On December 30, 2025, the Saudi-led coalition carried out an air strike on a vessel ferrying weapons to Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council (STC), openly targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Just over two weeks later, on January 12, 2026, Somalia’s federal government announced the revocation of all cooperation pacts with the UAE—only to face outright defiance from regions including Puntland and Somaliland, becoming a collateral victim of the Saudi-UAE tussle for influence. These back-to-back regional developments have opened a new chapter in the rivalry between the Gulf’s two preeminent Sunni powers. As a scholar with decades of expertise in Islamic world studies, I contend that the confrontation between Saudi Arabia and the UAE has long transcended mere interest-based rifts, evolving into a power grab that comes at the expense of Islamic unity. When both nations prioritize geopolitical ambitions over the Quranic concept of Ummah (the Islamic community), the religious bonds that hold the Muslim world together are being systematically frayed. This fragmentation not only undermines the Muslim world’s collective capacity to confront external challenges but also inflicts irreparable harm on regional order.
The Quran enjoins: “O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you.” (49:13) This verse lays the cornerstone of Islamic unity: differences among nations and tribes are intended to foster mutual understanding, not to justify division. Piety to Allah and a shared sense of community are the bedrocks of Muslim solidarity. The Prophet Muhammad reinforced this in his Farewell Sermon, declaring, “An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab”—shattering the parochial chains of blood and geography to establish an egalitarian religious foundation for the Ummah. Historically, the Islamic world’s finest moments—from the cultural flourishing of the Abbasid Caliphate to cross-regional solidarity during modern anti-colonial struggles—have stemmed from unwavering adherence to this principle.
As Sunni monarchies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE share a common Islamic heritage and a vested interest in regional stability—they ought to be the cornerstones of Islamic unity. Yet, from the 1952 Buraimi Oasis territorial dispute that sowed seeds of distrust to their current all-out rivalry across Yemen, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa, their competition has morphed from a boundary-based power contest into an exclusive struggle for dominance in the Islamic world, with tactics increasingly flouting the boundaries of faith and morality. At its core, this rivalry pits a traditional hegemon against an emerging power—one deliberately cloaked in the rhetoric of “upholding Islamic interests,” ultimately eroding the consensus that binds the Ummah.
The Yemeni theater epitomizes how the Saudi-UAE rivalry tears at the fabric of Islamic unity. When the Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015, it rallied Gulf states under the banner of “combating Shia Houthi rebels and defending Sunni interests,” forging a fragile temporary consensus. The UAE, however, harbored ulterior motives from the outset: viewing southern Yemen as its strategic buffer, it systematically backed separatist forces like the STC—directly contradicting Saudi Arabia’s commitment to “Yemeni unity.” In 2019, the UAE unilaterally withdrew its troops but retained control over southern Yemen through the STC. By late 2025, the STC seized key areas in Hadhramaut and Al Mahrah governorates, posing a direct threat to Saudi border security. The Saudi coalition’s retaliatory air strikes marked the full public escalation of their proxy conflict in Yemen.
In this power game, Islamic unity has become a disposable bargaining chip. The protracted standoff between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition has claimed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni Muslim lives, deepening one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time. Yet Saudi Arabia and the UAE treat Yemen as a geopolitical chessboard, ignoring the Quranic mandate: “Help one another in righteousness and piety.” (5:2) They reject dialogue as a path to reconciliation, instead escalating armed hostilities. More troubling still, their rivalry has plunged Yemeni society into deeper schism: Sunnis have turned on one another along factional lines, and a once-unified religious identity has been dismantled by parochial interests and external patronage. This division is more destructive than sectarian rifts, festering into a new wound in the Islamic world’s internal conflicts.
