Just over a year ago, The Gazelle announced that Sheikha Lubna bint Khalid Al Qasimi, then incumbent as the UAE’s first Minister of State for Tolerance, would speak at the 2017 Commencement. I reacted to Al Qasimi’s appointment with two reflections. First, how fitting that a Minister of Tolerance would address a cohort of students whose very existence in the UAE hinges on the country’s willingness to show tolerance to multiple disparate minority groups. Second, how encouraging it is that this country has such a ministry in the first place.

A year ago I knew nothing about the Ministry of Tolerance — neither its purview nor its purpose. Perhaps this fact was due to my junior self’s disconnectedness from the legislative processes that govern this country; perhaps it derived from the absence of comparable ministries in most governments around the world. When Reuters broke the news that the UAE would create ministries of Happiness, Tolerance and Youth, it acknowledged that readers might dismiss the move as a bit“New Age”.

Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak al Nahyan, who replaced Al Qasimi in October 2017, said at this year’s Emirates Airline Festival of Literature that to understand the true meaning of tolerance, people must be willing to "open the books we haven't read, be willing to read books, comprehend them and appreciate what we read.". I accepted this invitation and embarked on a mission to learn more about the UAE’s position on and definition of tolerance. I read the [UAE Constitution’s English translation], Articles 25 through 44 of which concern “Freedoms, Rights and Public Duties”.

Not one of the 20 Articles in this section, or any other Article of the constitution, affirms tolerance as a government priority or a right granted to UAE citizens and non-citizen residents of the country. Instead, the UAE affirms its commitment to tolerance by decreeing, at irregular intervals, new federal laws from which the Ministry of Tolerance derives its legitimacy and through which it glimpses its purview. One such piece of legislation, Federal Decree Law No. 2 of 2015, offers a window into the UAE government’s understanding of tolerance.

That law begins — Chapter 1, Article 1 — by defining two key terms: “Discrimination: Any distinction, restriction, exclusion or preference among individuals or groups based on the grounds of religion, creed, doctrine, sect, caste, race, colour or ethnic origin” and “[r]eligions: The divine religions; Islam, Christianity and Judaism.” The law then stipulates in Chapter 1, Article 6 that “[a]ny person, who commits any act of discrimination of any form by any means of expression or by any other means, shall be sentenced to imprisonment for a period not less than five years, and by a fine not less than five hundred thousand dirhams and not exceeding one million dirhams or either one of these two penalties” and imbues this law with Sheikh Khalifa’s authority.

Federal Decree Law No. 2 of 2015 shows the UAE’s commitment to tolerance. The decree’s definition of tolerance, however, diverges from putative common sense understandings of the term. I hold one such common sense understanding of tolerance, which I believe must involve protections for persons who are different not just because of their religious beliefs, but also because of other immutable aspects of their personality. It seems noteworthy that the UAE government sees its commitment to tolerance above all as a commitment to countering religious extremism. A section of the UAE government’s official website that outlines the nation’s “[g]overnment of the future” expounds on the law’s purview: “The law is intended to provide a solid legislative ground for the environment of tolerance, co-existence and acceptance. […] The law criminalises any acts that trigger religious hatred and/or insult religion through any form of expression, which covers speech and the written word, books, pamphlets or online media.” That entry then lists three UAE initiatives that, it argues, promote tolerance in the UAE: The International Institute for Tolerance “seeks to provide solutions to the challenges of extremism and promote the UAE as a role model for tolerance.” Hedayah, formerly the International Centre for Excellence, “serves as the premier international hub for policy makers, practitioners and researchers of Counter Violent Extremism (CVE)” and “address[es] current threats in CVE by organising capacity building activities and workshops.” Finally, the Sawab Center “works with religious leaders, organisations, businesses and youth in order to amplify their voices, challenge extremism doctrines of hate and intolerance and demonstrate the true values of the UAE's community.”

In the UAE government’s eyes, then, a commitment to tolerance is a commitment to religious tolerance above all. I hope that my exploration, however juvenile, of the UAE’s constitution and decree laws completes the task that Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak al Nahyan set when he called for us to learn the “true meaning” of tolerance by reading texts that come from other contexts and carry different ideological baggage. One text from which I learned the most about tolerance is one that promulgates a different moral framework: Sophocles’ Ancient Greek tragedy Antigone.

Antigone wants to bury her dead brother, Polyneices, who committed treason against Thebes. Kreon, now King of Thebes, forbids anyone from burying Polyneices. The penalty for transgressing Kreon’s order is death. Nevertheless, Antigone buries her brother. Explaining her actions to her sister, Ismene, Antigone warns Ismene, but also the audience: “Don’t fear for me; guide your own destiny aright.” Antigone knows that justice for some is justice for none. She recognizes that her brother has broken the law, but she refuses to accept the state’s odious mistreatment of Polyneices because of his pariah status. Antigone reminds us that sometimes incongruencies arise between what is legal and what is moral.

Federal Decree Law No. 2 of 2015 safeguards the Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — from blasphemy, which it defines as a form of hate speech. The decree protects followers of those three religions who would otherwise have little recourse if a person decided to disparage and mock them because of their faith. This commitment to sheltering a community from hate speech is laudable, and I can only hope that as the UAE grows, it will protect more and more communities under the rubric of criminalizing hate speech.

The UAE government counters all “discrimination against individuals or groups based on religion, caste, doctrine, race, colour or ethnic origin.” But we have still not created a truly tolerant society. A vast panoply of characteristics can still make a UAE citizen or non-citizen resident a target of discrimination: being queer, belonging to any religion other than the three Abrahamic religions that the government recognizes, being South or South East Asian, being poor, being female, and more. The UAE might benefit from a more expansive definition of tolerance that involves criminalizing discrimination against sexual minorities. The country’s laws may make it illegal to have sex outside of marriage, but no law criminalizes same-sex love.

I leave the UAE in two weeks, after having spent almost four years navigating the vicissitudes of being a queer man in this country. While I faced discrimination over those four years because of a part of my identity that I can do nothing to change, I recognize that as a white male expatriate in this environment, I enjoyed great privilege. This fact reminds me of a letter I once read in the preface to Frederick Douglass’ autobiography. In that letter, Wendell Phillips, Esq., recognizes that Douglass endured milder hardships than most other enslaved U.S. Americans. The letter asks us to “hear, then, what it is at its best estate — gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture.” Phillips’ attitude gives me hope that I can speak for queer persons in the Emirates while remaining cognizant of my comparative privileges.

The UAE has a unique opportunity to protect everyone who calls it home. As one of the Arab World’s most forward-looking nations — as a country so committed to diversity and inclusiveness that it commissioned a Ministry for Tolerance — the UAE sits on the cusp of Arab allyship. A UAE that commits to tolerating, accepting and protecting queer persons is a UAE that works toward creating the future this country seems to want: a community of inclusiveness, vibrancy, and excellence.