PARTNERS: Emir Hamad and Sheika Mozah pose for a rare portrait beside I.M. Pei's Museum of Islamic Art in Doha
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Yet it is not the oil wealth, or the skyscrapers it has financed, that makes Qatar's model of Gulf modernization so important. Nor is it the use of oil to bankroll Qatar's investments in such entities as the London Stock Exchange, the British supermarket chain J. Sainsbury, Credit Suisse and potentially EADS, the parent company of Airbus. It is, rather, the Emir's emphasis on education. The key role here is played by Qatar's First Lady, Sheika Mozah bint Nasser al-Missned. Chairperson of the private Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, she is spearheading many of the country's crucial initiatives. Among her tasks is the modernization of Qatar's education system and the creation of the Arab world's leading center for research. Her position as an open partner of the Emir in development has made her a role model for legions of young Arab women whose opportunities continue to be hindered by patriarchal customs. "I have all the time in the world," quips the Emir, who often visits his wife's office to chat with her colleagues and visitors. "She's the one with the busy schedule."
Though Sheik Hamad rules from the Emiri Diwan, a marble-sided palace next to Doha's old souk, some of the state's most far-reaching decisions are formulated in Mozah's Qatar Foundation office in the sprawling cultural complex known as Education City. A favorite bronze sculpture in Mozah's office is of a foot kicking through a wall, an apt symbol of her revolutionary role. Her late father was a progressive Arab nationalist who was jailed and eventually exiled from Qatar in the 1960s. Mozah spent much of her childhood in cosmopolitan Cairo, a world away from the conservative, provincial Doha of the time. A woman of strong views, she argues that denial of women's rights is part of a wider problem of oppression in the Arab world. "We have to be serious about our problems," she says. "Change is inevitable." Mozah's increasing visibility has some conservatives grumbling. A Saudi newspaper went so far as to Photoshop her out of a ribbon-cutting scene, lest her subversive example catch on in a kingdom where women are still forbidden to drive cars.
Education City, a modern campus of 10 sq km hosting branches of top American universities such as Georgetown and Northwestern, is Mozah's most tangible accomplishment. The idea is to give Qataris and Arabs from other countries a chance to receive a top education while remaining within their own culture. Chatting in a conference room at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, Yasmeen al-Khuzaei, 20, says: "Finally, we can really get to do stuff for our country."
Finding American university partners, however, is easy compared with Mozah's real challenge: to replace Qatar's calcified public-education system with state-funded charter schools able to draft their own curriculums. During a recent 12th-grade chemistry class at al-Bayan Educational Complex for Girls, students were discussing the science of sexually transmitted diseases. "In the old system, students took all their knowledge from the teacher," says school director Hessa Abdullah. "Now we stress that students should search for knowledge, open their minds." Mozah is also the force behind the effort to make Qatar the Arab world's Silicon Valley, helping to diversify the economy beyond the energy sector. The Qatar Science and Technology Park, a complex of offices and labs that is set to be inaugurated this year, has already attracted $225 million in investments from global firms such as Microsoft, Shell and General Electric Co.
A General Looking for Troops
Qatar is not yet a people's paradise, though. In 2005, the U.S. State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons report downgraded the country because of its mistreatment of migrant laborers. Despite the independence granted to al-Jazeera, Qatari intellectuals gripe that restrictions on ownership have been used to tether the media. The Emir's foreign policy does not always win him admirers, either. Qatar hosts the U.S. command center for the Iraq war at al Udeid air base and has low-level official ties with Israel, but the Bush administration is angry over the state's relations with Iran, Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah organization and the militant Islamist Palestinian group Hamas. Last year, the Emir, displeased with the U.S.'s refusal to respect Qatar's neutrality, snubbed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's request for a meeting. When George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made Middle East tours recently, Qatar was the only one of the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries they skipped. "We have relations with Israel, and with Hamas, with the United States, and with Iran," the Emir says. "But everybody knows that we are independent in our policy. We are paying for this."
Still, others in the neighborhood are impressed. "They are a very sincere, visionary couple," says Saad Eddin Ibrahim, one of Egypt's leading pro-democracy campaigners. "They have a project for educational, social and political reform and have done what they said they were going to do. We tend to be suspicious of governments in the Middle East, but this is a country with a truly enlightened ruling élite." The regional influence of al-Jazeera has been huge, too, providing independent news and analysis for and by Arabs for the first time. "Al-Jazeera has many warts, but it has inspired a new, aggressive kind of reporting that has governments struggling vainly to put the information genie back in the bottle," says Lawrence Pintak, director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research in Cairo. One result, says Pintak, is that a majority of Arab journalists now see their primary mission as driving political and social reform, a sea change in a profession that was once a mouthpiece for Arab regimes.
Meanwhile, Mozah's education initiatives are inspiring emulation elsewhere. In Dubai, ruler Sheik Bin Rashid al-Maktoum established a $10 billion endowment to foster knowledge, ideas and innovation among the builders of tomorrow's Arab world. Abu Dhabi recently signed an agreement for New York University to establish a branch there, and Harvard Medical School is constructing a facility in Dubai. Even Saudi Arabia is getting in on the act, with plans to create King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in partnership with three U.S. universities.
There's no doubting the Emir's popularity. Jumping behind the wheel of a 4x4, he takes TIME for a spin, and Qataris smile and wave as he drives past. He points out the universities and office buildings going up, but reserves his special enthusiasm for the new Museum of Islamic Art on Doha's waterfront. Designed by I.M. Pei, its architecture mixes Islamic geometric patterns with modern cubist angles. For the Emir, its real importance will lie in its collections. "Our young generations are going to understand that in the past, the Arabs were open, they mixed with many people," he says. "They'll see pieces that represent the Arabs in Spain and will realize there were three religions — Islam, Christianity and Judaism — mixing and respecting each other. We were living together in peace then. We can do it now." That tolerant, open-minded spirit may be the best measure of how the Gulf's supersheiks hope to build a new Middle East.