Profiles in Courage

September 11, 2001 had been a turning point for almost all people in the world. As regards me, I remember filling packing cases after a hard work’s day in the preparation of a significant move: to the Middle East; my departure scheduled only some ten days later. I was about to join a brand new faculty at Kuwait University when I switched on the TV and saw, again and again, Manhattan’s Twin Towers hit by airplane, and hit again, then collapsing. Only thirty minutes later I had received the first telephone call of a friend who tried to convince me that Kuwait would be safe and I certainly would not change my stance.

Well, I didn’t loose my courage although none of my new and most curious colleagues really expected me to come after 9/11. The new beginning was cumbersome but overall quite interesting. I met people from all over the world, a true international faculty. They had, though, very different profiles of courage. I learned to know rather anxious people who never really understood that Islam was a great cultural achievement and worth of being studied in detail. I met greedy people who were there for the money only. As usual in Academia, you always also meet people with highly problematic personalities, preventing any real collaboration.

The Kuwaitis were friendly and in essence very helpful. Some of my new colleagues from the West who had been there for some time complained, though, that they were snobby, considering themselves very special. Some allegedly even looked down to us, the western expats, coming for the money, the infidels.  

As I settled, I became aware of a would-be colleague from the Ministry of Health who was somehow a relative of our Dean. Dr. I. presented himself as a VIP within Kuwait’s health system, a former MP, even a journalist; in fact a multitalented member of Kuwait’s closed society. He arduously tried to get into the faculty. When having been seconded, he quickly demanded giving lectures on topics he could hardly be considered to be an expert of. When finally appointed as assistant professor, he managed to serve in two independent departments.

The first Arabic word I learned in this context was wasta, or insider relationship, old boys’ network. Dr. I. represented wasta. Asking him a favor, one almost immediately got satisfied. He knew people and places. In his own private clinic he had employed numerous humble and subservient domestics. He could always count on their slavish obedience.

While his remote relative, the Dean, knew about Dr. I. but could not prevent him from joining the faculty, problems with him quickly emerged. Absurd criticism of expats led to early cessation of contracts. Then he attacked his Kuwaiti colleagues. There is a highly questionable rule at Kuwait University that a permanent appointment does not depend on scientific publications but rather on passing the American board examination or an equivalent qualification. Dr. I. had dozens of publications (which have to be considered worthless from a scientific point of view) and he was a specialist who had passed an equivalent board exam in Ireland. But some of his rivals among the Kuwaiti colleagues had not. If they were too close to his arch enemy, the Dean, he liked to question their qualifications. He usually involved the media and even the University President, who received dozens of letters of complaint.

On an especially revealing and even instructional occasion Dr. I. sent a pages-long email to the culprit, a very likeable young colleague with certain talents as a University teacher, where he referred to a certain hadith which is well-known among adherents of Shi’a Islam: mubahala. He updated this email, in which he accused his colleague of lying about the assumed expiration of his part II board exam, on a daily basis and sent copies of it to the President’s office, the Ministry and all faculty members. He even sent copies to students.

Mubahala reminds the pious believer of an incident in 631 CE (9 AH) when a group of Arabic Christians argued with the Prophet Muhammad which of the two parties erred in its doctrine concerning the nature of Jesus. Muhammad, after likening Jesus’ miraculous birth to Adam’s creation, called the Christians to mubahala, or cursing, where each party should ask God to destroy the lying party and their families. He then covered himself and his family (Ahl al-Bayt), i.e., his daughter Fatima, her husband Ali and their two boys Hasan and Husayn with a cloak. The Christian envoy declined taking part in mubahala and chose instead to pay tribute.

As far as I know, I was the only western expat who recognized the tremendous impact of Dr. I.’s curse on our young Kuwaiti colleague. Muslims, who read through all the baseless accusations which were sent day after day to dozens of people, were deeply shocked. Mubahala is definitely exceeding the limits. Dr. I. did not fear any consequences for his ruthless defamation. But the young colleague eventually resigned and left the faculty for good.

