from the Arabian Peninsula can often be seen searching for their latest luxury item in the Louis Vuitton and Gucci boutiques. Fashion-interested and with money to spend, Gulf Arabs also flock to the iconic British shopping mecca Harrods, which was bought by the Qatari royal family in 2010 from Egyptian businessman Mohamed al-Fayed.

Wealthy Middle Eastern consumers have long enjoyed shopping in European fashion capitals, but now Muslim fashion designers are increasingly claiming their own space in the world’s fashion scene.

“Islamic chic” is a fast-growing market. The State of the Global Islamic Economy 2014-2015  shows that Muslim consumers spent around $266 billion on clothing globally in 2013. And Thomson Reuters, which co-commissioned the study, estimates that figure will increase to about $484 billion by 2019.

Aab in East London

Aab, one of the world’s leading Islamic clothing , opened its first boutique in East London this . Complementing its online offering, the physical store opened its doors to a crowd of 2,000 people eagerly awaiting its arrival.

The opening of Aab’s London shop is the first in an international long-term growth strategy that includes expanding to key international fashion and financial hubs in the Middle East, Malaysia and Indonesia over the next three years. “With the success of our first flagship boutique in London, we plan to open more in the UK and overseas due to the demand for our brand,” says Nazmin Alim, creative director of Aab.

“[With] the population of young Muslims rising, they have [significant] spending power as this is the generation that are now independent, working and exposed to media in more ways than one,” Alim adds.

As Islamic fashion is becoming a global industry, plenty is also happening on the couture front. The Islamic Fashion Festival, which in 2006 in Kuala Lumpur, has been held 17 times to date in cities that include New York, London, Jakarta, Dubai and Singapore. Names like Sydney-based , Rabia Z and young trend-aware Muslim fashion lovers, dubbed “hijabistas,” are leading a modest fashion revolution with their own brands, garnering hundreds of thousands of followers on social media in the process.

“The new younger generation want to be modern without compromising on their halal lifestyle,” says Salma Chaudhry of The Halal Cosmetics Company, which in 2013. “We’re in a society where any and all information is at our fingertips, ladies are chatting and sharing information on social media particularly about topics like beauty and fashion all the time.”

Chaudhry, who will be speaking about her cosmetics range in Saudi Arabia, France and Azerbaijan this year, predicts both the Islamic fashion and beauty industries are on the cusp of something big.

“Muslims of this generation are embracing their identity, and businesses that do not cater to this huge consumer sector will be left behind. I think that halal cosmetics will be as readily available as any other types of beauty products pretty soon. The industry is still in its infancy and the future is about to boom,” she says.

QUIRKY TURBAN HAUTE COUTURE

 is a Stockholm-based fashion designer who focuses on quirky turban interpretations as an alternative way of wearing the hijab. Raised in a religious Muslim family from Jordan—“I hated my mother’s baggy and shapeless clothes,” she says—Aldebe studied design at high school and started creating dresses for friends’ graduations and weddings at an early age.

DESIGNER IMAN ALDEBE. PHOTO: BINNIAM ESKENDER

Each one of her trendy pieces is hand-made. Her collections are sold in exclusive galleries in Sweden, Paris and Dubai. “I’m always at the forefront because I’ve worked with Muslim fashion during a large part of my upbringing. It used to be men designing women’s clothes but now women have taken over,” she says.

The daughter of a religious leader and politician in Sweden, Aldebe’s groundbreaking quest to modernize Muslim fashion provoked the conservative views of Islamist and right-wing extremists alike. “If you are paving the way for something new, you can count with a certain resistance,” she says.

When one of Aldebe’s female friends attended Polishögskolan (Police College) in Sweden and needed a suitable hijab, Aldebe was commissioned to create the hijab that now forms part of the official Swedish police uniform. The task, complicated by security considerations, resulted in is a sleek, stylish, yet highly functional hijab that seamlessly blends with the required headgear. So far, just one Swedish police officer wears it for work. But Aldebe will soon be creating an official military hijab for the Swedish army (in camouflage), as well as another for women working in pharmacies and hospitals.

