The UAE’s Two-Front Gamble. Europe’s Muslim debate, the Saudi rivalry and the risk of strategic overreach.

Two developments have recently drawn renewed attention to the foreign policy of the United Arab Emirates. The first concerns Europe. Investigative reporting has documented an Emirati-funded intelligence and influence operation that mapped more than 1,000 people and hundreds of organisations across Europe as supposed members, sympathisers or enablers of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of those named had no demonstrated connection to the movement. The second concerns the Gulf itself, where the once unusually close partnership between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh has deteriorated into open strategic competition, particularly in Yemen.

Placed beside each other, these stories invite a larger theory. Is the UAE attempting to make Muslim life more difficult in Europe, thereby encouraging Muslim professionals and capital to migrate to the Gulf, while simultaneously weakening Saudi Arabia so that Dubai and Abu Dhabi become the preferred destination within the Muslim world?

There are facts that make parts of this theory appear superficially plausible. Anti-Muslim discrimination in Europe is high. Some well-educated European Muslims are leaving, and Dubai is one of the destinations. The UAE has built perhaps the world’s most successful expatriate economy and benefits directly from imported capital and talent. At the same time, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are no longer merely partners. They compete over business headquarters, aviation, tourism, oil production, regional diplomacy and the political future of Yemen.

But the evidence does not support the strongest version of the argument. No credible investigation has established that Abu Dhabi’s European influence operations were designed to create Muslim emigration. Nor is there credible evidence that the UAE armed or directed the Houthis in their attacks on Saudi Arabia. The Houthis have themselves attacked the UAE, including the deadly strike on Abu Dhabi in January 2022, and Abu Dhabi has repeatedly condemned renewed Houthi attacks on Saudi territory.[1]

What the evidence does support is a more interesting and more defensible conclusion. The UAE has pursued a sustained international campaign against political Islam, sometimes using methods that blurred the boundary between identifying genuine extremist networks and stigmatising a much wider field of Muslim civil society. It has also pursued an increasingly independent regional strategy that has repeatedly collided with Saudi interests. Those two policies produce benefits for Abu Dhabi, but also risks. In a Middle East now moving towards new Saudi-centred security arrangements, and in a Europe increasingly sensitive to foreign interference, the UAE may be approaching the limits of strategic overreach.

What the ‘Abu Dhabi Secrets’ investigation actually found

The strongest evidence of Emirati interference in Europe comes from the “Abu Dhabi Secrets” investigation by European Investigative Collaborations and partner media. Based on leaked material from the Swiss private intelligence company Alp Services, the investigation reported that the firm had been contracted by the UAE government and supplied Emirati intelligence with the names of more than 1,000 individuals and more than 400 organisations in 18 European countries, presenting them as part of, or close to, a Muslim Brotherhood network.[2]

The lists were extraordinarily broad. They included politicians, academics, journalists, anti-racism campaigners and institutions such as France’s National Centre for Scientific Research. Mediapart reported that many of those targeted had no connection to radical Islamism. Alp Services also allegedly used fake online identities, planted or promoted hostile material, altered online reputations, briefed journalists and sought to influence banks and policymakers.[3]

The European Parliament took the allegations seriously enough for a formal question to be put to the European Commission in July 2023. The question described a “Swiss company hired by UAE for anti-Muslim disinformation campaign” and said that people and organisations had been wrongly connected to radical Islamist networks, damaging reputations and contributing to public distrust of Muslims and Islam. The Commission said it had taken note of the investigation and would follow the matter with member states in the context of foreign information manipulation and interference.[4]

That wording matters. The documented operation was framed by Abu Dhabi primarily as a struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE classifies as a terrorist organisation. It is therefore more precise to describe the policy as an anti-Brotherhood or anti-political-Islam influence campaign than simply as a state programme to spread hatred of all Muslims.

