Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have scored points vis-à-vis the international community thanks to their social reforms which have reduced the place of religion in public life, strengthened the rights of women and, in the case of the United Arab Emirates, taken into account the lifestyles of non-Muslims.
Yet Saudi and Emirati efforts to set themselves up as autocratic models of moderate Islam have done little to encourage moderation outside their borders. And this despite a radical drying up of Saudi funding abroad, which had lasted for decades and was aimed at spreading a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, and the fact that the Emirates now see themselves as a paragon of tolerance.
The geographical limits of Saudi and Emirati moderation are glaring in cities in France, in the Rohingya refugee camp of Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh, and in Pakistan.
The limits of this new religious influence are also expressed in the difficulties encountered by the Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID), funded by Saudi Arabia. After ten years in Vienna, the center was forced to move to Lisbon.
Islamophobia and poverty, obstacles to the emergence of a moderate Islam
Defenders of this center accuse Islamophobia of being at the center of the controversy. However, if the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in recent years