Mackenzie France: The UK’s latest radicalism wake-up call
Notice what's missing.
Mackenzie France is the director of strategy at the Pinsker Centre, a UK-based foreign affairs think tank focusing on Israel and the Middle East. He is also a Senior Contributor at Young Voices and a Krauthammer Fellow at the Tikvah Fund.
Every so often, news flashes up on our screens that simply doesn’t compute the first time. You read it, and reread it, perhaps slightly incredulous at the suggestion. Recent examples of such headspinners came earlier this month when we saw headlines on the United Arab Emirates’s decision to revoke scholarships for their students to study in UK universities, citing radicalisation concerns.
This decision by the UAE is a grave and embarrassing reminder of the state of domestic extremism in the UK. The time has long passed for the UK to begin taking the concerns of moderate muslim states like the UAE seriously. Rather than doubling down on our effete counterextremism strategy, or, as some UK politicians prefer, denying the problem entirely, we must now take some advice from those used to dealing with the problem.
This intervention is just the latest warning of many given by the UAE. In January 2025, the UAE designated eight entities operating perfectly legally in the UK as terrorist organisations over alleged links to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. The UAE designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation in 2014, whereas the 2015 UK review into the organisation stopped short of recommending a ban.
In a now viral speech from 2017, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed warned Europe that there would be “far more radical extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe” because of political indecision, political correctness, and a misguided self-confidence on behalf of western leaders that they “know Islam” better than moderate regional players.
An almost perfect prediction as to what would happen, the UK has completely underestimated the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood and other directly subversive groups. A June 2025 report by the French government, aiming to understand the activities and scope of the Brotherhood in France, identified that the UK and Sweden were the two European countries most at risk of subversive influence.
Whilst Sweden announced an investigation into ‘Islamist infiltration’, the UK, naturally, did nothing. The 2015 review already revealed a preexisting ‘complex network of charities associated with the Muslim Brotherhood’, as well as occasional ‘significant influence on the largest UK Muslim student organisation’ – how much worse has the problem got, left unchecked, in the last decade?
There is simply not enough oversight in the UK to deal with the issue. The UK’s civil society and academic networks are vulnerable to pressure groups and institutional capture, …
Notice what's missing.
Mackenzie France is the director of strategy at the Pinsker Centre, a UK-based foreign affairs think tank focusing on Israel and the Middle East. He is also a Senior Contributor at Young Voices and a Krauthammer Fellow at the Tikvah Fund.
Every so often, news flashes up on our screens that simply doesn’t compute the first time. You read it, and reread it, perhaps slightly incredulous at the suggestion. Recent examples of such headspinners came earlier this month when we saw headlines on the United Arab Emirates’s decision to revoke scholarships for their students to study in UK universities, citing radicalisation concerns.
This decision by the UAE is a grave and embarrassing reminder of the state of domestic extremism in the UK. The time has long passed for the UK to begin taking the concerns of moderate muslim states like the UAE seriously. Rather than doubling down on our effete counterextremism strategy, or, as some UK politicians prefer, denying the problem entirely, we must now take some advice from those used to dealing with the problem.
This intervention is just the latest warning of many given by the UAE. In January 2025, the UAE designated eight entities operating perfectly legally in the UK as terrorist organisations over alleged links to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. The UAE designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation in 2014, whereas the 2015 UK review into the organisation stopped short of recommending a ban.
In a now viral speech from 2017, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed warned Europe that there would be “far more radical extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe” because of political indecision, political correctness, and a misguided self-confidence on behalf of western leaders that they “know Islam” better than moderate regional players.
An almost perfect prediction as to what would happen, the UK has completely underestimated the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood and other directly subversive groups. A June 2025 report by the French government, aiming to understand the activities and scope of the Brotherhood in France, identified that the UK and Sweden were the two European countries most at risk of subversive influence.
Whilst Sweden announced an investigation into ‘Islamist infiltration’, the UK, naturally, did nothing. The 2015 review already revealed a preexisting ‘complex network of charities associated with the Muslim Brotherhood’, as well as occasional ‘significant influence on the largest UK Muslim student organisation’ – how much worse has the problem got, left unchecked, in the last decade?
There is simply not enough oversight in the UK to deal with the issue. The UK’s civil society and academic networks are vulnerable to pressure groups and institutional capture, …
Mackenzie France: The UK’s latest radicalism wake-up call
Notice what's missing.
Mackenzie France is the director of strategy at the Pinsker Centre, a UK-based foreign affairs think tank focusing on Israel and the Middle East. He is also a Senior Contributor at Young Voices and a Krauthammer Fellow at the Tikvah Fund.
Every so often, news flashes up on our screens that simply doesn’t compute the first time. You read it, and reread it, perhaps slightly incredulous at the suggestion. Recent examples of such headspinners came earlier this month when we saw headlines on the United Arab Emirates’s decision to revoke scholarships for their students to study in UK universities, citing radicalisation concerns.
This decision by the UAE is a grave and embarrassing reminder of the state of domestic extremism in the UK. The time has long passed for the UK to begin taking the concerns of moderate muslim states like the UAE seriously. Rather than doubling down on our effete counterextremism strategy, or, as some UK politicians prefer, denying the problem entirely, we must now take some advice from those used to dealing with the problem.
This intervention is just the latest warning of many given by the UAE. In January 2025, the UAE designated eight entities operating perfectly legally in the UK as terrorist organisations over alleged links to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. The UAE designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation in 2014, whereas the 2015 UK review into the organisation stopped short of recommending a ban.
In a now viral speech from 2017, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed warned Europe that there would be “far more radical extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe” because of political indecision, political correctness, and a misguided self-confidence on behalf of western leaders that they “know Islam” better than moderate regional players.
An almost perfect prediction as to what would happen, the UK has completely underestimated the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood and other directly subversive groups. A June 2025 report by the French government, aiming to understand the activities and scope of the Brotherhood in France, identified that the UK and Sweden were the two European countries most at risk of subversive influence.
Whilst Sweden announced an investigation into ‘Islamist infiltration’, the UK, naturally, did nothing. The 2015 review already revealed a preexisting ‘complex network of charities associated with the Muslim Brotherhood’, as well as occasional ‘significant influence on the largest UK Muslim student organisation’ – how much worse has the problem got, left unchecked, in the last decade?
There is simply not enough oversight in the UK to deal with the issue. The UK’s civil society and academic networks are vulnerable to pressure groups and institutional capture, …
