UAE Moves To Restrict State Funding For Its Citizens Seeking To Study At British Universities

12th January 2026 at 4:06 PM

2 minutes read

Dubai : The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has moved to restrict state funding for its citizens seeking to study at British universities, alleging its students could get radicalised by Muslim Brotherhood elements in the British education system. Though the funding for scholarships was cut in June last year, it became widely known because of reports in British dailies — the Financial Times and The Times — last week.

While the list included institutions across the US, Australia, France and Israel, names of British universities were visibly excluded despite the UK being home to many of the world’s top-ranked academic institutions. People familiar with the discussions told the Financial Times that the exclusion was intentional. When British officials raised questions about the omission, Emirati officials said it was not an oversight.

The UAE’s position is rooted in its broader domestic and regional policies. According to The Times, Abu Dhabi views the Muslim Brotherhood as a serious threat to its autocratic yet relatively secular political system. Dozens of suspected members have been jailed, and the UAE backed Egypt’s military takeover in 2013 to remove President Mohamed Morsi, who was linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The subsection below gives a background of the Muslim Brotherhood. You can skip it if you know about its history, to continue reading about the UAE’s funding cut for scholarships to students studying at British universities. The Muslim Brotherhood or the Ikhwan al-Muslimun is a transnational Sunni Islamist organisation founded in 1928 in Ismailia, Egypt, by Hassan al-Banna, a schoolteacher and Islamic scholar.

Brookings Institution, the group was initially a rather fringe organisation, until the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel’s military victory over Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria led to the decline of secular Pan-Arab Nationalism in favour of Islamism. The group renounced internal violence in the 1970s after early militant phases, including assassinations, though offshoots like Hamas, which emerged from a Brotherhood linked charity in 1973, continue to engage in armed struggle, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Muslim Brotherhood briefly held power in Egypt post-Arab Spring between 2011 and 2013, with Mohamed Morsi elected president before a 2013 military coup led to severe repression, mass arrests, and designation as a terrorist group in Egypt, according to Reuters and Al Jazeera reports.