At times, driving in Abu Dhabi, a person could be excused for thinking he was in south Orange County. The green medians. The palm trees. The sun. The four-lane (in each direction) highways crowded with SUVs and recent makes of high-end cars.

At other times, we are reminded some significant gulfs exist between ways of life here in Abu Dhabi and the UAE … and a western country.

One prominent example?

A discussion in the Federal National Council, the UAE’s parliamentary body, about unmarried Emirati women.

Which led to one of the FNC members suggesting the problem could be solved if Emirati men simply married more Emirati women.

Here is that story, as reported in The National.

As I understand it, men in the UAE are allowed to have as many as four wives. Simultaneously.

If Emirati men were to take more wives — those who could afford it, that is — presumably the issue of unmarried Emirati women would be solved.

(And never-married women here are called “spinsters”. They just are. That a might be a term no longer used, elsewhere … does not occur to anyone.)

Or so says one of the members of the FNC.

That suggestion will not be made in the the U.S. congress any time soon.

Similar … yet dissimilar.