Research and media findings have uncovered an organised Emirati network operating in Britain and across Europe, working to defame Muslim migrants, promote Israeli propaganda, and amplify far right discourse. This activity coincides with an official Emirati decision to halt funding for scholarships for Emirati students seeking to study at British universities, citing so called concerns over Islamic extremism.
An Emirati decision issued days ago excluded 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 as it sees fit, justifying the decision on the grounds of the alleged risk of Islamic extremism in British universities triggered widespread criticism. Critics argued that the rationale 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, identified a network of at least ten influential accounts on the X platform belonging to Emirati individuals. These accounts operate in a coordinated manner to promote a single narrative: Israel is presented as the first line of defence for so called Western civilisation against Islam, Europe’s new right wing movements are portrayed as the true protectors of the continent from the perceived threat of Muslim migrants, and the United Arab Emirates is framed as the central coordinator of this alliance.
According to the monitoring, seven of these accounts were created within a narrow timeframe between December 2024 and January 2025, a clear indication of deliberate establishment rather than random individual activity.
Among the prominent names in the network are Rawda Al Taneiji, Maryam Al Mazrouei, Abdulqader Al Manhali, Meera Zayed, and Majed Al Saeedi. Most of these individuals also created parallel accounts on Instagram at the same time or reactivated dormant profiles, reinforcing the likelihood of organised collective action.
Amjad Taha: the shadow director
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 regarded as the effective director of operations. Content is first produced on his accounts and then reposted verbatim or with minimal variation across the rest of the network, reflecting a clear centralised leadership structure.
The content driven 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 with near identical visual style and production quality. These were later found to have been filmed in a single studio, likely connected to an Emirati media platform known as OnePodcast. The visual and linguistic uniformity of the content points to organised central production rather than individual initiatives.
Eight members of the network also published books in English through a single American publishing house operating on a print on demand basis. These books, which lack academic references, show clear indicators of being generated using artificial intelligence and repeatedly address the same themes, including the alleged 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 appearances by its members have been documented at conferences and events organised by the far right in Britain, as well as 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 represent a security and civilisational threat, and the United Arab Emirates stands at the forefront of confronting what is labelled Islamic extremism.
The targeting extends to any voice expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause, even outside Islamic circles. This was evident in the coordinated attack against environmental activist Greta Thunberg following her participation in an attempt to break the siege on Gaza.
In parallel, the network has either established or fuelled the content of several news websites that emerged around the same period, most of which rely heavily on AI generated material.
Among the most notable of these websites are The Washington Eye, Daily Euro Times, Brieflex, Africalix, and InfoFlix. These platforms published fabricated reports serving Emirati narratives, including a claim that Libya’s prime minister transferred 400 million dollars to Turkey, which was later shown to have no factual basis.
The activity also extends into the United States through the website New York Insight, which publishes content hostile to the Sudanese army, accuses it of links to the Muslim Brotherhood, and simultaneously polishes the image of the Rapid Support Forces militia. The network is also linked to far right, anti Muslim platforms such as the Polish outlet Visegrad24, which launched a Middle East edition this year with direct involvement from Amjad Taha and members of his network.
These findings indicate that the decision to suspend scholarship funding in Britain cannot be separated from a broader context of Emirati media and propaganda policies.
While any state may adopt a political stance opposed to political Islam, transforming this position into a global campaign to defame Muslims, incite hostility against migrants, and justify Israeli war crimes places these policies 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 social cohesion within European societies.
