You know the whole place effectively runs on slavery, right?
I stayed in Dubai at least a dozen times in the oughties. I learned to snowboard in the Mall of the Emirates. The whole place looks brand-new and sparkly clean, just like Disney World. I even note that I was once there around Christmas and the mall nearest my hotel had a giant Christmas tree in its atrium (very liberal for a Muslim country).
And Emirates is my favorite airline. Their FAs are gorgeous and they know how to knock heads with the Arab men.
But less than 1/8th of the residents are natives. The majority of the rest are temporary manual laborers recruited from the Indian subcontinent and Australasia, wretched poor who are lured there by what seem like princely wages, unaware that they're going to be living like a prisoner in a labor camp. Their passport is seized on arrival and they can't leave the country until they are deemed to have fulfilled their contract.
Not to mention it's run by a totalitarian regime that as much as has license to kill (so long as the victim isn't another member of the royal family).
That said, I would agree that they aren't known as a sponsor of or host to terrorism (to do so would be bad for the tourist trade, and they can't abide that) so I also don't think we have much to fear from them. But being there was much less fun when I learned what went on behind the curtain. Now it mostly creeps me out.
Not that that makes the UAE any different from any other oil-rich country. They all run on some degree of human servitude.
I am aware of some of the stuff that goes on including some stuff people don’t hear about on average, and I won’t argue with on that but at the same time I’m not going to lie how nice and beautiful it is to visit and until the US airliner stop treating passengers like school children and up their game ill keep using Emirates.