But here, in glittering, manic Dubai, he is confronting the unsettling freedom to make his own choices. Here Mr. Galal, 24, drinks beer almost every night and considers a young Russian prostitute his girlfriend. But he also makes it to work every morning, not something he could say when he lived back in Egypt.
Everything is up to him, everything: what meals he eats, whether he goes to the mosque or a bar, who his friends are. Galal said, taking a drag from yet another of his ever-burning Marlboros. In Egypt there is more time, they have more control over you. In Egypt, people keep you in check.
Here, no one keeps you in check. In Egypt, and across much of the Arab world, there is an Islamic revival being driven by young people, where faith and ritual are increasingly the cornerstone of identity.
But that is not true amid the ethnic mix that is Dubai, where 80 percent of the people are expatriates, with nationalities. This economically vital, socially freewheeling yet unmistakably Muslim state has had a transforming effect on young men. Religion has become more of a personal choice and Islam less of a common bond than national identity. Dubai is, in some ways, a vision of what the rest of the Arab world could become β if it offered comparable economic opportunity, insistence on following the law and tolerance for cultural diversity.
In this environment, religion is not something young men turn to because it fills a void or because they are bowing to a collective demand. That, in turn, creates an atmosphere that is open not only to those inclined to a less observant way of life, but also to those who are more religious.
