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erased and silenced the activism that had been taking place for a number of years, while
enablingthestate'sco-optationoftheissue.“WhatbothersmemostabouttheTIP,”said
Randa,aPalestinianlawyerwhonowlivesinDubaiandworkstoadvocatefordomestic
workers' rights in the UAE, “is that one of the things the Bush Administration was after
wasthisbilateraltradeagreement(heresheisreferringtothe'1,2,3Agreement'—anuc-
lear weapons agreement), 18 an agreement that would get them a better trading deal with
the UAE, so they strategically used the trafficking issue to negotiate a better deal.” Be-
coming more animated and agitated, she added,
well, it also really bugs me that it seems like the TIP has an imperialist agenda.
I mean it's a good thing to have human rights standards, but we must take into
account how people come to those organically. In order for neoliberal feminists
in the West to have their rhetoric, they must understand that neoliberal rhetoric
is based on Western experiences and this rhetoric can be very condescending!
Heba and Maysoun, two Emirati women who donate money to various informal
groups working with migrants, took Randa's sentiments a step further. When I inter-
viewed them at a cafe in Abu Dhabi, the conversation began quietly enough. The quiet
tonesdissipated,however,oncewebegantalkingaboutcivilsocietyandtheroleofEur-
oAmerica in helping or hindering a civil society movement in the UAE. Pushing back
the sleeves of her long black abbaya so she could gesture emphatically with her hands,
Heba began talking about the reasons she believed that people in EuroAmerica react to
Dubai the way they do;
It's like this, like they couldn't conceptualize an Arab Muslim country doing so
well, developing so rapidly and so successfully, and even having civil society,
likeitdidn'tfitintotheirlittleboxthattheyhaddrawnaboutus.Nowwiththings
going a bit differently, they are so excited to point to us and our problems and
say, “see, I knew they couldn't be doing that well, or if they were, they did it in a
sneaky and backward way.” Like it's because since they didn't anticipate it, and
that it didn't fit into their box, they are doubly happy to see us struggle. They
point to us and say that we have a trafficking problem, that we don't have civil
society. They want to see us fail. They want to keep us down somehow.
Her friend Maysoun continued, also becoming very animated to the point where her
head scarf actually began slipping off:
They want to blame everything on Islam, they want to use something, to find
somethingtopointtothefactthatusMuslims,thereissomethingwrongwithus,
 
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