With the arrests continuing almost on a daily basis, it is hard to predict when they will end. Yet it is clear that they fall into a larger pattern of the suppression of the limited spaces that hitherto had existed for discussion, debate, and association in the UAE. As part of the April 2011 crackdown, the elected boards of the Teacher's Association and the Jurists' Association (the latter headed by al-Roken) were dismissed and replaced by government appointees. A draft new judicial law discussed in a closed session of the Federal National Council on 26 July 2012 would, if passed, change the UAE constitution by placing the Federal Judicial Council under the President, rather than the Minister of Justice, thereby doing away with any separation of powers between the executive and judiciary branches of government. And the outspoken Chief of Police in Dubai, Dahi Khalfan, has shown scant regard for due process or the presumption of innocence with a series of inflammatory outbursts warning of international plots to overthrow Gulf rulers.
Domestic Implications
The escalating crackdown has profound implications for notions of national identity and ‘public space' in the UAE. The demonisation of the Muslim Brotherhood (with which Islah is affiliated) by the media and ruling elites has contributed to the construction of a ‘them and us' mentality which never before existed. People now speak of ‘the opposition' and ‘opposition figureheads,' terms virtually unheard of in the close-knit and largely homogeneous Emirati society that hitherto had lacked internal fissures such as the Sunni-Shiite schism in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Crucially, they come at a moment of uncertainty within the UAE, as the nation and its rulers struggle to define what it means to be an Emirati in the contemporary world.
For decades, national identity in the UAE was constructed around the charismatic authority and benevolent leadership of the country's founding father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan. He united the seven federations upon independence in 1971 and was its first (and only) President until he died aged 86, in November 2004. People from all walks of life identified closely with him and cemented a residual loyalty that deepened with the addition of feelings of nostalgia following his death. However, eight years on, this unifying glue has weakened, but his sons have not been able to find a suitable replacement for Zayed as the emblematic national symbol of identity. Hence, the construction of ‘the other' - the threat from Islah and the Muslim Brotherhood - is being used to try and rally Emiratis in support of their rulers, and to overcome their lack of vision for the country's future.
The demonisation of the Islah movement has intriguing socio-cultural consequences. In Arabic, ‘Islah' as a word simply means ‘reform' and is used as such in everyday conversations. However, in its public association with regime-declared ‘enemies of the state', its original meaning has been stripped away, and the word has instead become politicised and loaded with pejorative meaning. It is difficult to envisage people in the UAE being able safely to talk of reform, at least in the near future, when the word itself carries such double-meaning. It also connects future calls for reform with a specifically Islamist agenda, making it harder for reformists of other hues to make themselves heard.