The problem is that such distinctions do not necessarily survive contact with European politics. If Muslim charities, academics, civil-rights campaigners, mosques and ordinary civic organisations are repeatedly mapped into a security narrative, the result can be broader suspicion of Muslim public life. A campaign intended to delegitimise “Islamism” can therefore have an Islamophobic spillover even if that is not how Emirati officials describe its purpose.

The most defensible criticism is not that the UAE has been proven to finance hatred of every Muslim. It is that its campaign against political Islam has sometimes cast such a wide net that ordinary Muslim civil society has been pulled into a security narrative.

Sources and notes:

1. UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, statements condemning Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, July 2026; and UAE request for a UN Security Council meeting after the Houthi attack on Abu Dhabi that killed three civilians in January 2022.
Available at: https://www.mofa.gov.ae/en/MediaHub/News/2026/7/14/uae-Saudi-Arabia
2022 Abu Dhabi attack statement: https://www.mofa.gov.ae/en/MediaHub/News/2022/1/18/18-01-2022-UAE

2. European Investigative Collaborations, “Abu Dhabi Secrets: How a Swiss company spied across Europe on behalf of the UAE state.”
Available at: https://eic.network/projects/abu-dhabi-secrets.html

3. Mediapart, “How a Swiss firm handed UAE names of 1,000 supposed Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers in Europe”, 2 October 2023.
Available at: https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/international/021023/how-swiss-firm-handed-uae-names-1000-supposed-muslim-brotherhood-sympathisers-europe

4. European Parliament, Priority Question P-002379/2023 and answer by the European Commission concerning the alleged UAE-funded anti-Muslim disinformation campaign.
Available at: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-9-2023-002379_EN.html

5. UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “UAE Ambassador participated in the conference ‘Muslim Brotherhood: a real threat to Europe’ held at the European Parliament”, 2 June 2026.
Available at: https://www.mofa.gov.ae/en/mediahub/news/2026/6/2/uae-muslimbrotherhood

6. Le Monde, reporting on the 2025 French government report on Muslim Brotherhood influence and on the UAE-linked questions surrounding a controversial series of opinion polls on Muslims in France.
Available at: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/05/22/muslim-brotherhood-s-influence-in-france-what-the-controversial-report-reveals_6741529_7.html
Related investigation on the controversial polling and UAE links: https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2025/12/03/qui-a-commande-les-sondages-controverses-sur-les-musulmans-en-france_6655880_4355770.html

7. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Being Muslim in the EU, 23 October 2024. The survey found that 47% of Muslim respondents had experienced racial discrimination over the preceding five years.
Available at: https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2024/being-muslim-eu

8. UK Government, “A Definition of Anti-Muslim Hostility”, 2026. The guidance cites 4,478 recorded hate crimes targeting Muslims in the year to March 2025.
Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/a-definition-of-anti-muslim-hostility

9. Olivier Esteves, Alice Picard and Julien Talpin, research on French Muslim emigration, discussed in Le Monde, May 2024. The researchers identify discrimination and an “atmosphere of Islamophobia” among reported motives, while acknowledging limitations in representativeness.
Available at: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/05/12/new-book-looks-into-why-french-muslims-leave-their-country-here-i-m-an-arab-in-austria-i-m-a-frenchman_6671222_7.html

10. Le Monde, “These young Muslim professionals who left France to settle in Dubai”, 2 December 2025.
Available at: https://www.lemonde.fr/campus/article/2025/12/02/en-france-toute-ma-vie-aurait-ete-un-combat-ces-jeunes-cadres-musulmans-partis-s-installer-a-dubai_6655647_4401467.html

11. Henley & Partners, Private Wealth Migration Report 2026. The UAE had been the leading destination for millionaire migration over the preceding two years, although 2026 regional conflict increased demand for contingency residence options.
Available at: https://www.henleyglobal.com/newsroom/press-releases/henley-private-wealth-migration-report-2026

12. Reuters, reporting on Saudi Arabia’s regional-headquarters policy and the competition to attract international firms from the UAE-based regional model.
Available at: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/citi-gets-license-regional-headquarters-saudi-arabia-memo-shows-2024-11-22/

