Muslims must work to change the world’s perception of Islam, says Saudi princess

Princess Ameerah Al Taweel questions why Muslims should have to defend Islam for the actions of a minority of extremists at the Arab Media Forum in Dubai. Reem Mohammed / The National

“Allahu Akbar” is one of the most powerful phrases in Islam and it’s in danger of being hijacked by terrorists and those who have twisted the religion, Princess Ameerah Al Taweel told the Arab Media Forum on Wednesday.

“There were 73 million searches on Twitter about Islam or Muslims between May 2015 and May 2016 illustrating that people are interested in find out about the religion,” she said. “However, the first five pages on Google show images of people blowing things up while shouting the simple phrase that we use every day and therefore it has become tainted.”

The Saudi philanthropist and entrepreneur called on all Muslims to work to change the perception of Islam around the world.

She pointed out there are 280 million social media accounts in the Arab world across the different platforms and that if everyone posted a positive status about Islam it would have a positive effect.

The Princess also questioned why Muslims should feel the need to defend Islam on social media.

“A study has shown that only 12% of people have a negative view of Islam, 83% are neutral so why do we defend against a small minority?” she asked.

Ohood bint Khalfan Al Roumi, the UAE Minister for Happiness, in her first address since being appointed to the post said that happiness is not a philosophy, it’s hard work and governs the work of the government as a whole.

She emphasised the fact that happiness is not only her job and the job of her ministry it is the job of all government ministries and ministers.

Ms Al Roumi countered the criticism that has been levelled at the idea of such a posting. We are trying to build hope in the region. If there’s a region that needs hope and happiness it’s ours. We are trying to improve the lives of our citizens and we hope this will be an inspiration for other societies to follow.”

Highlighting how seriously the government is taking the issue of happiness she explained that “there is a happiness majilis in all federal government entities and this council looks into all services to make sure they are aligned with the happiness directives.”

The executive director of innovation co-ordinates the activities of this happiness council.

In all government departments there are changes. Customer facing staff are moving away from being measured on how satisfied their customers are to how happy they are. This is a big change and is now an integral part of government services.

When asked how happy she is herself, Ms Al Roumi said, “thankfully I’m very happy. Of course I’m not laughing around the clock, happiness doesn’t mean you have to laugh around the clock, happiness means we wake up every day and make a conscious decision to be positive and happy. We make a conscious effort to limit negativity and outside influences.”