Maktub Essay Winner - Nadim Rifai

By: Nadim Rifai

Contrary to popular belief, multiculturalism grows harder to explain the more multicultural one is. Imagine my conundrum, a third culture kid with two nations as heritage where both represent a turning away from my academic aspirations and professional goals.

Nonetheless, I have come to learn that one’s culture does not represent the destination where one plans to go or the hypothetical scenario as I have described above. Multiculturalism thus becomes the ability to integrate one’s origins with his/her current location in such a way that the mixture of the two makes for a better person.

That person in turn becomes a bridge between the two cultures. A Palestinian living in Qatar wondering what (s)he can do upon return to the West Bank and what that person can take from Qatar back home. I find that multiculturalism has a lot to do with fully engaging one’s environment; a complete implementation of the cultural attributes a person possesses to the circumstances and experiences that person undergoes.

Education City provides a venue for such an interaction where students are enabled to explore deep within themselves what part of their culture they identify with. I like to think that each and every student, without exception, ends up discovering that none of their attributes have significant usable value without a knack for intercultural communication and a sincere willingness to share their uniqueness with the people around them.

Being aware of this gave me a bird’s eye view as I saw multiculturalism happening around Education City and Doha in every single situation. I saw it in events, outings, meetings, concerts, car accidents, job interviews, soccer games, building inaugurations and everyday lectures. It is here that I came to realize that the value of the numerous cultures interacting here does not lie in what one can extract from a certain environment but rather, how that very environment is infinitely enriched by successfully encompassing the numerous and diverse cultural elements available.

The Education City project can thus continuously focus on the importance of cultural diversity and multiculturalism without ever worrying about over-emphasizing it. I came to realize that it is part and parcel of the community and a very unique attribute of the life we lead here.

Through my stay here, I realized that not only my perspective on my culture had changed, but also my view of the notion of cultures and their diversity evolved as well. There is an important difference between the two for while I was introduced to new cultures and norms here, I was –and more importantly so- introduced to new ways of intercultural interaction. This new methods are the same ones that I was able to model for myself and experiment with as I learned new ways to extract more from the synthesis while contributing my own peace to this dynamic equation.

It is here that the beauty of multiculturalism lies; in the fact that enriching and interacting with one culture grants a satisfaction equal to that of learning something new from the culture. Despite Angela Merkel’s unfortunate words in a statement she made recently claiming that multiculturalism has failed, one must keep in mind that the indicators for its success are never as clear as one might presume. Multiculturalism has profound effects on each and every single individual taking part in it. Globalization might be the system through which countries exchange technology and economies trade, but it is under the umbrella of multiculturalism that these things happen smoothly (most of the time) and cause people to grow closer to each other. While the exchange of ideas has been around for thousands of years, it is now that I feel I am witnessing a genuine exchange of values. This exchange transcends geographical and linguistic barriers, and it only requires a healthy medium where it can occur. Education City has proven to be such a medium and I feel privileged to have taken part in it, witnessed it, and learned from it.