13. Reuters, “Yemen strike shows depth of distrust between Saudi Arabia and UAE”, 30 December 2025.
Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/yemen-strike-shows-depth-distrust-between-saudi-arabia-uae-2025-12-30/

14. UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “UAE Statement on Ongoing Developments in Yemen”, 30 December 2025, rejecting allegations that Abu Dhabi directed Yemeni parties to threaten Saudi security.
Available at: https://www.mofa.gov.ae/en/mediahub/news/2025/12/30/uae-saudi-arabia

15. Reuters, “Why the UAE no longer needs OPEC”, 29 April 2026, on the UAE’s decision to leave OPEC and its widening strategic and economic divergence from Saudi Arabia.
Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/why-uae-no-longer-needs-opec-2026-04-29/

16. Reuters, “Turkey lays out plans for defence pact with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia”, 13 August 2026; and Saudi Press Agency, Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, 17 September 2025.
Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/turkey-pakistan-saudi-arabia-will-form-political-military-mechanisms-coordinate-2026-08-13/
Saudi-Pakistan agreement: https://www.spa.gov.sa/en/N2399714

17. Al Jazeera, “Why is Saudi Arabia forming a coalition to protect the Red Sea?”, 30 July 2026. Reporting identified 14 founding states and noted the UAE and Oman had not signed.
Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/30/why-is-saudi-arabia-forming-a-coalition-to-protect-the-red-sea

18. Foreign Policy, “The Middle East Has a New Saudi-Led Axis With Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, and Egypt—but Not the UAE”, 1 July 2026.
Available at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/01/saudi-qatar-pakistan-turkey-egypt-uae-axis-alliance-iran-middle-east/

19. Joint statement by the foreign ministers of Türkiye, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE concerning Al-Aqsa / Al-Haram Al-Sharif, 23 July 2026, illustrating that UAE participation in wider regional diplomacy continues despite its absence from some new security structures.
Available at: https://www.mfa.gov.tr/joint-statement-by-the-foreign-ministers-23-july-2026.en.mfa

Inauguration of the new European Union Chamber of Commerce in Saudi Arabia (ECCKSA) in May 2024 - PHOTO/X/@EUintheGCC

The campaign did not end with the leak

The strategic objective behind the operation is visible in the UAE’s public diplomacy as well as its covert activity. In June 2026, the UAE’s ambassador to the European Union participated in a conference at the European Parliament entitled “Muslim Brotherhood: a real threat to Europe”. The UAE foreign ministry reported that participants called for the EU to list the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation and praised the Emirati model of confronting the movement.[5]

In France, the influence debate has become particularly intense. In May 2025, Le Monde reported that a French government report on Muslim Brotherhood “entryism” had been heavily influenced by Emirati thinking, while also noting that the report itself was more nuanced than some of the alarmist political rhetoric surrounding it. Later that year, the newspaper raised questions about the UAE links of the founder of a media group that commissioned controversial polling on Muslims and the Brotherhood in France.[6]

None of this means that every European concern about the Muslim Brotherhood originates in Abu Dhabi. European governments have their own security debates, their own Islamist movements and their own domestic political incentives. Nor does criticism of the Brotherhood amount automatically to hostility towards Muslims. The movement is controversial within Muslim societies themselves.

The issue is foreign-state amplification. The UAE is not merely expressing an opinion about political Islam. The evidence shows a long-term effort to shape how European institutions, media and political actors understand it. The broader the definition of “Brotherhood-linked” becomes, the easier it is for an external geopolitical rivalry to bleed into domestic European debates over Islam, migration and citizenship.

Europe already has an anti-Muslim problem of its own

The UAE did not create European Islamophobia, and it would be analytically convenient but wrong to suggest otherwise. Anti-Muslim discrimination has deep domestic roots in European history, migration politics, terrorism, economic inequality, colonial legacies and the rise of populist parties.

