The Louvre Abu Dhabi, a lesson in tolerance

Yesterday, we went to Abu Dhabi to the ultra-swank Emirates Palace Hotel to see the Louvre collection. There were about 20 sculptures, artifacts and paintings, and the guide did a quick blurb at each one.

Strangely enough, a lot of the art had a sort of religious aspect to it:

"This is Buddha as he should appear before attaining nirvana"
"As you can see, the Christ child is holding a copy of the Torah"

"And so Esther visited the king, who hated Jews, in order to make an appeal for herself and her people. This is when she fainted from relief."

And so on...

There's something a bit amazing about standing next to a woman in a niqab (black cloth facemask with just the eyes showing) in a Muslim country, looking at a huge sculpture of Jesus!

But then, I shouldn't have been all that surprised. My Arabic teachers seem to know more about Biblical history than I do, and I've had a few interesting e-mails from a friend who has studied more aspects of Islam than I have (not difficult, since I haven't done much religious study). An excerpt from one of his e-mails:

I know the references in the Qu'ran...
Allahhomma
Yeshua (Jesus)
Budhon (Buddha)
Yahweh
Dus (Deus)
Yahanano-yamanan (I still don't know what this is)

Yes, it is in several practices an amazing beautiful religion. Muslims across the Middle East have quite developed relationships with Christianity and Judaism as Mohammed actually interacted with these societies, argued with representatives from them and, in the case of one church in particular, was sheltered by them while he fled locals who sought to kill him. Consequently Muslims revere and protect this one church somewhere southwest of modern day Israel, and elder Muslim scholars enjoy a regular audience with the Pope toward interfaith matters.

(I guess if anyone can shed light on Mr. Yahanano, that would be awesome!)

What you see in the news, and what we North Americans have been tainted by since 9/11, this sort of fear/intolerance of Arabs is something that I was actually surprised to have to "get over". Was it un-nerving to see veiled women everywhere (and where do you look when you're trying to talk to someone in a full-face veil)? Yes. Was there some conditioned fear response when a man with his face wrapped in a goutra walks past? Yes. But it hasn't been that difficult to overcome.

Whoever chose the exhibited pieces that we saw yesterday obviously had education and tolerance in mind, and I think it's important to continue to encourage this positivity, while discouraging some of the misconceptions that we have been inundated with, and still are inundated with, by the media.

A bit of a digression there. Sorry... Anyway, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, along with some other museums, is going to be built on Saadiyat Island, with a probable end result somewhere around 2018. Well, you heard it here first! The plans for the project are all on display as well, and it looks quite amazing, with every building looking a bit like something out of Star Trek.

And on that note: I'm not sure if I'll have time to blog from Canada, but I will try. We still haven't packed and we're at T-23.5 for takeoff... so I should get back to work!