Followers of the Baha'i faith pictured with the late Vice President and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Rashid. Courtesy: Motivate
Followers of the Baha'i faith pictured with the late Vice President and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Rashid. Courtesy: Motivate
Followers of the Baha'i faith pictured with the late Vice President and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Rashid. Courtesy: Motivate
Followers of the Baha'i faith pictured with the late Vice President and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Rashid. Courtesy: Motivate

From Sikh to Hindu, new book profiles ten diverse faiths of the UAE


John Dennehy
  • English
  • Arabic

When Surender Kandhari first came to Dubai in 1975, there were only a handful of Sikhs in what was then a small fishing village centred around the Creek.

The UAE was barely a few years old but tolerance was already an ingrained part of life.

“I never had any problems,” said Mr Kandhari, chairman of the Sikh temple in Dubai. “Everyone who saw me treated me well. We were accepted.”

Today, more than 100,000 Sikhs live in the UAE. The GuruNanak Darbar temple that opened in Jebel Ali Village seven years ago gives free food to anyone who turns up and, on Fridays, tens of thousands pass through its doors.

It is this freedom to live and worship so epitomised by the Sikh story that is the subject of a new book about faiths living together in the UAE.

Inside the Krishna temple in Dubai during Diwali. Courtesy: Motivate
Inside the Krishna temple in Dubai during Diwali. Courtesy: Motivate

Celebrating Tolerance: Religious Diversity in the United Arab Emirates is edited by Reverend Andy Thompson, chaplain at St Andrew's Church in Abu Dhabi, and launched this week — during Pope Francis's historic visit to the UAE.

It charts the experiences of ten different faiths, including Hindu, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Sikh, Jewish, Baha'i and Christian, who have come to work, live and coexist peacefully. It also examines some of the rituals involved in each faith.

Other communities have welcomed, guided and supported us  and offered us their friendship

Many came here decades ago and the Christian Armenian community is one. By 1950, as the first oil exploration camps were established in what was then the Trucial States, a handful of Armenians came as engineers, car mechanics and tradesmen to support the burgeoning energy industry.

By the 1970s, this handful had turned into a wave because of Lebanon’s civil war and the Iranian revolution that prompted Armenians leaving these countries for the Emirates. The first Armenian mass took place in 1977, the first church was built in Sharjah in 1996 and the Armenians were officially recognised as a community. Today, Armenians here number in the thousands.

Celebrating Tolerance: Religious Diversity in the United Arab Emirates was released this week during the Pope's visit to the UAE. Courtesy: Motivate
Celebrating Tolerance: Religious Diversity in the United Arab Emirates was released this week during the Pope's visit to the UAE. Courtesy: Motivate

The Jewish community is also profiled in the book. Jews have lived in the UAE for decades and there are now thought to be close to 200 in the UAE.

They come from across the globe and work as teachers, artists, academics and doctors. The community is organic and functions without teachers, rabbis or formal institutions. They live mainly in Dubai, where there is a small synagogue.

“Our community has nothing of the grandness or scale of the old Jewish communities that once lived in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq and Egypt,” members of the community write in the book.

“We have come here as individuals generally not expecting to find other Jews and imagining that our Jewish identities may, by sad necessity, be diminished. To find it here again gives it a fresh and even primal quality.”

Evangelical preacher Jim Burgess addresses worshippers in Dubai on Easter Sunday. Courtesy: Motivate
Evangelical preacher Jim Burgess addresses worshippers in Dubai on Easter Sunday. Courtesy: Motivate

The leadership of the Jewish community in the UAE also welcomed the book's publication, saying it was an important milestone for them. "It is our first opportunity to share the wonderful story of our life in the UAE with a local audience," it told The National.

“Other communities have welcomed, guided and supported us, and offered us their friendship as we have built our flourishing community.”

Mr Thompson is also the author of Jesus of Arabia and Christianity in the UAE, a book that shows the links between Islam and Christianity. He believes the new book confronts stereotypes that the Arabian Gulf is home to just one religion.

Aram I, head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, opens a community centre in Abu Dhabi. Courtesy: Motivate
Aram I, head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, opens a community centre in Abu Dhabi. Courtesy: Motivate

“There is a huge diverse, thriving community here and the good news is that they have been quietly living the values of the tolerance and mutual respect for decades,” said Mr Thompson.

“They had come to the UAE as migrant guest workers and although we are all strangers in a strange land, we have each created a spiritual home.

“In the present climate of intolerance in the West and in other parts of the Middle East, the story of the UAE gives us hope.”

The publication of the book is also timely. The UAE is marking the Year of Tolerance and the book was given to Pope Francis during his visit to the UAE this week. An anti-discrimination law ­— criminalising all forms of prejudice on the grounds of religion, caste, creed, doctrine, race, colour or ethnic origin — that came into force in 2015 had also helped improve the spirit of tolerance.

The book has also been endorsed by Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, Minister of Tolerance, who has written the foreword.

“That wonderful fact of tolerance deserves the celebration accorded by this splendid book,” he said.

"I daresay that we will learn something new about our own religion as well as much about religions different from our own.

“Without our active attention, tolerance can swiftly vanish. Let the essays in this book inspire tolerance in perpetuity."

Celebrating Tolerance: Religious Diversity in the United Arab Emirates is published by Motivate and costs Dh145.

The 10 faiths

The Armenians: Christian Armenians arrived from the 1950s to work primarily on the oil exploration camps. The first formal mass was said in 1977 and today a community numbering in the thousands has its own church, school and hall.

The Baha'i: the first Baha'is, a faith that originally grew in Iran, moved here from neighbouring Gulf countries in the 1940s. They operate through a system of local assemblies.

Buddhists: There are close to 500,000 Buddhists in the UAE while a Buddhist temple opened in 2009.

Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church: Many Copts came to the UAE from Egypt in the 1970s. It is thought that as many as 30,000 Egyptian Christian Copts live in the UAE.

Evangelicals: They can trace their presence back to the 19th century with nurses and doctors coming here to help medical needs of people here. There are several places of worship across the country.

Hindus: There are sereral Hindu temples in Dubai with hundreds of thousands practising the Hindu faith in the UAE.

Jews: A small community of about 200 Jews live in the UAE but this could be higher. There is a synagogue in Dubai.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: The church was formally recognised by Dubai in 1993 – the first such recognition in the Arabian Gulf region.

Roman Catholicism: The first church opened in Abu Dhabi in 1965. Now there about one million Catholics living here.

Sikhs: The first Sikh temple opened in 2012 and there are about 100,000 living in the UAE.

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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What: The Al Burda Festival
When: November 14 (from 10am)
Where: Warehouse421,  Abu Dhabi
The Al Burda Festival is a celebration of Islamic art and culture, featuring talks, performances and exhibitions. Organised by the Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development, this one-day event opens with a session on the future of Islamic art. With this in mind, it is followed by a number of workshops and “masterclass” sessions in everything from calligraphy and typography to geometry and the origins of Islamic design. There will also be discussions on subjects including ‘Who is the Audience for Islamic Art?’ and ‘New Markets for Islamic Design.’ A live performance from Kuwaiti guitarist Yousif Yaseen should be one of the highlights of the day.