The upheaval also created an opportunity for the UAE, a country that prides itself on being a cutting-edge, cosmopolitan home to people from some 190 countries. The resurgence of political Islam as a result of the 2011 popular Arab revolts that toppled leaders in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen, fuelled the worst fears of men like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed, Egyptian General-turned President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. This is apparent in the Saudi-UAE-led war to counter Iran in Yemen Emirati, Egyptian and Turkish support for opposing sides in Libya’s civil war and Turkish and Gulf state involvement in Syria.Įgyptian President President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (left) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (center) pray at Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo The third phase is complicated by the fact that all of the players with the exception of Indonesia have embraced Iran’s model of coupling religious soft power with hard power and the use of proxies to advance their respective agendas.
Their entry into the fray has further blurred the dividing lines between purely religious and cultural soft power, nationalism, and the struggle within Muslim societies over values, including various freedoms, rights, and preferred political systems.
The new players are first and foremost the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Qatar, and Indonesia. If the first phase of the battle for the soul of Islam was defined by the largely uncontested Saudi religious soft power campaign, and the second phase began with the emergence of revolutionary Iran, the third and most recent phase is the most complex one, not only because of the arrival on the scene of new players but also because it entails rivalries within rivalries. This struggle has and will affect the prospects for the emergence of a truly more tolerant and pluralistic interpretation of one of the three Abrahamic religions. This battle for the soul of Islam pits rival Middle Eastern and Asian powers against one another: Turkey, seat of the Islamic world’s last true caliphate Saudi Arabia, home to the faith’s holy cities the United Arab Emirates, propagator of a militantly statist interpretation of Islam Qatar with its less strict version of Wahhabism and penchant for political Islam Indonesia, promoting a humanitarian, pluralistic notion of Islam that reaches out to other faiths as well as non-Muslim centre-right forces across the globe Morocco which uses religion as a way to position itself as the face of moderate Islam and Shia Iran with its derailed revolution.Īs the battle for religious soft power between rival states has intensified, the lines dividing the state and religion have become ever more blurred, particularly in more autocratic countries. are engaged in a deepening religious soft power struggle for geopolitical influence and dominance.
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