East meets West in a culture clash as Sheikh Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, and friend of the Royals and successive Brit governments, is exposed in a family court ruling in London. The judge found he orchestrated the abductions of two of his children and subjected his youngest wife to a campaign of “intimidation” – behaviour which, on the balance of probabilities, amounted to potentially breaking English and international law.
In 2000 one of the daughters who tried to escape the gilded cage, Shamsa, was kidnapped from the streets of Cambridge and hasn’t been seen since. According to reports, the UK Foreign Office stopped the police investigation. Another daughter, Latifa, fled in 2018 only to be picked up by Indian coastguards and forcibly returned home where she alleges she was beaten and tortured. All of which has come back into the spotlight with the sheikh’s sixth and youngest wife, Princess Haya, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan and half-sister of King Abdullah, fleeing to London last April with their two young children, one of whom she alleged her husband was trying to marry off to Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
Sheikh Maktoum, 15 July 1949, is known for developing Dubai into a global city and for his racing interests in the UK though his horses have been dogged by doping concerns. He was also criticised heavily over the enslavement of young boys acting as camel jockeys; and also for the conditions of immigrant workers in construction in Dubai.
He is a Sun Cancer in an expansive opposition to Jupiter; with a possessive Venus Pluto in Leo. It’s not a particularly hard chart but the lifestyle there despite pretensions to being a Western tourist hotspot is about two hundred years behind the times. He’s in for a shock in 2021 with Solar Arc Mars conjunct his Saturn which could be financial or health issues. With serious setbacks in 2023/24. That latter is a time when the Dubai chart is under major strain as well.
Princess Haya, 3 May 1974, is a stalwart Sun Taurus with a hard-edged Mars Saturn in Cancer square Pluto, so despite her opulent lifestyle she’s known some hard times. Her Uranus squares the Sheikh’s Sun so it was always going to be an arms’ length affair with her freedom-loving instincts finally breaking through.
Shamsa, 15 August 1981, is a Sun Mercury in Leo trine Neptune; with her Sun in a needs-independence square to Uranus; and her Mars in Cancer in a trapped and scared square to Pluto.
Latifa, 5 December 1985, is a rebellious Sun Uranus in Sagittarius sextile an enthusiastic Jupiter. Although Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, recently sat beside her for a staged photo op saying all was well, Latifa looked drugged. Latifa’s chart looks beyond horrific for the next several years with a chained-down tr Pluto square her Mars for two years; then several blocked, angry, explosive Solar Arcs running to mid-decade.
There’ll come a day of reckoning (maybe) for the Royals who home in on the obscenely wealthy like wasps to a jam jar, and the real-politickers in successive UK governments who have cosied up to these Gulf allies, with their Sandhurst-trained rulers and turned a blind eye to anything that didn’t and still doesn’t sit comfortably with Western sensibilities – while selling them weapons by the yard.
And why anyone chooses to holiday there, let alone buy a second home, given their archaic laws and dodgy legal system is beyond me.
See Previous post August 18 2018.
“This is a very dangerous man. He is very, very powerful. No one can stop him getting what he wants.” Description of Sheikh Maktoum from his first (?) Lebanese wife who demanded a divorce after few years of a marriage that took place 47 years ago. She left her baby daughter, Manal, behind in Dubai while she arranged her affairs at home in Lebanon. She was never allowed to see her again.
From today’s Sunday Times.
It must be house positions that make him such a thug. Pluto on the Midheaven would put Mars and Uranus in his 8th and a Scorpio Ascendant.
Also Bahrain – another Royal and Tory favourite – See: Human rights abuse claims at Bahraini hospitals linked to Irish university.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/human-rights-abuse-claims-at-bahraini-hospital-linked-to-irish-university-075wnjjwp
Alleged mistreatment of medics and patients by the regime following the Arab Spring protests.
We lived in Muscat, Oman from 1995-1999 – Dubai was the nearest away destination then…..expats and prosperous locals in both countries had Indian help domestically, etc. However, arriving in Dubai you could feel the change in atmosphere – not saying Oman was perfect, far from it, but the workers seemed exhausted and exploited by comparison. “They” softened the blow with cheap raffle tickets so that you could win a Maserati or some other thing for a couple of quid, but you could feel the misery of the workers at 40 paces…I’ve lived all over the world in undevloped countries but there is something desolate and so hard about Dubai in particular, perhaps the wealth in shopping malls compared with the hidden people who can barely afford to eat everyday, exploited by those who can.
Maggie
Agree 100% on Dubai and Oman, the latter a wonderful country. I’ve been to Dubai on business many times and it’s a superficial, tacky and under the surface brutal place like all Gulf countries, and our beloved Saudi Arabia too. If you’re the kind of person who clicks their fingers at waiters, Dubai is the place for you. They can treat foreign workers any way they like, literally as indentured slaves. How many died in Qatar building the stadia for the World Cup, another madcap and I suspect deeply corrupt project. And Tories prostrate themselves to these ba*tards every which way so long as there’s money in it. My sympathies are with the ordinary people in these places not the brutal autocracies running them.
Alex, yes you get the feel of a place, without a word, by seeing the faces, feeling the unspoken. We complain about Europe on every level, but at least there are chances there none of these people will ever get because the society is structured to deny the most basic human rights to them.
Agree with everything you say about these awful states. Reports today that the Queen is to ‘distance herself’ from the Sheikh following the High Court decision. This may have implications regarding trade between Dubai and the UK.
I agree, Marjorie that the natal chart is not terribly difficult but I notice that with the Sun/Jupiter opposition (and I think Jupiter sits ill at ease in Capricorn) the Sun squares the nodal axis and I’ve seen this in a case where the individual makes the same destructive choices over and over again, without ever learning. It’s as if they are unable to tune into their life’s purpose or learn through experience. But the thing I usually look out for with domestic tyrants is Moon/Mars and there it is in Pisces/Gemini. It tends to be moody, aggressive, touchy and overly defensive with other family members tiptoeing around the native and a horrible tension in the atmosphere. Along with that entitled, regal Venus in Leo conjunct Pluto, this is a man who dominates women. And I know one shouldn’t judge by appearance, but what a cruel face he has.
Just awful, let’s hope that as we gradually move away from fossil fuels we will stop protecting and collaborating with these dreadful regimes
Yes, I also agree. A female friend worked there for a while, and from what she told me it is no place for any woman to be, especially on her own. I was also once in transit at the airport there, waiting for a connecting flight. I mistakenly ended up getting out of the lift on the floor where the flights are mostly for the foreign workers who are employed in Dubai. It was a stark contrast to the blinging area where I was supposed to enjoy endless shopping and cafes. Dark, crowded, and a very bad atmosphere. The images of that area and those people linger in my mind. Quite chilling.
Absolutely agree – I refuse to give my money to brutal, medieval dictatorships – trouble is it makes it hard to go on holiday anywhere!
I’ve always had a vey bad feeling about Dubai based on what I hear from friends who’ve been there professionally. It may not be that visible for tourists, but this definitely isn’t a place where professional women, especially those without family, feel comfortable. Some men feel that too, I know of at least two people who took lower pay rather than transfered to Dubai for work.