Many Muslim countries understand the threat of political Islam better than the West does
Egypt banned the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia designated it a terrorist group. The UAE lists it and its affiliates as terrorist organisations. Jordan banned it in 2025 after authorities accused Brotherhood members of weapons training and plotting attacks.
That is not âIslamophobiaâ.
That is Muslim-majority states saying: we know the difference between peaceful Islam and terrorism.
Europe, meanwhile, keeps pretending that making this distinction is bigotry.
And the result is visible.
The UAE has gone so far as to restrict state-funded scholarships for Emirati students going to British universities, citing fears of Islamist radicalization and Muslim Brotherhood influence on UK campuses.
Think about that for a second.
A Muslim-majority country is worried that its young people may become more radicalized in Britain than at home.
That should be a national scandal in the UK, but the BBC never bothered reporting it.
Mohamed Atta was born and educated in Egypt, but the 9/11 operational cell formed in Hamburg, Germany, around the al-Quds mosque network. Anis Amri left Tunisia and later carried out the Berlin Christmas market attack after moving through Europe and connecting with jihadist networks in Germany. Salman Abedi, the Manchester Arena bomber, was a British-Libyan radicalized inside the UKâs Islamist ecosystem.Â
Roshonara Choudhry, a promising British student, stabbed an MP after consuming al-Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlakiâs online lectures in the UK.Â
This is the uncomfortable pattern: the West did not merely âreceiveâ radicalization from the Middle East. In many cases, it incubated it.
European countries produced thousands of ISIS foreign fighters. The UK reported around 900 British nationals who travelled to Syria, with up to 400 returning to continue spreading radicalism in the UK; German authorities tracked about 910 people who left for Syria or Iraq for Islamist reasons.
Meanwhile, while Europe drifts further into anti-Israel politics, several Muslim-majority countries moved in the opposite direction: the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan entered the Abraham Accords framework with Israel.Â
That should tell us something.
The problem is not "Islamophobia".
The problem is extremism.
And Europeâs failure has been its refusal to distinguish between ordinary Muslims who might want normal lives, and Islamist movements that want power, censorship, intimidation, and eventually violence.
Banning the Muslim Brotherhood is not an attack on Muslims. Deporting Illegal with known ties to terror organisations is not "Islamophobia".Â
It is a defence of Muslims, Jews, Christians, secular citizens, dissidents, women, minorities, and democratic states.
The Middle East learned this lesson the hard way.
The West is still pretending not to understand it.