Years later, I learned that Dr. I. is a pretty prominent liar himself. In 1990, Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein had invaded the tiny but oil-rich country in the corner of the Persian Gulf. A 15-year-old Kuwaiti nurse, who had only been introduced as Nayirah and who later turned out to be the Kuwaiti US ambassador’s daughter, testified to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990 that she herself had witnessed babies being taken out of incubators and being left on cold floors to die. The incubators were then taken to Baghdad. After the war, it became clear that another alleged witness, who had testified before the UN Security Council and the Congress that he had supervised the burial of 120 infants and personally buried 40 newborn babies who had died after taken from their incubators by Iraqi soldiers, had used false names and identities. This witness later revoked and admitted that he had never seen these atrocities. The alleged Dr. Issah Ibrahim was in fact our Dr. I., not a surgeon but rather a dentist. The notorious story is still remembered as the “incubator lie” which essentially served in motivating the World public to support America’s actions of throwing the Iraqi troops out of the Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm. More information can be found in L. May’s Crimes against Humanity: A Normative Account, Cambridge University Press 2004.

A notorious liar is suffering from a habit. A Kuwaiti lawyer who I once had asked for some support in a libel case, in which Dr. I. was involved, was very hesitant to accept the job. “Is it about libel?” he asked me. “But that’s the way how we do it in this society.”

I recently got to know that Dr. I. has lost a lawsuit in court against his faculty chairman and has now sued the University President.

 

Note: Profiles in Courage is the title of the 1955 Pulitzer-Prize-winning bestseller by John F. Kennedy, which describes the integrity and bravery of eight US senators. It profiles moral courage of highly reputed men in the history of the Unites States. Despite overall enthusiastic reception the later 35^th US president was quickly blamed that he was the only man who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book which had been ghostwritten for him. The book has actually been written by his speechwriter Ted Sorensen.

No Mercy

 

 

 

 

I know that I was always very privileged when living in the country. My Ramadans were usually nice times full of interesting discussions about religious matters and in general plenty of opportunities for widening my horizon.

However, the easy-going times of Ramadan are now definitely over. Since last year (when I had left the Middle East for good already) the Holy Month is moving into the summer months and will be observed for about 12 years during the scorching heat. A full circle of the Gregorian-Hijra calendar is 33 years, an entire generation. Since in Muslim countries the population is very young, few people have experienced the harsh conditions of fasting during the long, extremely hot and, what makes it even worse, humid days.

I have noticed that the weather conditions were very uncomfortable in Kuwait the last days. When living in Kuwait, I had expressed my concerns many times and usually was told by the older Kuwaiti colleagues that people were used to it. I doubt. Most people are anyway working indoors. My compassion and sympathy is especially with Bangladeshi, Pakistani or Indian construction workers who have to bear the brutal heat and humidity in full which is in fact unbearable when it comes to 40+ degrees and close to 100% humidity. I remember only one time that this condition had hit me. In my first September in Kuwait, it was very similar: water running outside the windows.

I was also wondering how it had been in Makkah, for example, when the Holy Qur’an had been revealed to the Prophet (PBUH). According to tradition, he’d got the first revelation in a cave of Hira on August 10, 610 CE when he was fasting in the month of Ramadan (I think that it was at the end of Ramadan, the last few days are still observed by the faithful as Laylat al-Qadr). On that very day this year Makkah reported 42 degrees maximum temperature and rather humid conditions.

So, people at that time were in fact kind of used to it. By Hijra of the Muslims in 622 CE, Ramadan had moved 132 days ahead, i.e., end of April, which still seems not to be very comfortable in Makkah (37 degrees, very humid this year).

Madinah may in fact be a bit different. It is also at a higher altitude, >600 meters above sea level.

In the old days in Kuwait without any air condition people would not have worked too much but used the long hours for contemplation and prayers. Badgirs, or wind towers, dominated the village, not skyscrapers as today (see Sharq Market as an example; they are found all over and on both sides of the Persian Gulf). The need for physical activity was at a very low level, I suppose.

Today’s greed and hyperactivity makes life so difficult during Ramadan in the summer. There might be a chance right now for a change in the society. Since I would expect even casualties this summer and in the coming years, authorities have to do something about it. Not only there but also in the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, even Saudi Arabia.

