Willy Trolove: Consumerism plus Islam equals a boomtown

It is 5.25am and there is wailing. In the land of the half-awake, time is slow. My blood moves like golden syrup. It oozes through the grey matter, switching it on bit by bit and forcing it to figure out where I am, what the wailing is all about, and whether I had too much to drink last night.

I am in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The wailing is the latest news from Allah, the dawn call to prayer. I did have too much to drink last night, but that's allowed here, even though it is Ramadan, the holy month of fasting and traffic accidents.

I have been in Dubai only a day but already I have survived a near-accident. A new four-wheel-drive screamed past my taxi. In front, a car changed lanes and the 4WD lurched to one side, slid, screamed like a wounded griffin, almost flipped, turned and came to a breathless halt facing us.

Arabs in traditional dishdash leaked from its innards, their faces whiter then their garb. As they recovered, wailing started the sunset call to prayer. They were rushing home for iftar, the meal that ends the daily fast. Hunger causes a surge of accidents at this time of year.

Minarets are everywhere. My host has a friend who lives equidistant from three mosques. Every morning three competing calls to prayer break into his bedroom and try to convert him to Islam. I don't get to meet him but I imagine him with wild hair, bleary eyes and giant earplugs.

Years ago the minarets were manned by muezzins, tower-climbing locals with lungs like Pavarotti's. Today the muezzins don't like the climb. They wail via a microphone and minaret-mounted super-woofers.

Most of the minarets were not here years ago. The mosques are sparkling new, built in the post-modern neo-Ottoman shopping-mall style as the city sprawls along the coast.

Dubai is a boomtown. It is Singapore with sand and sheikhs, a 21st-century gold rush. Vast hotels burst up out of the wasteland. Motorways of barely dry concrete reach into the desert. Mini-cities of skyscrapers and factories sprout like oases from the sand. Harbours and marinas carve into the beachfront dunes.

Huge artificial islands, several kilometres across and shaped like palm trees or world maps, are being built just offshore in the Persian Gulf. Soon they will be thick with resorts, luxury homes and golf courses.

Labourers from all over the Middle East, Pakistan and India flock here to jobs and dreams. Expatriate professionals from every developed nation live, work and play between the beaches and the minarets.

Here, right now, capitalism is in full cry. Everything we think we know about Islam suggests it shouldn't be happening, but the sheikhs of Dubai's ruling family, open-minded and focused on the emirates' future, have looked to the West and learned.

They have taken the best ideas, applied them to their sandy kingdom, and educated their people with a discipline and foresight that an elected government could never muster. In just 30 years they have turned their sleepy port town into the commercial hub of the Middle East, and shown that consumerism is as compatible with Islam as it is with anything else.

They have done this without democracy. The locals have few rights that we would recognise. They have a tribal privilege to petition the emir but they have no vote. Their courts are the emir's personal imprisonment service. Annoy him and you end up staring at a wall for 20 years. Free speech is no more alive than Elvis.

But Dubai has the one thing lacking in most other Arab nations and many of the democracies. It has economic freedom in excess: free trade, few regulations, low taxes, and a government committed to the unfettered creation of wealth.

It is one of the most interesting places in the world to be when the President of the United States calls for a democratic Middle East.

How far would Dubai have come if it had been democratic? The sheikhs do not rely on the whims of the people. None of this could have happened with bickering political parties, a three-year electoral cycle and special-interest groups.

Democracy is a beautiful thing when it has developed over several centuries. But when your aim is to secure the Middle East and make it prosperous before weapons of mass destruction become as common as DVD players, you don't have several centuries to play with.

Dubya should come to Dubai. He might learn what is going on here. He might see what economic freedom can do. He might even question whether democracy is the best way forward.

He'd better pack his earplugs.