UAE said to slash scholarships to study in UK, citing fear of Muslim Brotherhood

The United Arab Emirates has curtailed subsidies for Emirati citizens to attend UK universities, citing concern that they will become radicalized by the Muslim Brotherhood there, according to British media.

The UAE’s relatively moderate, business-friendly autocracy has enabled it to attract people and capital from around the world, turning the oil-rich Gulf state into an economic powerhouse.

Emirati leaders consider groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which advocates for society to be administered based on Islamic religious principles, to be an existential threat, and have lobbied Western nations to declare the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said last month that the matter was under “close review.”

Citing people with knowledge of the matter, the Financial Times reported Thursday that the UAE in June excluded popular British institutions from a list of foreign universities that Emirati citizens could attend at the government’s expense.

The list reportedly still includes universities in locations such as the US and Australia as well as Israel, with which the UAE signed the US-brokered Abraham Accords normalization agreement in 2020.

When UK officials asked their UAE counterparts about the exclusion, the Emiratis told them that it was not an oversight, a person with direct knowledge of the discussions told the Financial Times.

UAE leaders “don’t want their kids to be radicalized on campus,” the person said, adding that the UK officials responded by stressing the importance of academic freedom.

Even before the list was published in June, the UAE was denying funds for citizens who wanted to study in the UK, according to the report, which cited one of its sources as saying that students who had already begun their coursework still got funding.

UK officials cited by the outlet said they were unsure how comprehensive the exclusion of British universities was. The officials said they were aware of some UAE military personnel still getting scholarships to study in Britain, and the report said wealthy Emirati families were still sending children to study in Britain and footing the bill themselves.

US Vice President JD Vance wrote that the news that the UAE thought British campuses were too fraught with Islamism made for an “absolutely insane headline.”

“Some of our best Muslim allies in the Gulf think the Islamist indoctrination in certain parts of the west is too dangerous,” wrote Vance on X.

The UAE has for years questioned Britain’s and other countries’ failure to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood, and over the past year hosted Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson, far-right UK figures who have accused Muslims of seeking to take over Britain.

However, the Financial Times indicated that the Emirates’ decision to cut funding for study in the UK was also motivated by specific challenges in the UK-UAE relationship.

Among these, the Financial Times said, were disagreements about a UAE-backed bid to buy the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper in November 2023; corruption allegations against the UAE-owned English Premier League soccer team Manchester City; and the UAE’s alleged backing for the Rapid Support Forces, which have committed atrocities in a civil war against Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood-influenced military.