I was greatly heartened — indeed deeply moved — by the wide resonance and exceptional engagement generated by the meeting of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the State, may God preserve him, with the large extended Emirati families.
That interest was not merely a reflection of the occasion's significance; it also embodied, in practical terms, His Highness the President's vision of reading society with great depth, understanding the human being, and anticipating the future.
When His Highness affirms that the stable, extended family represents the essential pillar for protecting identity and values, he is presenting a civilisational vision that sees the true capital of nations as beginning with the human being — and the human being begins with his family, where his initial character is formed, his memory takes shape, and his sense of belonging is born.
As experts in sociology and heritage, we naturally observe the accelerating digital transformations sweeping the world, and how the intermingling of cultures has multiplied at an unprecedented pace, to the point where the question of identity has become one of the most prominent questions in contemporary sociological thought. The challenge is no longer about the speed of knowledge transmission, but about the capacity of societies to preserve their cultural character while opening up to the world.
It is for this reason that His Highness the President's forward-looking vision — declaring 2026 the Year of the Family and celebrating the large extended Emirati families — represents a strategic dimension that places the family at the heart of the state's cultural security system, presenting it as the primary environment in which values are transformed into behaviour, heritage into practice, and belonging into a constituent part of the human being.
Sociologists are in agreement that a person is not born with a fully formed identity, but rather with the capacity to acquire one — and the family is the first space that gives that capacity its cultural and moral contours.
Within the family, a child learns his first language, acquires the art of dialogue, grasps the meaning of responsibility, preserves customs and traditions, and absorbs the value system that will accompany him throughout his life.
This is what sociologist Maurice Halbwachs affirmed: that human memory is shaped through the social frameworks in which a person lives. The family is the first and deepest of these frameworks; it is the family that determines what is heritage and what is forgotten. For this reason, when the family is absent or weakened, the primary carrier of heritage is weakened with it.
Throughout the various civilisations, the family has therefore remained the institution that produces identity, before the school takes on the task of refining it and state institutions assume the role of organising it. Sociological thought distinguishes between knowledge acquired through education and knowledge formed through daily interaction: the school provides information, but the family shapes character.
In the Emirati home, the culture of sana' (refined conduct), the etiquette of gatherings, respect for elders, the spirit of solidarity, and a culture of work are all transmitted through daily practice that is difficult to replace by any other educational means. This is why the family has remained the institution most capable of transforming culture from abstract knowledge into stable social behaviour.
It is from this standpoint that large extended Emirati families acquire an exceptional status in the social fabric of the state. The wider the family, the wider the living memory of society. The presence of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren within a single social fabric multiplies the opportunities for the spontaneous transmission of experiences, values, language, and refined conduct.
It allows heritage to live within human relationships before it lives in books and museums. For this reason, large Emirati families may be regarded as a living social archive that has preserved the nation's memory across generations and contributed to entrenching the Emirati character as we know it today.
The importance of this vision becomes even more apparent at a time when social media platforms and virtual spaces have begun to share with the family the task of shaping children's awareness. In this reality, the value of the Emirati home is redoubled as the space in which children learn to think, to engage in dialogue, to take pride in the Arabic language, to connect with their nation's history, and to engage confidently with the world without losing their cultural compass. Intellectual immunity begins in the family, and then accompanies the individual through every stage of life.
The United Arab Emirates presents a balanced civilisational model that combines scientific leadership with deep cultural rootedness. It advances with confidence in the fields of artificial intelligence, space exploration, and the knowledge economy, alongside its commitment to family, language, heritage, and national identity.
This equation reflects a profound understanding of the nature of development as a project for building the human being before it is a project for building the economy, because societies that are capable of preserving their value system possess a greater capacity to absorb change and direct it in the service of their future.
Perhaps the deepest message conveyed by the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the State, may God preserve him, lies in restoring the family to its rightful place as a civilisational institution that shapes the future of the state.
Every cohesive household adds a new store of awareness to the Emirates, and every family that preserves its values and heritage contributes to raising a generation that combines knowledge with belonging, ambition with loyalty, and openness to the world with pride in its roots. And so the Emirates continues to build its future from the place where it has always begun — the human being, the family, and the values that have shaped this nation's story from its very earliest days.