*2.1. Contextualizing 'Moderate Islam'*

The UAE post-Arab Spring policies may seem contradictory. On the one hand, regional interference triggered civil wars and humanitarian crises; the list is quite impressive: crushing Bahraini protesters, supporting the military putsch against the first democratically elected President of Egypt, bombarding Yemen together with the Saudis and imposing an aerial and naval blockade that resulted in the spread of famine and cholera, encouraging the secession of Aden in the country's south and, last but not least, militarily backing General Haftar against the UN-recognized governmen<sup>t</sup> of Tripoli in Libya (Holmes 2014; Nour 2018; Ramani 2019; Abdulrahim 2019). With a similar attitude, Abu Dhabi introduced compulsory military service for 12 months in 2014 that was extended to 16 months in 2018 (El Yaakoubi 2018).

On the other hand, the governmen<sup>t</sup> announced the creation of four new ministries—Tolerance, Happiness, Youth and Future—reflecting the country's 'success story' in spite of the upheavals surrounding it. In this framework, Dubai's ruler, Mohamed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, addressed the region and the world:

The changes reflect what we have learned from events in our region over the past five years. In particular, we have learned that failure to respond e ffectively to the aspirations of young people, who represent more than half of the population in Arab countries, is like swimming against the tide ( ... ) We do not forget that the genesis of the tension in our region, the events dubbed the "Arab Spring," was squarely rooted in the lack of opportunities for young people to achieve their dreams and ambitions ( ... ) We have also learned from hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of refugees in our region that sectarian, ideological, cultural and religious bigotry only fuel the fires of rage. We cannot and will not allow this in our country ( ... ) When the Arab world was tolerant and accepting of others, it led the world: From Baghdad to Damascus to Andalusia and farther afield, we provided beacons of science, knowledge, and civilization, because humane values were the basis of our relationships with all civilizations, cultures, and religions. Even when our ancestors left Andalusia, people of other faiths went with them. (UAE The Cabinet n.d.a)

Donor diplomacy followed suit: The UAE aid has only humanitarian objectives. It is neither governed by politics nor is limited by geography, race, colour or religion of the beneficiary. This is a practical application of the principle of tolerance in the UAE. This policy was laid down by the founder President of the UAE, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan who stressed that foreign aid and assistance is one of the basic pillars of UAE foreign policy. (UAE Government n.d.)

The Emirates constantly boast about meeting the UNMillennium Development Goals in eradicating extreme poverty, while conferring pledges to alleviate the su ffering of the Yemeni people. However, just pouring money into the same countries that they themselves have been shelling is not enough to win the hearts and minds of the international audience. That, of course, is not to say that Abu Dhabi bears the sole blame for the misfortunes of Yemen. Given their common fear of Iranian intentions in the wake of the Houthi takeover of the capital Sanaa in 2014, the UAE were invited by the Saudis to participate in their military campaign in order to restore the status quo ante. Whereas it is true that the Emirates were driven by their own regional aspirations, it would have been inconceivable for these two Gulf Arab powers to leave Iranian interference in the Peninsula unchecked. Despite the fact that Tehran denies it, a 2018 UN report indicated that the Houthis were supplied with military material emanating from the Islamic Republic (Fahim 2018).

In the midst of that new proxy conflict, the question of reputation, which is of crucial significance in public diplomacy, inevitably came to surface. Much like the USA during the Iraq War, whose crusade in exporting democracy was overshadowed by the inhumane treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo (Nye 2019, p. 11), the Emirates are still haunted by the images of the famine-stricken children that went viral on social media during the Saudi-led Yemen campaign, in addition to UN allegations of committed war crimes and evidence of secret detention centers (Human Rights Watch 2018, World Report 2019). The Houthis also face war crime charges, such as diverting food aid or sending child soldiers to battle (BBC NEWS 2018; Human Rights Watch 2015). To make matters worse for the Emirati international image, the embattled Yemeni President, Mansour Hadi, accused the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed of 'behaving like an occupier of Yemen, rather than its liberator' (Hearst 2017).