The scale is nevertheless significant. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reported in 2024 that 47 per cent of Muslim respondents in 13 EU countries had experienced racial discrimination in the previous five years, up from 39 per cent in its earlier survey. Thirty-nine per cent reported racial discrimination when looking for work, while young women wearing religious clothing were particularly affected.[7]

Britain has seen similar pressures. The UK government said in 2026 that 4,478 religious hate crimes targeting Muslims had been recorded in the year to March 2025, representing almost half of all religious hate crime and an increase of about one-fifth on the previous year.[8]

This matters because foreign influence operations operate inside an existing market for political narratives. A misleading dossier connecting a civic activist to extremism is more damaging when it enters a society in which suspicion of Muslims is already politically potent. External actors do not have to invent a prejudice to exploit it.

The migration effect is real. The intention is unproven

There is, however, a second part of the hypothesis for which evidence is beginning to emerge: some European Muslims are responding to discrimination by leaving.

Research into French Muslim emigration has identified a difficult-to-quantify but genuine movement of educated Muslims out of France. In a study discussed by Le Monde, researchers found that many respondents described an “atmosphere of Islamophobia”, workplace discrimination and frustration over visible religious practice as factors in their decision to emigrate. The sample was not nationally representative, and the researchers acknowledged selection bias, so it cannot tell us how many people are leaving. But the profile was striking: 52 per cent of respondents who had moved abroad held a five-year university degree, suggesting a disproportionately qualified group.[9]

Destinations varied. Britain and Canada were important, as were the Maghreb and Turkey. The Gulf, with Dubai in particular, formed another significant destination group. By late 2025, Le Monde was reporting specifically on young French Muslim professionals relocating to Dubai, attracted by a combination of professional opportunity, religious ease, security and taxation.[10]

The economic logic is obvious. If a European country pays to educate a doctor, engineer, lawyer, technology specialist or entrepreneur and that person then moves abroad because they feel permanently marginalised, the country loses human capital and future tax revenue. The destination economy gains both.

The UAE is particularly well designed to capture this movement. Its tax regime, global air links, English-speaking business environment, long-term visa reforms and established expatriate labour market make relocation comparatively easy for mobile professionals. Henley & Partners described the UAE as the leading destination for millionaire migration over the two years before its 2026 report, although regional war has since caused more UAE-based families to seek additional residence options elsewhere.[11]

This creates a real Emirati “migration dividend” from European alienation. But a dividend is not proof of causation. There is no evidence that the Alp Services campaign was commissioned to drive Muslims out of Europe so that they would move to Dubai. The documented objective was to weaken the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar-linked networks and political Islam. Any migration benefit to the UAE should therefore be treated as a possible secondary consequence, not an established motive.

Saudi Arabia complicates the migration theory

The argument that Muslims leaving Europe would naturally choose Saudi Arabia because Mecca and Medina are there also needs qualification.

Saudi Arabia possesses religious legitimacy that no other Muslim-majority state can replicate. For some Muslims, proximity to the holy cities is an important attraction. But migration decisions are usually less theological than economic. Employment, residency rights, schools, housing, taxation, professional regulation and lifestyle often matter more than symbolic geography.

For decades the UAE held a substantial advantage over Saudi Arabia in precisely these areas. Dubai became the region’s commercial platform because expatriates could build careers and businesses within a cosmopolitan infrastructure designed around foreign labour. Riyadh has been trying to close that gap under Vision 2030.

Saudi Arabia’s regional-headquarters policy is one example. Since 2024, foreign firms seeking many government contracts have been required to establish a regional headquarters in the kingdom. Major international companies have responded by establishing or licensing regional bases in Riyadh, while Saudi officials have reported a rapidly expanding headquarters programme. The policy was explicitly designed in part to capture economic activity that had traditionally been managed from Dubai.[12]

The competition for Muslim and non-Muslim talent is therefore already happening without any covert demographic strategy. Saudi Arabia has religious gravity and a vastly larger domestic market. The UAE has institutional convenience, accumulated expatriate networks and a stronger legacy as a regional business hub. The rivalry is structural.

