United Arab Emirates: investigation reveals how Abu Dhabi allegedly tried to discredit Muslims in Europe and the United States

According to an investigation by Drop Site News, an independent American media specializing in investigative journalism, founded in particular by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim, former journalists at The Interceptthe United Arab Emirates allegedly financed a vast operation aimed at discrediting Muslim organizations and personalities in the United States by associating them with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Swiss private intelligence company Alp Services, working on behalf of Emirati interests, notably ordered in 2018 from the American researcher Lorenzo Vidino a report devoted to the supposed networks of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.

The document targeted several large American Muslim organizations, including CAIR, ISNA, MPAC, the Muslim American Society and Islamic Relief USA, but also mosques, religious leaders, activists and charities. According to Drop Site News, the report did not provide any elements to seriously support the belonging of these people or organizations to the Muslim Brotherhood. The investigation above all reveals the extent of the means envisaged to smear these actors: hostile articles in the press, anonymous briefings transmitted to journalists, negative modifications of Wikipedia pages, transmission of compromising information to financial compliance databases and discreet political lobbying.

In other words, it was not simply a matter of Abu Dhabi monitoring opponents or producing analyses. The documents describe a real influence strategy intended to weaken the reputation, credibility and sometimes even the financial situation of people considered troublesome. This offensive is part of a broader policy carried out for several years by the United Arab Emirates against the Muslim Brotherhood, which the monarchy considers as a political threat since the Arab Spring of 2011. But the investigation shows that this fight would have gone far beyond just the members of the brotherhood to affect Muslim organizations perfectly established in American society.

This is precisely where the Emirati method poses a problem: transforming an accusation of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood into a political weapon, without necessarily producing solid evidence. A label heavy enough to cast suspicion on an association, an intellectual or a mosque and marginalize them in the long term.

Most worrying is that this strategy does not appear to have been limited to the Middle East. According to documents studied by Drop Site News, it has spread to the United States and Europe, with the clear objective of influencing Western public debate on Islam, Muslim organizations and their representatives. The United Arab Emirates, which normalized its relations with Israel in 2020 and has since maintained diplomatic relations and close cooperation with the Hebrew state, thus finds itself accused of contributing, through this type of campaign, to fueling an Islamophobic climate in Europe and the United States. The Drop Site News investigation notably reports operations targeting Muslim organizations on both sides of the Atlantic and highlights the convergence of some of these efforts with those of pro-Israeli organizations.

The United Arab Emirates, regularly presented as a modern, open and “moderate” state, appear here under a completely different face: that of a monarchy ready to spend significant resources to monitor, discredit and isolate those it considers its political adversaries, including several thousand kilometers from its borders. Several American Muslim leaders cited in the investigation denounce an attempt to exclude them from American political life. For them, the objective is clear: to assimilate Muslims engaged in civil society with a clandestine or extremist organization in order to delegitimize their words.

The Drop Site News investigation thus reveals the dark side of Abu Dhabi’s influential diplomacy: behind the investments, international partnerships and the discourse of tolerance, a much more aggressive policy when it comes to fighting those whom the Emirati power considers likely to challenge its authoritarian model.