UAE cuts funds for citizens to study in UK over refusal to ban Muslim Brotherhood Submitted by MEE staff on Fri, 01/09/2026 - 11:42 Abu Dhabi excludes British universities from list of institutions eligible for state scholarships Britain's King Charles III receives Dr Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE's minister of industry and advanced technology, during an audience at Buckingham Palace in 2023 (Aaron Chown/AFP) Off The United Arab Emirates has restricted funding for citizens to study at British universities over tensions with the UK for its decision not to ban the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation. Abu Dhabi has excluded British universities from a list of institutions eligible for state scholarships while including universities in Israel, France and the US, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. In the year ending September 2025, 213 students from the UAE were granted visas to study at British universities, a drop of 55 percent from the year ending September 2022. The move indicates a serious deterioration in relations between the UAE and Britain, with the FT quoting sources saying Emirati officials "don’t want their kids to be radicalised on campus". In response, British officials reportedly emphasised the importance of academic freedom. The root of the row appears to be a disagreement over the Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE has urged Britain to ban. In December the UAE even took the unusual step of paying for Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing Reform UK party, to travel to Abu Dhabi to meet senior officials over a "shared opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood". Farage, whose party leads national opinion polls, vowed in September that Reform will ban the Brotherhood if it is elected. Under 'close review' The Labour government has said it is keeping the issue of proscribing the Brotherhood under "close review". The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Cairo in 1928 and is one of the world's largest and best-known political Islam groups. It has long maintained that it is a peaceful organisation that wishes to participate in politics democratically. But it is considered a major threat by many autocratic governments in the Middle East and North Africa. In rare instances in which free elections are held in the region, parties affiliated with the Brotherhood often either win outright or form the largest opposition party. The group is banned in Egypt , Saudi Arabia , Bahrain and the UAE . In 2017 Britain's parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, after an inquiry into the government's policy towards "political Islam", concluded that political Islamists were a “firewall” against violent extremism and should be engaged with, either when in power or in opposition. Nigel Farage met senior UAE officials to discuss Muslim Brotherhood on funded trip Read More » But the inquiry itself, commissioned by the previous, coalition government, reportedly followed lobbying by UAE officials. The UAE has a track record of seeking to encourage a crackdown on non-violent political Islam in the UK. In January 2025, the UAE labelled eight British organisations as terror groups over alleged links to the Muslim Brotherhood, although none of these organisations are considered to have broken any British laws. In response, Reform MP Richard Tice urged the Labour government to "act on" the organisations named by the UAE, a state where political opposition to the government of any kind is banned and risks heavy prison sentences. In 2023, it was revealed that the UAE had paid Alp Services, a private intelligence firm based in Geneva, to smear Britain’s largest Muslim charity, Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), by seeking to link its officials with the Muslim Brotherhood and violent extremists. Now calls are growing for a ban on the organisation. Farage told the Reform conference in September that "we will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country. Quite why we have been so gutless about this, both Conservative and Labour, I do not know. "All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same." UK Politics News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0