Yemen is where the Saudi-UAE rivalry stopped being theoretical

The second major strand of the argument concerns Yemen. Here, too, precision matters.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE entered the Yemen war together in 2015 against the Iran-aligned Houthis. Their objectives gradually diverged. Saudi Arabia remained primarily focused on securing its southern border and restoring a friendly central government. The UAE developed relationships with southern armed groups, most importantly the Southern Transitional Council, which seeks an independent South Yemen and is deeply hostile to Islah, a Sunni Islamist party associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

By late 2025 these differences had become a direct strategic crisis. UAE-backed separatist forces seized significant territory in southern and eastern Yemen, including areas close to the Saudi frontier. Saudi-backed forces moved against them. In December 2025, a Saudi-led coalition strike on the port of Mukalla targeted what Riyadh described as foreign military support for the separatists. Saudi Arabia then backed a demand for Emirati forces to leave Yemen, declaring its national security a red line.[13]

The UAE denied directing any Yemeni force to undertake operations that threatened Saudi security or its borders and rejected Riyadh’s account of its role.[14]

This episode is evidence of Emirati action that Saudi Arabia believed undermined its security. It is not evidence that Abu Dhabi was behind Houthi missile or drone attacks on Saudi Arabia. The distinction is essential. The Houthis are aligned with Iran, have attacked both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and in 2022 killed three civilians in Abu Dhabi. In July and August 2026 the UAE again publicly condemned Houthi attacks and threats against Saudi Arabia.[1]

The stronger argument is indirect. By backing a separatist project that fragmented the anti-Houthi camp and challenged the Saudi-backed Yemeni order, the UAE made Saudi Arabia’s Yemen problem harder. That served Abu Dhabi’s own interests in southern ports, maritime routes and anti-Islamist politics, but it also weakened the coherence of the coalition originally built to contain the Houthis.

The rivalry is about much more than Yemen

The Saudi-UAE split now extends across several theatres.

Economically, Riyadh is trying to pull corporate decision-making away from Dubai. Both states compete for finance, tourism, logistics, aviation, technology firms and wealthy residents. The UAE has responded by deepening its own financial centres and maintaining an aggressively open investment environment.

In oil policy, the divergence became dramatic in 2026 when the UAE announced its departure from OPEC after decades of membership. Reuters described the move as reflecting Abu Dhabi’s frustration with production limits and its increasingly independent energy strategy, a direct challenge to a system long dominated by Saudi Arabia.[15]

In Sudan, the two governments have been associated with different preferred outcomes and Riyadh has been increasingly uncomfortable with allegations of Emirati support for the Rapid Support Forces, which the UAE denies. In the wider Arab world, the UAE has generally been more uncompromising than Saudi Arabia in its opposition to political Islam.

And there is Israel. The UAE normalised relations in 2020 and has built important economic and security ties under the Abraham Accords. Saudi Arabia has not followed, and the regional wars since 2023 have made formal Saudi normalisation more politically difficult. The relationship with Israel therefore gives Abu Dhabi access and leverage, but it also places it on a different political track from some of the states now gathering around Riyadh.

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The Iran war has accelerated a new Saudi-centred security architecture

The strategic environment changed again after the US-Israeli war with Iran that began in February 2026. The conflict exposed the vulnerability of Gulf infrastructure, shipping routes and Western security guarantees. Saudi Arabia responded by building overlapping regional security arrangements rather than relying solely on Washington.

