Islam's "Liberal" Tourist Paradise

If you think of going there, maybe you better think again

TOURIST BEWARE, THE ODOR OF ISLAM STILL WAFTS ACROSS THIS MAN-MADE "PARADISE"

[A] British couple recently convicted of having sex on a beach in Dubai may have been freed and deported to the UK after their three-month prison sentence was suspended, but others haven't been so lucky. According to the Lonely Planet guide to the city, one British tourist was arrested at Dubai airport and sentenced to four years in prison after 0.03g of cannabis - an amount “smaller than a grain of sugar and invisible to the human eye” - was found on the stub of a cigarette stuck to the sole of his shoe. Meanwhile, a Swiss man was reportedly imprisoned after customs officers found three poppy seeds on his clothes (they had fallen off a bread roll he had eaten at Heathrow), and a British woman was held in custody for two months before customs officers conceded that the codeine that she was using for her back problems had been prescribed by a doctor.

from "Why I'd rather die than visit Dubai"
Essentially it is Las Vegas without the sex and gambling, which is Las Vegas without a point
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/sathnam_sanghera/article5267814.ece