How the UAE and Allied Regimes Export Fear to the West
By Faisal Kutty
Mar/Apr 26
For some Muslims in the West, Islamophobia is understood primarily as a product of Western history — colonialism, Orientalism, post-9/11 securitization, and the rise of the far-right. That account is incomplete. Over the past decade, a growing body of investigative journalism and academic analysis has documented a more complex and troubling reality: some Muslim-majority states, particularly the United Arab Emirates, have played a direct and sustained role in shaping Islamophobic policies, narratives, and legal frameworks in Europe and North America.
This is not a claim about cultural difference or theological disagreement. It is about state power, law, and political strategy.
The Arab Spring was the turning point. The mass uprisings for transparency and democratization in 2011 demonstrated that political participation grounded in Islamic ethics could coexist with electoral legitimacy and popular mobilization. For authoritarian regimes — especially monarchies, mostly British-installed, and military-backed governments — this posed a structural threat. As one Middle East Eye investigation put it, Abu Dhabi came to see political Islam not merely as an ideological rival, but as an “existential danger” to regime survival.
What followed was not simply repression at home, but the export of a counter-narrative abroad. Emirati policy documents, diplomatic cables, and internal reporting reveal a deliberate effort to persuade Western governments that Islam itself — when expressed through civil society, charity, or political participation — should be treated as a security risk.
In legal terms, this meant shifting the frame. Instead of targeting violence or criminal conduct, states increasingly focused on ideology, association, and belief. This move aligned neatly with post-9/11 counterterrorism laws already present in the U.S. and allied states which came into being primed and ready for overbreadth and abuse.
One of the most consequential aspects of this campaign has been the promotion of the so-called association-based suspicion. Emirati-backed research and advocacy repeatedly blurred the line between peaceful Muslim organizations and violent extremism, often through the elastic use of the term “Muslim Brotherhood–inspired.”
As investigative reports have shown that Emirati-linked actors worked closely with Western think tanks, intelligence contractors, and policymakers to advance this framing. In Austria, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, these ideas migrated almost verbatim into government reports, counter-radicalization strategies, and even legislation.
A Middle East Eye analysis observed that entire paragraphs from Emirati-funded studies were replicated into European policy documents. The legal result was predictable: raids without charges, asset freezes without convictions, mosque closures without findings of criminality.
From a rule-of-law perspective, this represents a profound shift. Liberal democracies traditionally punish acts, not identities. Yet Muslims increasingly found themselves subject to state action based on imputed ideology, communal affiliation, or mere religious expression.
Perhaps the clearest illustration of this strategy can be seen in the campaign against Muslim charities, particularly Islamic Relief Worldwide. Reports by The New Yorker and Middle East Eye detailed how private intelligence firms, retained at enormous expense, sought to link Islamic Relief to extremism through innuendo rather than evidence.
No court found Islamic Relief to be a terrorist organization. Independent reviews cleared it of institutional antisemitism. And yet, banks severed ties, governments suspended funding, and humanitarian operations were disrupted. As Waseem Ahmad Islamic Relief’s Worldwide chief executive told The New Yorker, “It just hurt and delayed our humanitarian work” ( David D. Kirkpatrick, “The Dirty Secrets of a Smear Campaign,” The New Yorker. March 27, 2023).
From a legal standpoint, this is the destruction of reputation without due process. And these concerns are no longer confined to journalism or academic analysis. In 2023, a formal parliamentary question before the European Parliament cited evidence that a Swiss firm hired by the United Arab Emirates conducted an anti-Muslim disinformation and smear campaign across Europe, targeting civil society actors, politicians, and Muslim communities in multiple EU states. The weaponization of counterterrorism rhetoric allowed states and private actors to achieve specific outcomes — financial exclusion, public stigma, operational paralysis — that would not survive judicial scrutiny if pursued directly.
For instance, the Washington, D.C.-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, in its extensively documented Brief, noted, “25 organizations were registered under FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] to work on behalf of Emirati clients in 2020 and 2021; Those organizations reported making 10,765 contacts on behalf of their Emirati clients; Emirati clients paid over $64 million to firms representing them” (Ben Freeman, “The Emirati Lobby in America,” Dec. 5, 2022).
At the same time, the UAE has aggressively branded itself as a global leader in tolerance. Its representatives speak annually at the United Nations on the need to combat Islamophobia. It hosts interfaith initiatives and promotes a vision of “moderate Islam” aligned with secular governance and geopolitical stability.
This dual posture — condemning Islamophobia in principle while enabling it in practice — is not contradictory. It is strategic. By defining acceptable Islam as non-political, state-aligned, and deferential to power, the UAE advances a version of religious freedom that excludes dissent.
As one Middle East Eye article noted, this model of Islam “contradicts attempts at change following the Arab Spring,” offering instead procedural gestures without substantive democratic values.
Western governments did not adopt these narratives by accident. They were receptive because the framing served existing political incentives. Casting Muslim-majority communities as security problems justified expanded surveillance powers, emergency measures, and immigration controls. Relying on “Muslim” sources provided political cover against accusations of racism or religious discrimination.
But legality does not equal legitimacy. Laws that disproportionately burden one religious community — without individualized suspicion or evidence — raise serious constitutional concerns. They also erode the moral authority of legal systems that claim to protect pluralism and equality.
The consequences are now well documented. Middle East Eye has reported across multiple investigations that these measures have led to asset freezes, organizational shutdowns, and prolonged legal challenges—some of which were later overturned by courts or criticized by rights groups.
Islamophobia, in this sense, is no longer merely social prejudice. It has become institutionalized through law, policy, and administrative power — often with the encouragement of Muslim-majority states that fear democratic accountability more than injustice.
For Muslims, this reality poses a difficult but unavoidable ethical question. Islamophobia cannot be opposed selectively. It does not become acceptable when advanced by Muslim rulers, nor does repression become legitimate when justified in Islamic language.
Islam’s moral tradition has always insisted that power must be accountable, that justice cannot be sacrificed for order, and that collective punishment is a form of oppression. These principles apply whether the violator is a Western government or an Arab autocracy.
If Islam is reduced to a managed identity — permitted only when it poses no challenge to authority — it ceases to function as a moral force. And if Muslims remain silent when Islamophobia is exported from within the Muslim world, they risk conceding the very ethical ground they seek to defend.
The struggle against Islamophobia is not only about confronting far-right demagogues or hostile media narratives. It is also about recognizing how law, geopolitics, and authoritarian interests intersect to redefine Islam itself as a threat.
That redefinition must be resisted — not in the name of ideology, but in defense of justice, due process, and human dignity. Those are not Western values or Eastern values. They are moral imperatives.
And Islam, at its best, has always insisted on nothing less.
Faisal Kutty is a lawyer, law professor, and affiliate faculty member at the Rutgers University Center for Security, Race, and Rights. You can follow him on X @faisalkutty.
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