Before I left Kuwait, working hours during Ramadan had been shifted already to the early morning hours. Construction workers woke me up, not the muezzin. But then Ramadan was still in October, which may be nice in Kuwait, especially at the end of the month.

First published at Salmiya.

 

The Long Way

That the small but oil-rich state in the northwestern corner of the Persian Gulf has recently elected four female MPs in parliamentary elections has seemingly pushed Kuwait again into a forerunner position among its Arabic neighbors, in particular largely retarded Saudi-Arabia. However, the tiny democratic achievements are at risk due to continuous outrageous reactions of six notorious Islamists in the parliament, namely Faisal Al-Mislem, Waleed Al-Tabtabaie, Dhaifallah BuRamiah, Jamaan Al-Harbash, Mohammed Hayef and Mubarak Al-Walaan. As we read in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Watan Daily, they threaten to “walk out of the swearing-in ceremony of the two female MPs if they do not wear the hijab while taking the oath of office.” They even met to “discuss the legal procedures to be initiated against Aseel Al-Awadi and Rola Dashti for violating the Election Law which states that female candidates must stick to Islamic dress code during elections.”

It is definitely a long way until democratic values will eventually reach even the Arab world. Islamists will sooner or later vanish anyway. It is, however, a great shame that the same troublemakers of the former parliament are again abusing their largely serving role as ‘parliamentarians’ when intimidating others about an absurd issue, wearing hijab, or Islamic headscarf, whether it is inside or outside of Kuwait’s nice parliament building.

Kuwaiti Women Power

In the third parliamentary election within only three years, four women have won seats in the Kuwaiti parliament yesterday. Women have fought successfully for their voting rights in 2005. I remember with much sympathy the women of Kuwait demonstrating in front of the parliament when inside lawmakers eventually agreed to give them the right to vote. When I congratulated some of my female Kuwaiti colleagues, open-minded and westernized, well-educated young women, they argued, however, that the right to vote may only strengthen the influence of the Islamists in the country. The paradox may be explained as follows. Very traditional Kuwaiti family fathers have, of course, up to four wives and plenty of grown-up but still unmarried daughters who, in all likelihood, will vote what the householder prefers: one man, several votes.

In the following parliamentary election in 2006, and two years later when the parliament had untimely been dissolved by the Amir of Kuwait, His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed, women failed to win seats in the very much male-dominated Islamic country. Now they eventually succeeded. Congratulations to former Minister of Health Massouma al-Mubarak, Salwa al Jassar and liberal candidates Aseel Awadhi and Rola Dashti!

The widely perceived retardation of scientific, cultural and human rights development in many if not most Islamic countries may be due to an important fact. In rapidly growing societies with population growth rates of between 3 and 5%, countries are soon evolving into, well, boys’ countries. The testosterone factor of the frequently unemployed, unmarried into their thirties and therefore profoundly unsatisfied young men, who have, if at least realistic, little hope for change, are running the society at the low-level, while male-dominated administrations try to keep this power under control only by restricting normal civil rights.

A typical example of a boys’ country is, of course, Saudi-Arabia. Despite undisputable rights for equal education women in Iran suffer from a mainly male-dominated and completely outdated interpretation of Shari’a family law. In particular, women rights movements there are brutally suppressed. Boys’ countries are undemocratic.

Yesterday’s Kuwait election is a flicker of hope after the previous very much annoying legislative period.

 

See also on this blog

They’ll Never Forget. A Kuwaiti dentist who created the infamous Incubator Lie after Saddam’s troops had invaded the small oil-rich Gulf country in 1990.

Another crisis. Islamists in the parliament do not act for the sake of democracy.

They’ll Never Forget!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the 2^nd of August 1990, Kuwait, the small country in the corner of the Persian Gulf was invaded by Iraqi troops. The tanks overran the tiny post Abdaly, about 50 km north of the Al Mutlaa ridge. Saddam Hussein was pretty certain that the US would not interfere. He had enjoyed, for many years, a sort of friendship among rogues, and the handshake with Donald Rumsfeld in 1983 is unforgotten, when the first war in the region, against America’s arch-enemy Iran, culminated with poison gas on one side and children with little plastic keys sent into the mine fields on the other. Stunningly, both parties, Iraq and Iran, had been eagerly supported by the West. Israel had even sold arms to Iran. It was a worldwide desire that both bastards, Saddam’s and Khomeini’s regimes, should better bleed to death, and vanish. But dictatorships do not vanish easily. One million had died when this war, which saw battles in trenches and usage of mustard gas, 70 years after WWI, ceased in August 1988.

