Dubai: The Guinness World Records on Sunday officially recognised Captain Fareed Lafta’s peace icon mural made of buttons as the ‘world’s largest button mosaic’ at the Burj Plaza in Downtown Dubai.
The peace mural, a white dove held by two hands bearing the UAE colours red, white, green and black, was made using 1,019,078 buttons and measured 392.5 square metres.
The record was previously held by university students in India with 900,288 buttons measuring a total area of 88 square metres. The mosaic’s message was about preventing global warming.
Lafta, 33, an Iraqi extreme sports enthusiast and goodwill ambassador for the Iraqi Red Crescent, initiated the making of the peace icon together with the help of over a hundred students, visitors and residents.
Although the initial bid was to create the world’s biggest peace icon, Talal Omar, Guinness World Records country manager for the MENA region, said there is no actual record for a peace icon because of the ambiguity of the subject.
“You cannot define what a peace icon is. But you can do a beautiful mosaic like this which is a symbol of peace,” Omar told Gulf News.
“There is a link. The message he [Lafta] wanted to deliver is to spread peace in our society and in the city and in the Arab world, and probably the world. But he did it through this beautiful image and he used buttons,” he added.
Lafta, whose many feats include the first-ever skydive above Mt Everest and jump of peace in Iraq and Afghanistan, said that spreading the message of peace is no longer just about bringing goodwill ambassadors to conflict areas.
He said he wanted to change the strategy by creating a role model city for peace which is Dubai.
“They take any goodwill ambassador to conflict places to promote peace. I realised nothing happens. I was in Afghanistan, I was in Lebanon, I was in many places. Unfortunately, it’s just media,” Lafta told Gulf News. “I want to make Dubai the first ever goodwill ambassador as a city.”
Lafta shared the record with the many unnamed individuals, mostly students from the American University of Sharjah (AUS), who worked tirelessly from March 2 to 9 to finish the mural. Among them was Dimah Al Manaseer, 19, an architecture student from Iraq.
“Whenever I have a break, I just come here to work on the mural. Sometimes it was sunny and the weather was not very cooperative. But the experience taught me a lot of things, first of all patience, and second how to work together in a harmonious way,” Al Manaseer said.
Some residents who saw the mural while it was being made, also chipped in with their time as well. Among them was two-year-old Zoya Inara Fazli who helped put buttons on the mural with her mum for two days.
