I've noticed a great deal of discussion in the press lately about a UAE National Identity. What puzzles me is that in all the rhetoric on that topic, I haven't seen anything describing what the UAE wants that identity to be. Two issues always surface: language and expats. Leaders are chagrined that Arabic is not spoken more often and blame the hoards of foreign workers for dilution of the culture. Finally, there has been absolutely no assessment of the current perception of the UAE by the rest of the world and how that differs from the identity the UAE wants to promote.
If you want to take the journey of developing a National Identity, it seems to me that you first have to determine the current status of that Identity and then define what needs to be changed to meet your ideal. That will require that leaders hear some rather unpleasant criticism, something the Arab culture is not good at giving or receiving.
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