 

As other Arab states, Kuwait had supported Iraq during the war with Iran. But soon Saddam blamed Kuwait that it had drilled for oil during the war in Iraq’s territory. There were long-standing disputes about the northern borders of Kuwait with Iraq and the tiny Emirate. Britain had configured (apparently with straight edge and compass) the borders in the Middle East. Kuwait’s boundaries were defined in 1922 in the Uqair protocol signed by Percy Cox, the High Commissioner to Baghdad who met his colleague John More, the British Political Agent to Kuwait, and Abdul Aziz ibn Abdur Rahman ibn Saud, the first Saudi monarch.

 

For Saddam a safe access to the Persian Gulf was of strategic importance. Iraq has a coast line of not more than 40 km with the Shatt al-Arab defining the boundary to Iran. But there are two muddy islands, Warbah and Bubiyan, which are just located in the northern offshore sands of the Gulf without providing Iraq with any reasonable harbor. An impressive, 2400 m long concrete girder bridge links the Kuwaiti mainland with Bubiyan Island. It had been constructed in 1983. The wonderful “Bridge to Nowhere” (in fact, the road ends at the small Bubyian post in the swamps of the marshland), spanning the shallow Khawr as Sabiyah, was heavily damaged in the events which follow but quickly restored in the aftermath of the war. The shores are very muddy here. Chalets in small villages are used, as everywhere on Kuwait’s seaside, as getaways. But there is still a lot of rubble, remains from the war.

 

In the beginning of August temperatures usually reach their annual highs, 50 degrees Celsius (122 F). Saddam’s Iraqi Republican Guards came at early in the morning at 2 am. The Amir of Kuwait, HH Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah had fled already to the neighbouring Saudi Arabian deserts. His half-brother Sheikh Fahad, was shot and killed in the Royal residence Dasman Palace by the invaders. Kuwait became what Saddam has always claimed: Iraq;s 19^th province.

                                                        

Tired of the ongoing bad news from the Middle East, the international community at first only shrugged it off. Of course, Saudi Arabia was alarmed. And so were the USA. Saddam was suspected of going ahead with invading the oil fields in the eastern provinces of the weak monarchy, too.

 

How persistent lies and war-time propaganda may lead to a change in the World’s public opinion has been better learned 12 years later, in the preparation of the next, the 3^rd Gulf War. In 1990, after Saddam had ruthlessly invaded the tiny Emirate in the corner of the Persian Gulf, it was not about weapons of mass destruction what finally led to Kuwait’s liberation by a broad coalition force. There was a bizarre story which suddenly found its way to the mass media: the incubator lie. A 15-year old Kuwaiti nurse reported atrocities of Iraqis in hospitals. In verbal testimony to the US Congress she alleged that she had witnessed that infants were taken out of incubators (which were taken to Baghdad later-on). The contentious Californian Representative, Democrat Tom Lantos put forward, as a co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, this story. Later it turned out that ‘Nurse Nayirah’ was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and her allegations baseless propaganda. Lantos played, by the way, a similar sinister role on the eve of the next Gulf war in 2002.

 

There were other liars involved in the incubator case. A Kuwaiti dentist, Dr. Ibraheem Behbehani, who was at that time head of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent, testified (as a “Dr. Issah Ibrahim”) that he had supervised the burial of 120 newborn babies after the Iraqi invasion, and personally buried 40 newborn babies “that had been taken from their incubators by (Iraqi) soldiers”. He later admitted that he had never seen babies taken from the incubators. Dr. Behbehani is now an Assistant Professor at Kuwait University working in the Department of Diagnostic Sciences.

 

“Truth is always the first casualty”, as Alexander Cockburn wrote in the Los Angeles Times on January 17, 1991.

