Research and media findings have revealed an organised Emirati network operating in Britain and Europe, engaged in smearing Muslim migrants while promoting Israeli propaganda and far-right discourse. This activity coincides with an official Emirati decision to halt funding for scholarships for Emirati students wishing to study at British universities, under the pretext of concerns about Islamic extremism.
Days ago, an Emirati decision was issued excluding Britain entirely from the list of approved universities eligible for government support. The list instead included universities in Israel alongside educational institutions in the United States, France, and Australia.
While every state has the right to direct its educational funding, justifying the decision by citing the risk of Islamic extremism in British universities sparked widespread criticism. Critics argued that the justification carries an inciting tone against Muslims and aligns with organised campaigns targeting Muslim communities across Europe.
Mark Owen Jones, Professor of Media Studies at Durham University and a researcher specialising in Gulf affairs, documented a network of no fewer than ten influential accounts on the X platform belonging to Emirati individuals. These accounts operate in a coordinated manner to promote a single narrative: Israel represents the first line of defence of Western civilisation against Islam, the new right in Europe is the true protector of the continent from the so-called threat of Muslim migrants, and the United Arab Emirates is presented as the coordinating mind behind this alliance.
According to the monitoring, seven of these accounts were created within a narrow time frame between December 2024 and January 2025, a clear indicator of deliberate establishment rather than random individual activity.
Prominent names within the network include Rawda Al Tunaiji, Maryam Al Mazrouei, Abdul Qader Al Menhali, Meera Zayed, and Majed Al Saeedi. Most of these individuals also created parallel accounts on Instagram at the same time, or reactivated dormant accounts, further reinforcing the hypothesis of organised action.
Amjad Taha: The Shadow Manager
Investigations place Amjad Taha at the centre of this network. Taha, who describes himself as a political analyst, is the head of an advertising company called Crestnux and is widely viewed as the effective director of operations. Content is first produced on his accounts, then reposted verbatim or in closely similar forms across the remaining accounts, reflecting a clear centralised leadership structure.
The content led by Taha revolves around full adoption of the Israeli narrative regarding the war on Gaza, justifying Israeli crimes as a defensive war on behalf of the West. It also includes attacks on Islam, Muslims, and civil society organisations, while linking migration to terrorism and instability.
Within three months of the network’s launch, its members began publishing videos that were visually and stylistically identical. These were found to have been filmed in a single studio, likely linked to an Emirati media platform known as OnePodcast. The visual and linguistic uniformity of the content reflects organised central production rather than individual efforts.
Eight members of the network also published books in English through a single American publishing house operating on a print-on-demand model. These books, which lack academic references, show clear indicators of being generated using artificial intelligence and repeat the same themes concerning the threat of political Islam, migration as a danger to Europe, and the role of civil society in spreading extremism.
The network’s activity is not limited to the digital sphere. Coordinated attendance by its members has been observed at conferences and events organised by the far right in Britain, alongside visits to universities and research centres in the United States.
The message remains consistent across all forums: Israel protects the West, the new right protects Europe, Muslims constitute a security and civilisational threat, and the United Arab Emirates is the spearhead in confronting Islamic extremism.
Targeting extends to any voice expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause, even from outside Islamic circles. This was evident in the coordinated attack on environmental activist Greta Thunberg following her participation in an attempt to break the siege on Gaza.
In parallel, the network established or fuelled content for several news websites that emerged around the same period, most of which rely heavily on AI-generated material.
Among the most notable of these sites are The Washington Eye, Daily Euro Times, Brieflex, Africalix, and InfoFlix. These platforms published fabricated reports serving Emirati narratives, including a claim that the Libyan Prime Minister transferred 400 million dollars to Turkey, which was later shown to be entirely baseless.
The activity also extends into the United States through the New York Insight website, which publishes content targeting the Sudanese army, accusing it of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, while simultaneously polishing the image of the Rapid Support Forces militia. The network is also linked to far-right, anti-Muslim websites such as the Polish platform Visegrad24, which launched a Middle East edition this year with direct participation from Amjad Taha and members of his network.
These findings demonstrate that the decision to suspend scholarships in Britain cannot be separated from a broader context of Emirati media and propaganda policies.
While any state has the right to adopt a political stance hostile to political Islam, transforming this position into a global campaign to defame Muslims, incite against migrants, and justify Israeli war crimes places these policies firmly within the realm of transnational extremist propaganda. This raises serious questions about the role of the United Arab Emirates, and Amjad Taha in particular, in exporting hate speech and undermining coexistence within European societies.
