Presentation of Qatari Identity at National Museum of Qatar: Between Imagination and Reality

Abstract

Introduction Recently, national museums have mushroomed in the Arabian Gulf to become a regional phenomenon. Evident within this phenomenon is the intention of the Arabian Gulf countries to exhibit their national identities, a challenging process in terms of representing the diverse national communities; such a focus reflects the important roles that museums play in the politics of culture. In the Arabian Gulf, museums are principally founded and financed by the state, which makes the state the main architect and policy-maker of the museums' ideologies. States in the Gulf refer precisely to the power and interest of the ruling families; therefore, the ruling family in Qatar has full sovereignty and ultimate authority over museums and national cultural representation policies. Cultural representation and museums in Qatar thus follow the ruling family's interests, who initiate policies that support them by connecting loyalty to the state with loyalty to the ruling family. This is the case especially if we consider that since its establishment in 2005, the head of the Museums Authority in Qatar has been HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the sister of the current Emir. Furthermore, the organisation of Qatar Museums is supervised directly by the Emiri Diwan, the seat of Government, which is unlike other organisations in Qatar. This article discusses the concept and challenges of presenting a single Qatari identity within the forthcoming National Museum of Qatar, due to open in 2019, a concept that assumes that Qataris traditionally lived a dual lifestyle as one people, moving seasonally between the sea and desert. This single-identity concept and its assumed presentation at the National Museum was first developed by a political scientist based in Qatar, Jocelyn Sage-Mitchell, in a paper entitled 'We're all Qataris here: the Nation-Building Narrative of the National Museum of Qatar' (2016), and has been subsequently discussed at academic workshops; the National Museum itself has not disclosed its approach to the narrative of Qatari identity. Therefore, this paper considers whether such a theoretical presentation of identity is a good fit for the complex reality of Qatari identity, and what might the challenges be if the National Museum followed this approach. The National Museum of Qatar Since 2007, the Qatar National Museum has been under undergoing redevelopment as the new National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ), designed by the French architect, Jean Nouvel. The NMoQ project is scheduled to open in April 2019 with a series of galleries representing different aspects of Qatar's history and heritage. The Museum is the vision of the Father Emir, HH Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and his daughter, the Chairperson of the Qatar Museums, HE Sheikha Al Mayassa. The new architecture is built around the historic palace of the previous ruler, Sheikh Abdulla bin Jassim Al Thani (1913-1948), which also housed the old Qatar National Museum (1975-2007) in a renovation that won the Agha Khan Prize for Architecture. ...

Early Diagnosis of Classic Homocystinuria in Kuwait through Newborn Screening: A 6-Year Experience

“…This could be attributed to the lack of confirmation of true positive screens due to failure in claiming a second recall samples, failure to obtain a repeat DBS for those who have been collected before 48 hours of age, or false negative result of the first DBS, which is less likely given the low Met cutoff value used. Further, Kuwait population is heterogenous, composed of different neighboring ethnicities with the majority being expatriates, which could be another reason for the low incidence of HCU compared to the native Qatari population, which is more homogenous and populated by original Qatari tribes and, thus, genetically isolated [7,46]. Nonetheless, the incidence of HCU in Kuwait is relatively high compared to the other parts of the world, where the incidence of HCU reaches 1:260,000 worldwide, 1:222,000 in Latin America [5], 1:1,120,000 in Japan, 1:492,000 in Korea, 1:132,000 in Germany [47], which emphasizes the importance and effectiveness of NBS in our consanguineous population with the increased incidence of autosomal recessive disorders in general and metabolic disorders specifically.…”