As the United Arab Emirates government prepares to switch to a two and a half day weekend (Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday) to better align the country’s business interests with the global economy, the decision by the emirate of Sharjah to keep Friday as a whole day off appears anomalous. By tweeting a verse from the Quran calling on believers to leave business and attend Friday prayer, Jawaher al-Qasimi, the wife of Sharjah’s ruler, seemingly confirmed a religious motivation for the move to a 3-day weekend. Sharjah, the third largest of the emirates, has traditionally had a conservative leaning on both political and religious issues. As the pace of reforms quicken in the UAE, the emirate, which has a smaller expatriate population than the emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai and therefore doesn’t need to cater so much to these interests, is differentiating itself through its conservatism and independent voice.
Sultan bin Muhammad al-Qasimi, an established historian who has ruled the emirate since 1972, is a member of the Federal Supreme Council, the highest constitutional authority of the UAE. Despite full integration with the federation, Sultan bin Muhammad decided to maintain Sharjah’s conservative and heritage credentials after the emirate briefly attracted package holidays, or tours, in the 1970s. UNESCO named Sharjah the cultural capital of the Arab world in 1998 and the World Book Capital City for 2019. Contrary to the rapid socioeconomic changes taking place in Abu Dhabi, including a new secular law and a relaxation on the sale of alcohol, Sharjah continues to strictly abide by sharia law and maintains its status as a “dry” emirate.
On regional affairs, too, Sharjah has charted a more independent course than its larger neighbors, notably during the Iran-Iraq War when the emirate adopted a neutral position toward Iran, along with Dubai, to maintain trade relations. Dubai remained neutral for other reasons as well, including its position as a transit hub for supplies, interests related to its newly constructed port of Jebel Ali, and local community ties. Abu Dhabi, however, held a pro-Iraqi stance, in line with policy from the newly formed Gulf Cooperation Council.
Sharjah is endowed with far lower oil reserves than either Abu Dhabi or Dubai. Its gross domestic product in 2018, at about $26.5 billion, was around 90% less than Abu Dhabi’s at $253 billion, and around 75% less than Dubai’s at $108 billion. Sharjah could therefore be said to be relatively immune, along with the other smaller northern emirates of Fujairah, Ajman, and Umm al-Quwain, from the more cosmopolitan and commercial calculations of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Although, like Dubai, a large portion of Sharjah’s economic activity relies on real estate, and it is a key center for higher education in the UAE. Etihad Rail, the UAE’s national railway network launched in 2009, is being built in three phases, linking Ghweifat to Fujairah, and will include Sharjah as part of its future expansion. The rail infrastructure is expected to connect the UAE with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman by 2024. Shurooq, the Sharjah Investment and Development Authority, is developing sectors such as retail, leisure, hospitality, and tourism. Consequently, there is likely to be a degree of economic convergence with the other emirates over the coming years while Sharjah preserves its unique identity.
Another area where Sharjah reflects the trend in broader UAE, and Gulf, politics is in its transition toward a younger leadership. Sultan bin Ahmed al-Qasimi became the new deputy ruler in August, following the death of Ahmed bin Sultan al-Qasimi in July 2020. Sultan bin Ahmed was educated in the United States, giving him an affinity for the UAE’s most important security partner, and has been chairman of Sharjah National Oil Corporation and the waste management company Wekaya since 2010. He is also chairman of property developer Arada and Sharjah Media Centre. In an echo of Dubai’s mega projects, the $38 million Al Majaz Amphitheatre was completed on an artificial island in Sharjah’s creek in 2014 and was the venue of the first-ever Sharjah Events Festival in December.
The biggest difference between Sharjah and the other emirates appears to be in the willingness of certain members of Sharjah’s royal family to break ranks with the political consensus but without transgressing the state’s red lines, i.e., only on specific issues that are de-coupled from UAE national security. For example, as the UAE unveiled new plans to offer citizenship to a select group of foreigners in late January, Jawaher al-Qasimi, who also heads the Supreme Council for Family Affairs in Sharjah, took to Twitter to highlight the fact that Emirati women do not have the same right to automatically pass on citizenship to their children as Emirati men do. She wrote, “Naturalization of the children of female citizens. Demand. Employment of Emiratis. Demand.”
In another case, a member of the Sharjah royal family and organizer of International Dubai Fashion Week, Hend Faisal al-Qasimi, called out Saurabh Upadhyay, an Indian national working in the UAE in April 2020, for being “openly racist and discriminatory.” Unusually, she went on to publish a front-page opinion piece in Gulf News on the topic. Her approach diverged considerably from the central government, which has not voiced such concerns in public, if at all, due to raison d’etat.
Sharjah tends to demonstrate a greater degree of autonomy than the UAE’s other emirates. While the overriding reason for this independent policy in the past has been to maintain important trade relations, contemporary political expression has been driven largely by a series of religious and economic issues. Responses have been tempered by state consolidation, care to avoid direct criticism, and room in the Emirati political system to cater to some diversity of political and religious thought for the purpose of maintaining national unity.
