For a city that is known to be home to more expats than nationals, the tension between Emiratis and locals has been heating up around wardrobe choices in the summer after a recent video went viral.
The video shows an Emirati woman throwing a fit at the Egyptian actress Abeer Sabry and Tunisian actress Feryal Youssef for wearing indecent clothes. Even though Farah Hamdy, an Egyptian expat who lives in Dubai, says that such commotion about inappropriate clothing is quite common and recurring in the expats-packed city, concerns about respecting the Emirati dress code bubbled up again after a video recently went viral.
Egyptian actress is heard commenting: "Who are you? And what do you want?"
While the woman answers: "I am an Emirati citizen. And when you're in my country, you don't get to dress like that."
With around 92 percent of Dubai's residents being expats, one may wonder what kind of identity is it that Dubai is trying to preserve.
“You won’t believe what kind of clothes some women wear when they visit us,” said one woman to the Khaleej Times. “We have got several complaints from both male and female customers about indecent dressing style of many women. Even European people (who have a liberal dressing style) have complained about certain women."
However, after rumors circulated that the Dubai municipality was handing out abayas to those who were not complying with the dress code in public places, Major-General Khalil Ibrahim Al-Mansouri, Assistant Commander-in-Chief of Dubai Police for Criminal Investigation, went out of his way to let foreigners know that everyone was welcome in Dubai.
The municipality is handing out abayas to women who are not address appropriately, but only in municipality offices.
Maj-Gen Al Mansouri stated that action would be taken against the Emirati woman who posted the video and harassed the Egyptian expat, as video taping someone in public without their consent in illegal in the UAE.
Editor's note: an earlier version of this article stated that the Dubai municipality was encouraging foriengers to wear abayas in public places as a result of this video, which is not true, the move to hand out abayas is only inside government offices.