>It boggles my mind that any westerner would choose to live and work in Dubai. Their laws and rules are very different from ours.

As long as you're not borrowing money from local entities, you're almost certainly not going to run into any trouble like that in Dubai. In practice Dubai is more libertarian than the UK; the government generally doesn't bother you or care what you're doing, as long as you don't get on the bad side of someone well-connected.