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Silk City and Our Values
The road to Kuwait City in a 2006 photo. (Cajetan Barretto/Flickr)

Silk City and Our Values

Al-Qabas, Kuwait, September 2

One of my colleagues, the journalist Walid Al-Jassem, notably coined the notion that “everything beautiful takes time” – be it a commercial project, a novel, or even a new recipe. I can’t help but think of this statement in the context of Silk City: the new city being built in Kuwait, which will feature state-of-the-art infrastructure, convention centers, malls, ports, bridges and a 1,001-meter-high skyscraper. Drawing on Al-Jassem’s remark, I urge our decision-makers to make sure that they are prepared for this mega construction project and think through all of its challenges and implications before it opens up to the public. Unfortunately, something tells me that not enough planning has been done and not enough time has been invested in planning the “city of tomorrow.” For example, we recently learned that the Minister of Commerce ordered the removal of statues from one of the fairgrounds built in the city, under the pretext that they are “idols” that could encourage idolatry. Similarly, we heard that the Ministry of Education decided to ban certain university courses in which the word “gender” – which ministry officials mistakenly interpreted as “sex” – appeared in the syllabus. How can we claim to be building a modern, open, and forward-looking city, when such nonsensical decisions are being made on a regular basis? As if the people of our country live on another planet; they don’t know what television is, they don’t have smartphones, they aren’t able to surf the web, read books, or watch movies. How can we attract foreign investments when these are the things our elected officials spend their time worrying about? How is it possible to think of a higher authority that plans and supervises the construction of Silk City, while many of our senior leaders are still bound by pathetic rules and instructions? Our leaders are in dire need of a better way of working together. They cannot capitulate to the whims of esoteric figures located in our society’s fringes. We never have, and never will, call to violate our Muslim customs, traditions, and norms. But we are demanding that our leaders be forward-looking and adapt their worldview to today’s life; not the life lived by our ancestors hundreds of years ago. The issuance of the decree to start the construction of Silk City must be preceded by decrees related to encouraging and fostering a culture of freedom and coexistence, accepting and welcoming of others, and being tolerant of new ideas. That’s the only way that this ambitious project, and our nation’s long-term vision, will work. – Ahmed Al-Sarraf (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)

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