For this reason, pledges to the reconstruction of the war-torn countries and declarations on peace, tolerance and women empowerment in the Middle East and Africa (UAE The Cabinet n.d.b) must be viewed in tune with UAE e fforts to create 'soft power', which is, according to Nye (2019, p. 11), the outcome of successful public diplomacy. By reinterpreting religious tradition on the basis of tolerance, openness, interfaith dialogue and moderation, the UAE do not try to sell, in Nye's words, 'an unpopular product' (p. 13), e.g., their policies in Yemen (Ghaith 2018), but rather to downplay the atrocities, the crackdowns on dissidents and the reported abuses of migrant domestic workers from India, Nepal, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, etc. (Human Rights Watch 2017). At the same time, the country improves its world profile and raises its credibility in international relations.

The ideological utilization of Islam, of course, is not a novelty. Both Islamic heritage and the Arabic language have traditionally predominated Arab cultural diplomacy to meet political ends; the Algerian National Liberation Front ruling party imported Azharite graduates from Egypt to reinforce the postcolonial state's Arab Islamic identity (Stora 2001, pp. 148, 171; Mansour 2005, pp. 275–81), Abd al-Naser justified nationalizations and land redistribution on religious grounds (Rahman 1982, pp. 88–89), whereas Saudi Arabia used the think-tanks of Salafists and self-exiled Islamists against Panarabism and Naserism and, later on, Iranian Shiite revolutionarism (Vassiliev 1998, pp. 469–72). Today, the international outcry provoked by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terror attacks in Europe, as well as, its heinous acts in the Middle East, such as beheadings and purges against religious groups, provided an opportunity to countries like the Emirates or Indonesia to redesign their public diplomacy by defending 'true Muslims' and 'true Islamic tradition' on behalf of the Arab and Islamic worlds (Hoesterey 2016).

The warm reception of 'moderate Islam' rhetoric lies in the historically cordial relations between the UAE and the West, which have been shaped by shared interests and security concerns. After the

British withdrawal from the Gulf, the country received for the first time American military material in 1977 (Sirriyeh 1984, p. 111); throughout the decades that followed the collapse of the Shah's regime, Emirati military buildup has reached unprecedented levels by virtue of the monarchy's geostrategic value in containing revolutionary Iran and al-Qaida alike (Young 2013). It is no wonder that the UAE wholeheartedly participated in the international coalition's fight against the Islamic State. In the meantime, their partners in the West turned a blind eye in respect to their acts in Yemen. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the Emirati foreign minister was among the first Muslim personalities who rushed to Paris to condemn the Jihadists and attend the rally of the world leaders (Tran 2015).

It was not until 2018 that some of the country's arms suppliers, like Germany, Norway, Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and, to a lesser extent, Sweden voiced their criticism over the war crimes that their Arab allies had allegedly committed in Yemen and imposed bans and restrictions on exports of military material (Westall 2019). Although the legal framework exists (EU Common Position on Arms Exports of 2008 and the Arms Trade Treaty of 2014), the position of the West towards that matter has been neither unanimous nor clear due to the lucrative contracts of the defense industries that lobby on behalf of their clients. The UK adopted a rather ambivalent stance, while French o fficials acknowledged that they have never ceased to provide Abu Dhabi and Riyadh with the latest weaponry in the name of fighting al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Mielcarek 2019). Hence, 'moderate Islam', in its own right, could be a useful public diplomacy tool in improving biased Western European perceptions of the Emirates.

As for the United States, they represent the UAE's major ally and strategic partner. After 9/11, they have been always receptive to their Muslim partners' 'moderate Islam' diplomatic initiatives, irrespective of human rights violations or their interventions in Yemen and elsewhere. Against the background of deteriorating US–Iranian relations in the post-Obama era, the circumstances have been favorable for the Emirates to project their model of 'moderate Islam' as a positive force capable of containing all forms of extremism. The various anti-terror pacts signed by the Trump administration and the Arab monarchs since 2017 set the geopolitical context for the Emirati 'moderate Islam' public diplomacy, which is examined at length in the lines that follow.
