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The United Arab Emirates shocked many western charities by placing them on its blacklist of “terrorist groups”, alongside radical groups like Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda.
The list, released earlier in the month, was topped by the Muslim Brotherhood, but also included organizations like Islamic Relief UK, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and large Muslim associations in Sweden, Norway, Finland and other European nations, prompting outrage and calls for an explanation from many Western governments.
The list included 83 groups, outnumbering Saudi Arabia’s list of nine and the US’ list of 59. However, there were several interesting omissions on the list, including the powerful Iran-backed group Hezbollah from Lebanon.
CAIR, a prominent Muslim civil rights group in the US, described its inclusion in the list as “shocking and bizarre”, pointing to its “many anti-terror initiatives”.
“Like the rest of the mainstream institutions representing the American Muslim community, CAIR’s advocacy model is the antithesis of the narrative of violent extremists”, it said in a statement.
Islamic Relief in Britain also expressed similar surprise, saying that assumed its listing “can only be attributable to a mistake”.
“We abhor terrorism in all its forms”, the group sai
d.
Frederic Wehrey, a Gulf expert at the UUS-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that the real target of blacklist was “politically active Islamism”.
“(The UAE) is trying to include non-violent, Brotherhood-affiliated groups in the same ideological constellation as real terrorist groups like (Nigeria’s) Boko Haram and al-Qaeda”, he said.
The UAE seems like an odd choice to lead the attack against political Islam, given that it has not been targeted by attacks and has not had populist protests which have shaken other nations in the region. However, its leaders consider the Muslim Brotherhood as serious threat to their rule; the grassroots organization was established in 1928 in Egypt and spread through the region.
“I think the criteria (for the list) has been to look at anything that could have even a remote link to the Muslim Brotherhood”, Andrew Hammond, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Middle East and North Africa program, said.