 

“Just how rapidly this happens can be illustrated by the case of the premature Kuwait babies, supposedly left to die last August by Iraqis who then removed the incubators to Baghdad. It has become the tale used by the Kuwait government in exile, as well as by President Bush, who invoked Iraqi horrors inflicted upon the innocent children of Kuwait in his speech. It should be said right away that there are thousands of examples of such Iraqi brutality and denial of elementary human rights, not just in Kuwait but in Iraq. But the story of baby mass murder is untrue.”

 

Anyway, an international coalition force (of the keen and willing) launched Operation Desert Storm, which lasted from January 17 until February 26, 1991. Iraqi troops were wiped out of Kuwait within a couple of weeks. Kuwait was freed, and the Kuwaiti will never forget, grateful and humble. Saddam then showed the World another unbelievable escalation of war, with finally setting the oil wells on fire, an ecological warfare never having been seen before. He was hanged for his crimes against Humanity on December 30, 2006.

 

The day of Liberation, February 26, is celebrated in Kuwait every year together with its National Day on February 25.

 

Congratulations, people of Kuwait! And God bless you!

 

When I asked one of my students at Kuwait University, what event is celebrated on National Day, she responded: “Oh, we became independent in 1961. But, actually, we have never been dependent!”  

First published at Salmiya.

 

     

Another Crisis

The present political crisis in Kuwait, the tiny oil-rich Gulf state, appears, for observers from abroad, in fact rather concerning. And even inside the country, which is usually considered one of the richest in the world, most citizens and expatriate workers, as well, not only raise eyebrows when reading the latest news in Kuwaiti newspapers which have found their way into the international press.

 

Earlier this year, the parliament had been dissolved by HH the Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah. In order to lessen tribal and Islamist elements in the upcoming election, the government has decidedly cracked down on any tribal ‘primaries’ held by the tribes for consolidating their votes. With little success, though. In fact, the entire election campaign was plagued with illegal primaries. And finally the Islamist bloc gained four seats in the parliament.

 

In July, riots among consistently under- and even unpaid Bangladeshi cleaners emerged, a workforce of about 250’000 which is usually kept (of course ‘voluntarily’) in completely unacceptable and, in fact, inhumane living conditions with salaries of about 40 dinars a month (less than $150); not only in Kuwait by the way but rather all countries of the Arabian peninsula. Numerous ‘troublemakers’ (strikers) had been deported it is said.

 

Earlier this month, the Kuwaiti Stock Exchange, due to a bigger plunge of 43% since June, was closed after a heavily disputed court decision. One of Kuwait’s main lenders, the Gulf Bank, is reported to have lost 1 billion dollars in failed derivative deals. As everywhere in the world, irresponsible, greedy gamblers have ruined also in the Middle East assets of millions of civilians. With falling oil prices the party might in fact soon be over.

 

Maybe that will eventually satisfy the Salafist faction in the Kuwaiti parliament, which has started a further attempt to intimidate the cabinet. Three lawmakers with a notorious reputation of pursuing questionable motions and double standards in the country, were about to interpellate and even impeach (‘grill’) the Prime Minister, Sheikh Nasser Mohammad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah not the least because of allowing a controversial Shi’a cleric from Iran into the country who had banned before. Allegedly, that person had offended the Prophet of Islam and some of his companions. It actually turned out to be impossible to figure out what he had actually said, so any commentary on that ‘insult’ is impossible. But the Kuwaiti people undisputedly consist of members of different branches of Islam, 70% Sunni and 30% Shi’a, which are not getting so easily together. In order to circumvent the grilling, the cabinet resigned in the meantime. In order to block the cabinet’s resignation, which might lead to another dissolution of the parliament, one now expects a ‘reshuffle’. Democracy as psychoanalytic group therapy.

 

While two of the notorious barraters, who are responsible for the new political crisis in Kuwait, Mohammad Hayef Al-Mutairi and  Abdullah Al-Bargash, have become members of the parliament through illegal primaries, the third, Dr. Waleed Al-Tabtabaei, had disputed some time ago the need for more Christian churches in Kuwait since there are already 20 churches in the country, certainly enough for the 12 large Christian families among the Kuwaitis. A more than frivolous comment, completely disregarding the 300’000 expatriate Christians, many from the Philippines. House maids, who are living under similarly poor conditions as their (Muslim) Bangladeshi counterparts. So, lack of credibility, lack of competence, and obviously, lack of any ethical or moral standards, too.

