“Culture is Everything and Everything is Culture”

May 10th, 2018: Nasif Kayed, founder and CEO of “The Arab Culturalist,” gave an amusing and inspiring talk on Arab Culture to an audience at CUD.

Nasif is a business consult and a dynamic motivational speaker and facilitator, providing Cultural Intelligence workshops and expert advice on Arab and Emirati culture.

Nasif spoke of the many misconceptions concerning Arab culture citing, as examples, impressions of the various forms of dress of both man and women and a commonly held opinion that all Arabs were rich because of oil. In fact of all the Muslim countries in the world, only a small proportion has a viable oil industry.

He encouraged his audience to be endlessly curious and not be afraid to ask awkward questions. “There is no harm in asking for clarification.”

Nasif also related the history of Dubai starting from its early days as the centre of the world’s pearl industry and its reputation for spices and the manufacture of fine fabrics which they then traded far and wide. He explained how Dubai had turned itself into a trading hub. Our spices are the origin of many modern day medicines.

Now Dubai has one of the largest Airports in the World and Jebel Ali Port is one of the busiest in the World.

He told his audience that Islam was not just a religion but also a way of life and spoke about the poetry of the desert and how the language of today  was reducing eloquence in conversation and in writing.

Nasif also gave his audience some dietary advice citing the date as “the fruit of life,” and relating the story of how the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia presented a date tree to California in 1928, producing some of the finest dates in the world.

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