“I thought this was a little strange, but it continued, on and on. He ignored her presence absolutely.”

It cannot be dealt with on abstract or academic levels. The Ministry of Housing was taken over by very devout Muslims about three years ago. It started at the top and went all the way through. We were asked to come and do a project for them, a quite large one, about six hundred or seven hundred houses for three thousand to four thousand families. We walked into the initial meetings. Of course I knew everybody in there; I grew up with them. My colleague, a woman, was project designer-in-charge. They totally ignored her presence. She did the talking. However, all responses were made to me only. Questions were directed to me. For two and a half hours the client would not look her in the face. Well, I thought this was a little strange, but it continued, on and on. He ignored her presence absolutely.

We came to the problem of designs. We were asked to develop ten alternative housing plans, each one for different types of people from medium income to very poor for different social status and different types of families. These ranged from courtyard houses to the duplex system to the individual house. He let us present our scheme for about an hour and a half; then he told me, "This has nothing to do with our country." I asked, "What do you mean by that?" He said, "This is contradictory to all values of Islam, this is an Islamic country. You have produced houses for American families. They are not for Arabs, the people of Islam.” I asked, "What do you mean by that?" He replied, "Take this opening between dining room and living room. It is not acceptable. Suppose you are having dinner and a guest comes in. What should your wife do? Go upstairs and have her dinner? You cannot have that. You have to put four walls on each and every room, and you must be absolutely sure that the woman of the house can walk from one part of the house to the other and be totally sure that no strangers will see her." Now you see the implication in design. All our schemes, when it came to this, were totally useless.

But I told him, "Listen, there is a problem here. I agree with you that there are maybe ten or twenty or thirty percent of the people who are as devout as you are, but seventy percent of us are not. We are willing to give you thirty percent of the architecture, according to your values, but let the seventy percent be different." He answered, "No. This is a Muslim country, and we are all people of Islam. You design houses for us. You follow instructions." The rest of the designs were thrown out, and only the houses which had this division were accepted.

Then came the problem of sanitary equipment. They checked our plumbing drawings. He said, "You have to redo all the plumbing systems." "I am sorry,” I replied, "I don't know why." He responded, "Because, in Islam, the water supply line and the w.c. line are not mixed together. There are two separate sewage systems." What he meant was that when you drain the sink, the water should go through one pipe, and when you flush the toilet, it should go through another. If you combine them, it is not Islamic anymore. But I told him, "Wait a minute. There is a public works sewage system outside where both are joined." He said, "That has nothing to do with me! It is not the domain of the Housing Ministry." This is not one client. These people handle the equivalent of twenty thousand housing units a year.

On another project, when we came to the problem of communities, we argued that the separation of Kuwaitis and non- Kuwaitis and now Muslims and non-Muslims should not occur. He said, "We do not want all foreign influences to come to our children."

These principles are reflected in education also. For instance, they want all schools to be completely segregated according to sex, from the age of eight all the way through university. We now have absolutely duplicate systems. It is obvious what the implications are. I am just giving you a few examples. When you say that you would like to use Islamic values, just remember that the people who will implement your decisions will not only take the advantages, but take all the disadvantages also and apply them. And from my experience in Kuwait, the disadvantages are major. We come to another problem which has to do with political power. When you produce a set of principles, whether or not they succeed depends upon the individual who will stand up and speak for them. Islamic values today in the Arabian Peninsula depend on a single power structure. On top are the rulers, the sheikhs. And next come the 'ulama. Parliaments don't exist anymore. When you want principles to come back into Islamic architecture, the ruling hierarchy will not interfere. The 'ulamă, however, will pick it up and magnify it way out of proportion to its place in history. In the past, when the concept of co-education was being introduced in Kuwait, the people who fought the 'ulama were the members of Parliament. These religious people are not that numerous, only thirty percent, but they are highly organized and have a pulpit that they use very, very well. At the moment, the organization to counterbalance the 'ulamā no longer exists in the Peninsula. So when Islamic values are introduced, chances are they will be magnified out of proportion.