Ghanim al-Sulaiti is a vegan entrepreneur from Qatar. He combines his passion for conscious living and business through the vegan startups he has created. In 2016, Ghanim co-founded Cambodia’s first plant-based vegan cafe, VIBE. Later he went on to co-found Qatar’s first fully vegan cafe, Evergreen Organics, at The Pearl, which is a community space for sharing information about mindful eating and a healthy lifestyle. Additionally, Ghanim is the founder of an ethical skincare line, Botany.

A civil engineer by training, Ghanim is now working as a site engineer for the Red Line South Doha Metro Project. He just launched Enbat Holdings, an investment company, which specializes in vegan business investments of all kinds.

AGSIW spoke to Ghanim about vegan living in Qatar, the conflict between veganism and the religious tradition of eating meat, and young entrepreneurs in the Gulf.

AGSIW: As a tunnel engineer, how did you come up with the idea to open a vegan cafe in Doha?

Ghanim: It was my personal transformation that led me to explore new ways of living and a true lifestyle I never thought existed. However, I think studying to be an engineer in the United States at the time of my transformation made an impact on my journey. I came across a book that talked about veganism back in 2013, which led me to become a vegan a year after that date. I also believe that after my work as an engineer my duty is to go back to my normal life and play a social role by being part of the community and the universe, by giving back to Earth as a human being.

My becoming a vegan, personally, and the circumstances that I was born into being from Doha, where there were not many options for me to enjoy social life as a vegan, led me to open up a cafe. I was going to a lot of restaurants around Doha when I became vegan and it was challenging for me to find vegan food and to talk to the waitresses about my diet, to inform and educate them how they could handle my food in different ways. For me, this challenge made me open a vegan restaurant. I felt that I wouldn’t be able to survive in Doha if this continues. I needed a place where I could let go and just choose whatever I wanted on the menu. As a vegan, you stop trusting the industry as a whole and once you know what goes on in the food industry, you stop wanting to participate in it.

AGSIW: Is there a shortage of vegan food options in Qatar?

Ghanim: Definitely, there has been a lack of vegan food in Qatar. That being said, there is also vegan food in Qatar. You can eat a fruit platter and it’s vegan; you can eat hummus and it’s vegan; you can eat falafel and it’s vegan, drink sodas and still vegan. However, what has been lacking are healthy options that are wholefood plant-based made from real food without additives – made with consciousness. You can go around Doha and create your own vegan dishes but these don’t necessarily give you the nutrients you need, or they don’t taste really nice. Are they inspiring foods?

What I found as a vegan is that food inspires me to work better and give more to the community. The best way for me to transfer this inspiration to my community was to create a space that has all the things I’ve learned in my journey, whether going to Bali or elsewhere in Asia, and bringing all the things I learned about being conscious, ecofriendly, and aware to the consumer. I knew I became vegan because of many things, not just the food, but all the different things that go with the production of it. Evergreen Organics is not just a cafe; it is a place where we make our own products, cheeses. We sell ethical brands; we use eco-friendly material from our packaging to our interior and furniture. We recycle paper, print on soy ink. We make sure the picture is complete and not just the food.

AGSIW: Some people argue that becoming a vegan is against the Gulf Arab norm and religious traditions of eating meat (e.g. Zabaih). What do you think about this?

Ghanim: I get this question all the time. Being from the Gulf and knowing how strong our beliefs are, I had to find the real answer to these questions and did some research. The actual act that made this relationship we have with meat, chicken, and fish is based on a wrong story and way of thinking. If you go back to the real stories like that of Eid al-Adha, it is meant for you to sacrifice something that is valuable for you. What was valuable at that time for Prophet Ibrahim was his son, not the actual sheep. He wasn’t sacrificing the sheep, but the most valuable thing to him. We just took one side of the story neglecting the actual reason behind it. Nowadays, meat doesn’t mean anything to us. Everybody can afford meat; everybody can sacrifice meat. The meaning is that you have to feel the sacrifice, not the animal itself, to achieve that goal. We are not doing that anymore. Eid al-Adha is just one act that we’ve duplicated for years and years without attention to its true meaning. Nobody now is watching how the sheep are being killed. People are just putting in the money and letting somebody else do all the work for them. So where is the sacrifice?

Traditionally, if you go back to the region 60 or 50 years ago – and I am not talking even a 100 years ago – people didn’t use to eat meat, chicken, and fish that much. Why? Because they used to go fishing for months to get fish; it wasn’t as simple as today. Also, they didn’t have refrigerators and freezers to store the food in. They had to make the effort to get it and eat it in the same day. People used to raise animals for years before killing them. The meat people ate used to mean something to them; they used to cry when losing their animals. They used to gather as a whole tribe or community to eat that dish, unlike now when four or five people sit down and eat meat casually. There used to be community values surrounding eating meat. People used to do this tradition a few times a year, in Eid and celebrations only. Now every day is a celebration; every day people have meat. So where is the value? We aren’t following culture or religion.

Going back to the Quran, vegetables are mentioned more than meat. Fruits and vegetables are always linked to Jannah [heaven]. You rarely see meat or chicken linked to Jannah. Fruit and vegetables are the food of Jannah. You also can’t compare people three thousand years ago to today. Some say humans were hunters; well, we were hunters because we were fighting for survival and in danger all the time, starving for months before eating raw pieces of meat. It was completely different; we are not in survival mode anymore.

AGSIW: Are you finding millennials more open than other age groups to trying out vegan food options? If so, why?

Ghanim: I have seen lots of age groups who are willing to hear the information about veganism and try out our food. I am sometimes shocked by how many vegans I see in Doha; I thought they never existed. Now you see whole Qatari families – fathers and mother, sons and daughters – that are all vegan and have been for years. It is shifting; Evergreen Organics has given them a platform to talk, shine, and come out as vegans.

AGSIW: Being a young entrepreneur, were you faced with any particular issues upon starting your business in Doha?

Ghanim: I have now five vegan businesses running; none of them was easy, none of them was not challenging. There is a lot of regulation and you have to understand the market, make sure your passion and ideas show. I don’t think this is specific to Qatar. In Cambodia, it was exactly the same thing for me. There isn’t a lot of difference between doing business in Qatar and internationally. However, there’s big support here in Qatar from the government. Governmental institutions like the Business Incubation Center, Qatar Airways, Qatar Foundation, and the biggest companies in Doha are trusting us because they know our business stands for an amazing cause. But there’s always a challenge; if business is easy then everybody will do it.

AGSIW: What role can local entrepreneurs play in their economies?

Ghanim: They are the wheel to bring new ideas and activate the market by making it more alive, vibrant, and healthy. Young entrepreneurs also bring out new concepts. And not just new concepts for the sake of new concepts, but sustainable solutions to sustain our humanity to make us better and healthier. As a vegan entrepreneur, I can see how every business I am doing is changing the industry in Qatar. I have a skincare business, cafe, factory, and vegan investment company. As long as you have a cause and a message to send, you can always make a great impact and have a role in the economy.

Check out Ghanim’s Instagram and Twitter feeds for more about his startups. To read more about Evergreen Organics, visit the website.

Mai Al-Farhan is a research associate at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.