 

The foes of Democracy in the Middle East are zealous, but hypocritical, Islamists, whether in Egypt, Palestine, or now in Kuwait.

 

Profit over People

 

 

This summer has seen riots of Bangladeshi cleaners in Kuwait who had been cheated by companies who had hired them from their home country to the Gulf. ‘Troublemakers’, as strikers had been called in the media, had been ‘calmed down’ by teargas and batons, and numerous had even been deported to their home countries with vague promises of later payments of outstanding wages with the help of their Embassy. The glitter and glamour of this week’s opening of Dubai’s Atlantis and other projects of hubris in this artificial world of the ‘few rich’ are entirely backed on the sweat, sorrows, and tears of underpaid and underprivileged laborers, as well. The situation of the workforce of, in particular, South Asia in Kuwait and all the other Gulf States is an enduring scandal which has eventually to be addressed properly by international intervention.

 

In last week’s Doha Debate, broadcast by BBC, the audience voted 75 percent in favor of the motion that ‘Gulf Arabs value profit over people.’ Dr. Mansoor Al-Jamri, co-founder and Editor-in-chief of Bahrain’s daily Alwasat newspaper admitted that foreign workers from the subcontinent have sometimes to live in conditions “[t]hat cats and dogs would not accept.” He warned that, if the situation of treating certain foreigners as third class citizens’ international bodies might ultimately intervene in the affairs of the Gulf States. “[T]he governments have a philosophy based on oil wealth, but instead of letting it trickle down to the people they use it to silence the elite or by-pass their citizens.”

 

What a shame! I had been among the more privileged ‘Western’ academic workforce in Kuwait for a couple of years and experienced only great hospitality, civilized manners, a society shaped by deep religious feelings. Is it compatible with the faith when underprivileged laborers are discriminated and even treated such as slaves?

 

Last week, the hard-hit Kuwaiti stock exchange was shut by an unprecedented court order. Stock exchange had fallen by 43% since June. Some investors criticized this directive and urged their privileged countrymen to stop acting like ‘spoiled babies’. It is sad but interesting to see that, in a conservative country such as Kuwait, gambling had abounded and greed has led to complete ignorance of strict religious rules. To make matters worse, the country’s democracy is, once again, on the brink of failure. Three Islamists, Salafist members of the Parliament, are about to grill His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah who has let the controversial Iranian cleric Mohammed Al-Fali, a persona non grata, into the country. It is said Al-Fali had offended Kuwaiti’s predominantly Sunni Muslim population by insulting some of the Prophet Mohammed’s companions. The old sectarian quarrels between Sunni and Shi’a in the small Gulf country, which might even lead to an unconstitutional dissolution of the Parliament.

 

Religious zeal on the one hand and greed and exploitation on the other: a sign of mere demise of the societies in the Gulf States.

 

 

 

The Main Slaughterhouse in Shuwaikh

When Kuwait University Dental School was established there was soon a demand for a special animal teaching model for oral surgical methods. Dental students throughout the world are frequently trained in different flap designs and suturing techniques by using mandibles of freshly slaughtered pigs. But they were, of course, not available in an Islamic country.

What is available and can be seen hanging on hooks in the numerous butcheries in Kuwait are sheep. Arabs love eating mutton and lamb. I quickly learned that the animals were not slaughtered in these places. Early in the morning the butchers are supplied with the slaughtered sheep by the local slaughterhouses. But where are those? Not being able of reading Arabic signs, I was too new in Kuwait, as to be able to find easily every place in the vast industrial areas where I assumed the slaughterhouses to be.

Somebody had told me that the main slaughterhouse of the State of Kuwait was located in Shuwaikh, close to the main fire station of that area. But where was that fire station? When I finally found it in the bustling industrial area between the Fourth Ring Road and what they call Canada Dry Street, the guard who I asked had never had heard about a near-by slaughterhouse.

It actually turned out that it was the neighboring plot of land. I identified the guard commander in the derelict office building, and a few glasses of tea later Dr. Refat, who had been called by mobile phone, arrived. He was the veterinarian on duty that day and I told him my problem.

