A Muslim country is warning Europe about Islamism.

Not Christian conservatives. Not the "far right". Not anyone you can wave away as an Islamophobe.

The United Arab Emirates.

The UAE has spent years taking a hard line against political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood, which the country classifies as a terrorist organisation.

And in June 2026, the UAE's ambassador to the EU, Mohammed Ismail Al Sahlawi, sat in the European Parliament at a conference with this title:

"Muslim Brotherhood: a real threat to Europe."

Hard to misread.

The warning was about the Brotherhood's methods. Infiltrating European societies and institutions, influencing political decisions, spreading extremist ideology.

Read that again.

A Muslim country is warning Europe about political Islam.

And here is what matters most!

Islamism is not only the man with a rifle or a suicide vest.

That is the outermost, violent expression of it.

Islamism can also work slowly. And politically.

Through organisations, universities, religious institutions, activism, lobbying, political and institutional influence.

That is exactly why it is so dangerous to look only for the man with the bomb belt.

Because Islamism can arrive in a suit.

It can hold a university degree. It can run an organisation. It can sit close to political decision makers.

And it can learn to speak the West's own language about tolerance, rights and diversity, while working for values that collide with liberal democracy.

And no. This is not just something the UAE claims.

Britain's own government has investigated the Muslim Brotherhood.

The British review found that Brotherhood-associated and Brotherhood-influenced groups in the UK had, at various points, held significant influence over the largest Muslim student organisation, national Muslim organisations in dialogue with the government, charities and some mosques.

The same review concluded that parts of the Brotherhood's ideology and activities run counter to democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, equality, and mutual respect and tolerance between faiths.

So this is not only about terror.

It is about ideology.

And now comes the part that should stop every European in their tracks.

The UAE has become so concerned about Islamist radicalisation at British universities that British universities have been removed from the list of institutions where Emirati students can receive state scholarships.

Young Emiratis are still free to study in Britain. With their own money.

The UAE simply will not pay for it anymore.

A person with direct knowledge of the discussions put it plainly to the Financial Times:

"They don't want their kids to be radicalised on campus."

Sit with that for a second.

A Muslim, Arab country is worried about sending its Muslim young people to Britain, because it fears they will be radicalised there.

If that does not trigger some soul-searching in Europe, I don't know what will.

Because the UAE's point is precisely this. You make a fatal mistake if you only start caring about Islamism once someone picks up a weapon.

The ideological process may have started years earlier.

The UAE's foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has said:

"Daesh, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have fed off a wider current of extremist ideas."

He pointed specifically at political Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which in his view have spent decades spreading those narratives.

He called them "backward-looking". And said they "reject open, pluralistic societies." This is a Muslim foreign minister saying it.

And there is something else I want to make very clear!

THE UAE IS NOT THE WEST.

It is not Europe. It is not a Western liberal democracy.

It is a Muslim, Arab country with a different culture, a different form of government and different traditions. And there are aspects of the UAE's political system and human rights record that we would never accept in a Western democracy.

This is not to be romanticised.

But the UAE has fought political Islamism for decades, an ideology its leadership believes has undermined and destabilised the Middle East. And which they now openly warn is seeking influence in Europe and the rest of the Western world.

Their foreign minister has spoken about the need to show that you can be "modern, Arab and Muslim."

That distinction is one Europe desperately needs to understand.

You can be a Muslim and still reject political Islam, extremism, antisemitism and religious intolerance.

And notice one more thing.

THE VIEW OF WOMEN IS PART OF THAT FIGHT.

Abdullah bin Zayed has directly criticised Islamist ideologies for their "denigration of women's role in society."

The UAE has not just talked about it. The country has made women's education, economic participation and leadership official state policy.

Women are to be educated. They are to work.

They are to be able to start businesses. They are to take part economically and politically. And they are to sit at the table where decisions are made.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and the UAE's vice president and prime minister, established the UAE Gender Balance Council with the stated aim of reducing the gender gap and strengthening women's participation in leadership and decision making.

And the UAE's president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, MBZ, leads a Muslim country that has made religious coexistence part of its national story.

In Abu Dhabi, a mosque, a church and a synagogue stand side by side in the Abrahamic Family House.

Think about that contrast.

A Muslim country is saying: Keep Islam. Fight Islamism.

Let women study, work and lead. Let Christians be Christians. Let Jews be Jews. And fight the political and religious movements that want to replace pluralism with their own ideology.

And yes. That includes the people who support, legitimise and clear the path for those movements while believing they are defending tolerance and diversity. Including when they end up working against the very Western values, freedom, equality, democracy and religious liberty, that gave them the opportunity to do so in the first place.

History has an old term for people who end up serving an ideology whose actual goals they do not share:

"Useful idiots." They do not have to be Islamists themselves. That is the whole point. They only have to be useful to those who are.

And this is what Europe has to learn to separate:

Islam is a religion. Islamism is a political ideology. And Islamist extremism is not "diversity".

You can defend Muslims' full right to believe and practise their faith, and at the same time say a resounding NO to movements that want to use religion for political power, parallel societies, extremism, or the gradual erosion of the society that gave them the freedom to be here.

