Britain’s universities are too radical for the UAE.
In the latest sign that diversity is our greatest strength, the United Arab Emirates has cut off funding for its students to study in the United Kingdom, because of fears that their students will be brainwashed by radical Islamist extremists. That’s right, a Muslim nation in the Arabian Gulf whose legal system is influenced by sharia law is having to take steps to prevent its citizens from being radicalised on British university campuses.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this. Universities are, of course, rife with impressionable fools who have been primed to think that the West is bad and that anti-colonialism is a cool trend, on par with a broccoli-like haircut for Gen Z males. Amongst these useful idiots, dangerous ideologues are waiting to pounce.
I shan’t forget Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called “Underpants Bomber”, a Nigerian student at University College London who attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his pants on a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. He had been President of UCL’s Islamic Society, and hosted numerous controversial speakers as he was slowly radicalised until he moved to Yemen. He is memorable to me because his device only succeeded in blowing up the part of himself he would have most appreciated having, were he to get his hands on the seventy-two virgins he believed were coming his way.
The woman who stabbed MP Stephen Timms and one of Lee Rigby’s murderers also studied in London. But the recent “tentifada” – squatters on major campuses campaigning nebulously “for Gaza” — has seen antisemitic attacks spike. My friend Natasha Hausdorff and others were abused during a debate on the topic at the Oxford Union in recent years, where multiple officers of the society have seemingly deliberately stoked controversy to burnish their “anticolonial” credentials.
Why does this matter? Well, firstly it’s such a crushing embarrassment to Britain that the US Vice-President, JD Vance, has commented that Britain being deemed unsafe for Emirati students is an “absolutely insane headline” (and no doubt helps his semi-joking prediction that Britain will be the first Islamist country with nukes). For those who love to trumpet soft power, Britain’s education system really is a way that we can influence the world; huge numbers of children of world elites study here, where we have a chance to convince them of the virtues of our country and our way of life.
More than that though, it is evidence that Westminster is blind to the risks of this trend deepening. The Emiratis are ruthlessly pragmatic, and have done a respectable job of carving a dynamic, prosperous, pluralistic and fundamentally safe society out of the desert. Of course the oil doesn’t hurt (though it hasn’t helped Iraq or Venezuela), but their clear-eyed concern about Islamism should be heeded here. Abdullah bin Zayed, the foreign minister and brother of the ruler, frequently goes viral on social media for a 2017 video where he seems to all intents and purposes to have a crystal ball on Europe’s present discontents:
There will come a day where we will see far more radical extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe because of lack of decision making, trying to be politically correct or assuming that they know Islam far better than we do. And I’m sorry but that’s pure ignorance.
We already have numbers from MI5 that there are well over 40,000 Jihadists on their watchlist in Britain. Imagine Aston Villa’s stadium, Villa Park (Capacity 42,000) with every seat occupied by someone plotting to commit atrocities. Actually, recent revelations about plots to formed armed Muslim militias to attack Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in a game against Villa recently mean you don’t need to pretend.
We already have numbers from MI5 that there are well over 40,000 Jihadists on their watchlist in Britain
Add to that the Iranian IRGC agents, al Qaeda nutters and ISIS operatives and other nutters coming over totally unchecked on small boats and housed in residential streets of Britain. It should be a relief, then, that Nigel Farage has pledged to ban the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. The devil may quite literally lie in the detail here, but it is a welcome start. At least one Westminster think tank is opening up a new centre dedicated to the thorny task of how the state would actually tackle this, a decade on from David Cameron’s refusal to do so.
I trust that the Conservatives will follow suit, building on James Cleverly’s and Tom Tugendhat’s proscription of another Islamist group, Hizb-ut Tahrir, in 2024. But in Britain, you can still pass by adverts on the Tube during Ramadan from Islamic Relief, a charity asking for Zakat, the traditional charitable payment made during the holy month. Islamic Relief are also banned in the UAE. In fact, the Emiratis have been so admirable in their efforts against this international Islamist network that they have even tried to eradicate the Muslim Brotherhood from Yemen, when Britain can’t even ban them here at home.
Last year, when Dominic Cummings said that Emiratis were pulling their kids from British universities, the “sensibles” at The Rest is Politics called him a conspiracy theorist. They will never learn, but the rest of us need to. Because the enemy is already through the gates.