CHALLENGING NORMS

Aldebe is currently working on her first Islamic clothing line for both men and women for the Arabian Peninsula, particularly Riyadh and Dubai. Combining Swedish style with long, traditional garments, her norm-breaking collection is all-white for both sexes, challenging the Gulf norm that women should wear black and men white. The white collection aims to strengthen women’s role in society and promote equality. “Sometimes, clothes have a larger impact than politics,” she says.

Making art out of fashion, Aldebe says, has always been a tool for her to try to eliminate prejudices and open up the eyes of the fashion world to other cultures and religious influences. “I want to show the emergence of strong, individualistic, intelligent, independent and driven women with a different background from the Swedish one, and that are Muslim,” she explains. “I’ve wanted to eradicate the image of the oppressed Muslim woman that voluntarily isolates herself from society to live on welfare and produce babies.”

DESIGNER: Iman Aldebe. Photo: Hector Melo

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the second largest consumer of Muslim clothing in the world, $22.5 billion in 2013. In first place is Turkey, with $39.3 billion spent on the merchandise in the same year. “When I was asked to change UAE’s traditional outfits, I discovered that the men’s traditional garments have remained the same for centuries. But colored female abayas are now slowly being accepted,” Aldebe says.

“Since I’m not confined to a certain norm, it’s been easier for me to think outside of the box and to create something modern, particularly after the Arab Spring,” she continues. But she has stuck with the wealthy region’s penchant for silk, pearls and Swarovski crystals, which features heavily in her newest designs.

Anas Sillwood, manager of Jordan-based Islamic clothing company , points out that most women, however, don’t wear haute couture. “The majority of Muslim women wouldn’t wear turbans. But Muslim women are looking for nice evening gowns to wear to special occasions,” he says. “At Shukr, we’re trying to meet some really pressing needs in the Muslim community.”

“Shukr’s sales are highest in the summer months because Muslims can’t find mainstream alternatives. In the winter months, sales slow down because the clothes become more modest in mainstream stores,” says Sillwood.

“Ideally, Muslims have a very balanced approach towards clothing—they want to look presentable and beautiful, but they don’t become obsessed with it, or with the latest fashion,” he adds.

BEYOND “MUSLIM COOL”

The term “Muslim Cool” relating to fashion was coined by ethnologist Leila Karin Österlind in her doctoral thesis on Muslim fashion that has the working title, “Next Year in Dubai Incha Allah. Islamic Fashion and Muslim Cool.” The concept works in two ways: It includes how trendy hijabistas like Instagram star Mariam Moufid and fashion blogger Dina Tokio dress, as well as the way in which Muslim fashion affect mainstream Western brands—for example, H&M’s offering of harem trousers and Moroccan-style kaftans in its collections.

A design by Jordan fashion house Shukr. Photo supplied

Österlind points to how this has also infiltrated wider male fashion: The now-infamous hipster beard, the height of its popularity occurring a few years ago and much-spotted in capital cities worldwide, was originally an expression of Muslim Cool. According to Österlind, there are mainly two trends that are taking over the global Muslim fashion scene: tight outfits combined with wraps or turbans and Khaleeji-influenced (Gulf style) abayas, and large, built-up hijabs. “Being a Muslim today is increasingly connected to consumption,” Österlind Swedish newspaper DN in April.

While valid as a description of previous trends, both “Muslim Cool” and “Mipsterz” are now dated terms according to Aldebe—as is “Muslim fashion” itself. She says that Islamic-inspired fashions are becoming more and more mainstream.

“The pressure for fashion profiles and celebrities to always be the first to deliver inspiring looks has contributed to an increased acceptance of the unknown. Trends shift so quickly today, so people are happy to get inspired from other cultures and religions,” she says.

Sillwood believes Islamic international fashion companies will emerge to compete in the fashion industry. He says that Turkish companies, while much bigger than Western Islamic clothing companies, are heavily influenced by Turkish fashion, which is not appreciated everywhere, and they are unlikely to become major international brands.

“Overall, the Islamic fashion industry will become more and more similar to the mainstream fashion industry—in terms of presentation and style of clothing. Because of the globalization of Western mono-culture, it is probably Western Islamic clothing companies that have the greatest chance of becoming major international fashion companies,” he says.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔčÏ’s editorial policy.

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