Dr. Refat was an exceptionally friendly, polite, and serious Egyptian colleague. He showed me the facilities of the huge area where the animals were slaughtered. There was a smaller slaughterhouse where, for example, family fathers delivered a single sheep. There was also a bigger complex where, as Dr. Refat explained to me, every night several thousands of sheep were killed. I noticed a certain smell of blood in the air which I still can vividly recall when thinking of it.

Dr. Refat had to learn which part of a sheep’s head I actually needed and so we agreed upon a new appointment at one of the next nights when I had to watch the slaughtering and wait until all the dead animals were hanging on hooks and the Bangladeshi butchers could do their job and cut up the meat according to my demands.

I arrived at 5 pm. Dr. Refat and his colleagues had a rather strange shift: 24 hours on duty, two days off. Regardless of holidays or weekends, sheep had to be slaughtered every day. I met the whole team in a small dwelling on the ground. Each doctor had his own bed and there was a living room with a TV and a small kitchen. We had a dinner with rice and lamb and then Dr. Refat showed me the animals which were waiting for being slaughtered at night. They had to rest, he explained to me. The long traveling had exhausted them. The flocks with different breeds of sheep, Australian, Arabian, Somalian, etc. were penned up in fenced areas. I realized that Kuwait, as all other Gulf States, imports living animals some of which are transported around half of the world. I remembered a decomposing corpse on the beach some time ago and suddenly understood that the animals which had died on the long way are usually thrown overboard.

Slaughtering would start after 11 pm, so there was plenty of time for discussing the deeper meaning of this proedure. Dr. Refat talked about the right way of slaughtering the animals. In order to be halal, the blood had to leave the body while the animal was still alive. So, the heart had to pump it out of the body. Benumbing the animal by electric current as is practiced, for example, in slaughterhouses in the West, would not be acceptable, nor is the use of a captive bolt stunner. The animal would have died before the entire blood could leave the body.

I was attentively listening to Dr. Refat’s narrations. I intuitively understood the necessity of getting rid of any blood before eating, especially in a country where meat quickly addles in the scorching heat. It became very clear that it had been the Apostle Paul who had changed this and other customs. Jews and Muslims are slaughtering alike. There is also a strong element of traditional rites in Jewish and Muslim slaughtering. It may prevent humans from unthoughtful killing innocent animals.

But when it started, these thoughts immediately vanished. Three thousand sheep (I was told five thousand during the month of Ramadan) were instantly ready to die, an incredible number. The animals approached their executioners, Bangladeshis in red overalls, in rows of about twenty. Their throats were cut with expert movements of a sharp knife, and after a couple of minutes the next row was allowed to enter the area. The mortal agony of the animals took several minutes. Currents of blood were drained into sinks. We were overlooking the ongoing carnage from an office above with large glass windows. Before Dr. Refat had come to Kuwait he had been working in a slaughterhouse in Brazil. There, he told me, everything was almost clinically clean, stainless steel everywhere. All of the animals was utilized, the blood, the hide, the bones. Not only the meat as here in the Middle East.

In the middle of the killing the first dead sheep were hung on hooks. Through small cuts in the fur compressed air was blown beneath the skin. So blown-up, it was easy to ‘undress’ them, i.e., remove the hide. In rubber boots I followed Dr. Refat through lakes of blood to the site of action. The head of a sheep was cut off and I had to tell the Bangladeshi butcher in his red overall which part of the mandible I needed for my purpose. With a few expert cuts he managed and I took the sample out. It was 2 o’clock in the morning. I left the slaughterhouse and drove my car home. That night I was dreaming of splatter movies.

In the following weeks, one of my students and I went to the pretty horrible place again and again. The animal teaching model had to be developed and, given the enormous efforts of getting the samples, properly published. It took some time until we were able to conduct the first practical sessions with our students. They were curious and had, in general, a positive attitude. They actually couldn’t believe my explanations. According to Islamic rules, animals are not supposed to watch other animals being slaughtered. Go there and see for yourself, I recommended.

I later read more about the cruelty of shipping living animals from Australia to the Middle East only for the purpose of slaughtering them halal.

Do you still eat meat? I asked Dr. Refat. A little, he told me.