SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: : the biggest threat to an unelected Gulf monarchy is an organized, politically conscious Muslim citizenry that starts asking why a handful of families own everything.

https://x.com/kelevitch/status/2056121611779228035

@kelevitch

The reason is simple.
The UAE ruling family has one existential fear their own population.
The Arab Spring showed them exactly what happens when political Islam gets room to breathe. Egypt, Tunisia, Gaza every time Muslims voted freely, Islamist movements won. The Brotherhood won decisively, with mass popular legitimacy.

MBZ watched that and understood: the biggest threat to an unelected Gulf monarchy is an organized, politically conscious Muslim citizenry that starts asking why a handful of families own everything.

So the entire UAE strategy follows from that one fear.

Fund Islamophobia in the West wether in France or the UK because a global discourse that frames Muslim political organization as extremism gives them cover to crush it at home. Align with lsrael because lsrael has spent 70 years developing the infrastructure to suppress exactly this kind of organized Muslim resistance. Back Sisi because Egypt proved that military force can reverse a democratic Islamist victory if you move fast enough.

The blockade on Qatar in 2017 was precisely related to this- they wanted to close aljazeera because it was giving a voice to the revolutionaries and the arab voices in the streets

It’s not about religion. MBZ isn’t secular because he read Voltaire.
He’s secular because political Islam is the only force that could delegitimize his rule entirely through the simple question:
By what right do you govern?
He doesn’t have a good answer. So he funds the people who make sure nobody asks while ensuring his citizens live in luxury and never have a reason to go on the streets

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Dana Nawzar Jaf

@DanaNawzarAli

UAE now funds both Netanyahu and Bennet and both Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson. It has become an active player in internal European and Israeli politics. Add this to its long list of interventions in the MENA. Why UAE does what it does? I haven’t seen a good answer yet.