Tolerance does not mean tolerating intolerance until it has grown strong enough to turn on you.

When a Muslim country pulls its state scholarships away from British universities out of fear of Islamist radicalisation, while parts of Europe are still afraid to even name the problem, the question is no longer whether there is a problem.

The question is who understood the seriousness of it.

And right now, it isn't us!

To:

His Majesty, Charles III,

King of the United Kingdom and the Realms,

Supreme Governor of the Church of England,

Bearer of the ancient title Defender of the Faith.

Your Majesty,

I write to you neither as a politician nor as a commentator, but as one of your loyal subjects who, as a bishop of Christ’s Church, cannot remain silent while the Christian foundations of this kingdom are steadily dismantled.

Sir, there are moments in the life of a nation when silence becomes a form of betrayal. If I refused to speak to Your Majesty now, this would be such a moment.

For more than a thousand years the Crown of this realm has stood in solemn covenant with the Christian faith.

The laws of this land were shaped by it.

The liberties of our people were nurtured by it.

The conscience of our civilisation was formed by it.

From the abbeys of medieval England to the parish churches of our villages, from the preaching of the Reformers to the missionary zeal that carried the Gospel to the ends of the earth, the Christian faith has not merely influenced Britain — it has defined her.

Yet today that inheritance is being quietly but deliberately eroded. Across the institutions of this nation there is a growing hostility toward the faith that built them.

Christian belief is mocked in the public square. Christian morality is dismissed as intolerance. Christian institutions are pressured to surrender doctrine in order to conform to the ideology of the age.

Within the very Church that bears the name of England, voices have arisen that appear more eager to mirror the spirit of the age than to proclaim the eternal truth of the Gospel.

Meanwhile, beyond the walls of our churches, powerful political movements openly speak of removing Christianity from its historic place within the life of this nation.

What would once have been whispered is now proclaimed openly: that Britain must become a post-Christian state.

It is in this context that I write to you, Your Majesty. For the British Crown does not stand apart from this crisis.

The Sovereign of this realm bears a title that is not merely historic but sacred in its origin and meaning: Defender of the Faith. Those words are not decorative. They are a charge.

They speak of a monarch whose duty is not merely to preside over the ceremonies of the Church, but to stand as a guardian of the Christian inheritance of the nation.

Yet many among your subjects now ask, with increasing anxiety: “Who will defend that inheritance today?”

They see a nation drifting from its foundations. And they ask whether the Crown will remain silent while that inheritance is dismantled.

Your Majesty, may I be so bold as to observe that your coronation oath was not a poetic formality. It was a solemn vow made before Almighty God to maintain and preserve the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law.

Those words bind the conscience of the sovereign. They remind the Crown that its authority is not merely constitutional but moral. The monarch is not merely a symbol of national continuity, but a custodian of the spiritual inheritance that shaped this realm.

History records moments when kings and emperors were confronted by the Church and reminded that their authority was accountable before God. In the fourth century Ambrose of Milan stood before the Emperor Theodosius I and reminded him that even the ruler of an empire must bow before the moral law of Christ.

That tradition of prophetic witness has never disappeared. Nor should it. For when rulers forget the foundations upon which their authority rests, the Church must speak — not with hostility, but with holy clarity.

And so, I write to say this, Your Majesty: The Christian character of this nation is under profound and accelerating assault.

If the Crown does not stand visibly and courageously in defence of that inheritance, history will record that the guardians of Britain’s institutions watched in silence as the foundations were removed.

The issue before us is not nostalgia. It is civilisation. Remove Christianity from the story of Britain and you do not create a neutral society — you create a moral vacuum. And history teaches us that moral vacuums are never left empty for long.

Your Majesty now stands at a crossroads that few monarchs in modern history have faced.

For the erosion of Britain’s Christian inheritance will not ultimately be judged by speeches made in Parliament or debates in the press. It will be judged by whether those entrusted with the guardianship of our ancient institutions chose to defend them — or merely preside over their quiet surrender.

You may preside over the quiet dissolution of Britain’s Christian identity. Or you may rise to the ancient responsibility entrusted to the Crown and speak with clarity about the faith that built this kingdom. The first path requires little courage. The second will require a great deal. But it is the path that history honours.

Your Majesty’s subjects are not asking for religious coercion. They are asking for leadership. They are asking that the sovereign who bears the title Defender of the Faith remember what that title means.

They are asking that the Crown hear the growing cry of anguish from Christians across this land who feel that the spiritual inheritance of their nation is being surrendered without resistance. And they are asking whether the Crown will stand with them.

For the faith that shaped Britain is not merely a cultural ornament. It is the wellspring from which our laws, our liberties, and our moral imagination have flowed. If it is cast aside, the nation will discover — too late — that it has severed itself from the very roots that sustained it.

Your Majesty, to many the Crown is a symbol of authority. But before God it is also a symbol of stewardship. And stewardship carries with it the duty to defend what has been entrusted.

May Almighty God grant Your Majesty the wisdom to discern this hour, and the courage to fulfil the sacred duty entrusted to the Crown.

Yours faithfully,

Bishop Ceirion H. Dewar FSHC

Missionary Bishop

Diocese of Providence

Confessing Anglican Church

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