The foundation had already been laid in September 2025, when Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement. In August 2026, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan went further with the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, creating a mutual-defence commitment and mechanisms for deeper political and military coordination. Reuters described the pact as including plans for joint exercises, defence-industrial cooperation and high-level strategic coordination.[16]

At the same time, Riyadh has assembled a broader maritime coalition to protect the Red Sea. Reporting in July identified Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and several African and Asian Muslim-majority countries among the signatories. The UAE and Oman were conspicuously absent from the founding group.[17]

Foreign Policy has described an emerging Saudi-centred axis involving Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt in which the UAE is notably missing.[18] This should not be exaggerated into a formal anti-UAE bloc. The participating states have different interests, and the UAE continues to cooperate with many of them. It joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt and others in a joint statement on Jerusalem as recently as July 2026.[19]

Nevertheless, the direction is significant. Saudi Arabia is no longer merely the largest Gulf state. It is increasingly placing itself at the centre of a network that combines its financial weight with Turkish defence capacity, Pakistani military power, Egyptian geography and the participation of a wider group of Muslim-majority states. That changes the cost of standing apart.

Europe has its own strategic interest in the story

For Europe, the issue is not simply whether the UAE gains influence. Foreign states lobby and pursue their interests everywhere. The question is whether European institutions allow external geopolitical conflicts to reshape domestic citizenship.

If European Muslims are unfairly labelled as security threats through foreign-funded influence campaigns, the immediate victims are individuals and organisations whose reputations are damaged. The longer-term cost can be wider. Highly educated citizens who conclude that their religion permanently limits their career or social acceptance may move elsewhere. Entrepreneurs can move companies and capital with them.

The French research is too limited to quantify a national “Muslim brain drain”, and it would be irresponsible to claim that Europe is about to lose a large share of its Muslim professional class. But the mechanism is real enough to deserve attention. The EU’s own data show high levels of employment discrimination, while qualitative research shows that some of the people leaving are unusually well educated.[7][9]

The UAE is only one beneficiary. Canada, Britain, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries can also attract those workers. The policy lesson for Europe is therefore broader than Emirati interference. A society that repeatedly tells a productive minority that it is culturally suspect creates an economic opportunity for competitor states.

There is a particular irony if part of that suspicion has itself been amplified by one of the states competing for those people and their capital.

A strategy can produce benefits without being a master plan

Geopolitical analysis often becomes less accurate when every outcome is treated as evidence of one hidden design. The UAE does not need to have conceived a single master plan linking European Islamophobia, Muslim migration, the Yemen war and Saudi competition for these policies to reinforce one another.

Its campaign against political Islam can make Muslim civic participation in Europe more contested. European discrimination can encourage some Muslim professionals to relocate. The UAE’s economic model makes it one of the places capable of attracting them. Its rivalry with Saudi Arabia gives it an incentive to preserve Dubai and Abu Dhabi as the Gulf’s preferred commercial centres. Its support for southern Yemeni actors can weaken Saudi influence even if it simultaneously opposes the Houthis.

These are interacting incentives, not proof of central orchestration.

This distinction matters because it changes how the UAE’s strategy should be judged. If the objective were secretly to drive Muslims out of Europe, the available evidence is insufficient. If the objective is to suppress political Islam, build the UAE as a global hub, preserve strategic autonomy and prevent Saudi Arabia from monopolising Gulf leadership, the evidence is substantial.

The risk of strategic overreach

The UAE’s strategy has been extraordinarily successful by many conventional measures. A federation of fewer than 12 million residents, most of them expatriates, has built a global airline system, a major financial centre, some of the world’s largest sovereign investment funds, an influential diplomatic network and military reach far beyond what its population would suggest.

But small-state activism works best when interventions remain deniable, partners remain multiple and rivals remain divided.

The European influence operations revealed by Abu Dhabi Secrets damaged that deniability. The Saudi rupture in Yemen damaged Gulf unity. Leaving OPEC signalled that economic competition with Riyadh had moved into the core architecture of oil politics. The emerging Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani security arrangements show that larger regional states are increasingly capable of building structures that do not require Emirati participation.

There is also a reputational contradiction at the centre of the Emirati model. The UAE markets itself internationally as a country of tolerance, coexistence and cosmopolitanism. That brand has genuine foundations in the everyday coexistence of a remarkably diverse expatriate population. But covert campaigns that wrongly associate Muslim civil society with extremism sit uneasily beside it.

The more those operations become visible, the more European governments may ask whether an important commercial partner has crossed from legitimate counter-extremism diplomacy into manipulation of domestic politics. That would be particularly damaging if the same governments begin to associate anti-Muslim hostility with the loss of skilled citizens, investment and tax revenue.

The more credible thesis is not a conspiracy of demographic engineering. It is a convergence of policies: anti-Islamist influence abroad, talent attraction at home, and increasingly open competition with Saudi Arabia.

What happens next

Three questions will determine whether the UAE’s current position becomes a durable alternative centre of Middle Eastern power or the beginning of relative isolation.

The first is whether Abu Dhabi and Riyadh can rebuild a functional relationship. Their economic competition will continue, but both have reasons to prevent rivalry from becoming permanent strategic hostility. The Houthis and Iran remain threats to both, and a divided Gulf creates opportunities for outside powers.

The second is whether the new Saudi-led arrangements become institutions rather than summit diplomacy. The Mecca pact is significant, but it is young. Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have different threat perceptions. The broader Red Sea coalition is even more diverse. If these structures remain largely declaratory, the UAE’s absence will matter less. If they develop shared command systems, intelligence, procurement and crisis response, the regional balance will shift.

The third is how Europe responds to foreign influence in its debate over Islam. European states have legitimate security interests in scrutinising extremist networks. But they also have an interest in ensuring that foreign governments do not define European Muslims through the lens of their own regime-security conflicts. That requires transparency over funding, lobbying, commissioned research and covert information operations.

Europe also needs to consider the economic dimension. Preventing discrimination is not only a matter of civil rights. In an era when the Gulf, North America and Asia actively compete for mobile professionals and capital, inclusion is part of national competitiveness.

The UAE may continue to benefit from Europe’s failure on that front. But benefiting from a trend is different from having engineered it.

Conclusion: a dangerous convergence, not yet a proven conspiracy

There is enough evidence to justify scrutiny of the UAE’s conduct in Europe and enough evidence to say that its rivalry with Saudi Arabia has become a major feature of Middle Eastern politics.

There is not enough evidence to say that Abu Dhabi deliberately promotes anti-Muslim hatred in Europe in order to force Muslims to migrate to the UAE. Nor is there credible evidence that the UAE has supported Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia. Those claims go beyond what the public record currently establishes.

The stronger conclusion is also more consequential.

Abu Dhabi has funded or commissioned influence operations that sought to define a broad range of European Muslim actors through the lens of the Muslim Brotherhood. European institutions themselves have warned that the resulting smear campaigns contributed to distrust of Muslims and Islam. At the same time, real anti-Muslim discrimination is encouraging some highly educated European Muslims to consider emigration, including to Dubai. The UAE benefits economically from the arrival of globally mobile talent and capital.

In the Middle East, the UAE has pursued policies in Yemen and oil markets that have directly challenged Saudi interests. Riyadh, meanwhile, is building new defence and diplomatic networks with Turkey, Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt and other Muslim-majority states. The UAE is absent from some of the most important new structures, even while remaining involved in other regional diplomacy.

These developments do not prove a single hidden strategy. They reveal something more characteristic of modern geopolitics: policies created for different purposes can converge to produce the same strategic effect.

For the UAE, the short-term effect may be attractive. It can weaken political-Islam networks abroad, attract skilled migrants and capital, and preserve its autonomy from Saudi leadership. The longer-term risk is that Europe becomes more resistant to Emirati influence, Saudi Arabia becomes the centre of a broader Muslim security architecture, and Western powers decide that their interests are better served by balancing Abu Dhabi rather than relying on it.

The UAE has prospered by being indispensable to many sides at once. Its next challenge is to avoid becoming so assertive that those sides discover they can organise without it.