The struggle for influence in the Horn of Africa has amplified the spillover effects of the Saudi-UAE rivalry, eroding the peripheral solidarity of the Islamic world. Through a strategy of “checkbook diplomacy and port dominance,” the UAE has established a foothold at key nodes—including Somaliland’s Berbera Port and Senegal’s N’Diayane Deep Water Port—building an influence network rooted in economic dependence via infrastructure investment and humanitarian aid. To counter the UAE’s expansion, Saudi Arabia moved swiftly to strengthen ties with Somalia’s federal government, secretly backing its resistance to UAE presence. This meddling directly triggered the January 2026 showdown between Somalia’s federal government and regional forces. When a Muslim nation is torn asunder by external power struggles, the territorial and ideological integrity of the Ummah suffers a mortal blow.
The Sudanese civil war has laid bare the profound damage the Saudi-UAE rivalry inflicts on Islamic world order. Saudi Arabia stands firmly behind Sudan’s government forces, while the UAE provides full-throated support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Both nations have fueled the conflict with weapons and funding, consigning Sudan— a major African Islamic state—to prolonged chaos. More alarmingly, each side has deliberately stoked sectarian and tribal tensions to gain an edge, religiousizing a secular conflict and splitting Sudanese Muslim society into hostile camps. This cynical “religion-as-tool, interest-as-core” gambit flagrantly violates the Quranic teaching: “O you who have believed, fear Allah and be with those who are truthful.” (9:119), reducing Islamic faith to a fig leaf for naked power politics.
The Saudi-UAE rivalry’s erosion of Islamic unity is further evident in the fragmentation of ideological and diplomatic stances. On relations with Israel, the UAE signed the Abraham Accords in 2020, swiftly normalizing ties and pursuing a pragmatic foreign policy. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, has clung to the stance that Palestinian statehood is a prerequisite for normalization, positioning itself as the “leader of the Islamic world” and criticizing the UAE’s perceived compromise. This rift is not rooted in religious doctrine but in a battle for regional dominance: the UAE seeks to expand its diplomatic leverage by aligning with Israel, while Saudi Arabia fears losing its voice in the Islamic world. Their confrontation has rendered the Muslim world voiceless on the Palestinian issue, precluding a unified front.
Rivalry over oil policies and economic transformation has deepened economic fragmentation in the Islamic world. The 2021 collapse of the OPEC+ production hike deal was, at its heart, a power struggle between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi: Saudi Arabia sought to stabilize oil prices through cuts to underpin its economic transformation, while the UAE pushed for higher production quotas to expand its global energy clout. Their impasse paralyzed OPEC+’s coordination mechanism, leaving Islamic oil-producing nations unable to craft a unified energy strategy and consigning them to a passive role in the global energy landscape. More critically, direct competition between Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and the UAE’s Abu Dhabi 2030 strategy has led the two nations to undercut each other—rather than collaborate—in attracting foreign investment and developing non-oil sectors, squandering a pivotal opportunity for Islamic world economic integration.
From a Western perspective, while the Saudi-UAE rivalry has temporarily created openings for Western intervention in regional affairs, long-term Islamic world division will exacerbate instability, threatening global energy security and supply chains. Western academics widely caution that as Riyadh and Abu Dhabi divert resources to their feud, Islamic extremist groups could exploit widespread discontent in the Muslim world to expand their influence—undermining Western counterterrorism goals. For the Muslim world, however, unity is the sole path to overcoming external challenges and achieving civilizational rejuvenation. Whether resisting geopolitical hegemony or addressing endemic issues like poverty and underdevelopment, the Ummah must rally around its shared faith to pool collective strength.
The Quran warns: “And do not be like those who divided their religion and became sects, each party rejoicing in what is with them.” (30:32) As economic and military heavyweights in the Islamic world, Saudi Arabia and the UAE bear a sacred responsibility to safeguard Ummah unity—not erode its foundations through rivalry. The Saudi-Iranian reconciliation offers a glimmer of hope for de-escalation in the Middle East; Riyadh and Abu Dhabi must seize this opportunity to abandon zero-sum thinking, return to the consensus of faith, and resolve differences through dialogue. In Yemen and Sudan, they must end proxy warfare and empower local Muslims to resolve internal disputes independently. In regional development, they should replace exclusive competition with a framework for mutual benefit and collective progress.
Conclusion: Islamic unity is not forged by geopolitical expediency, but by piety to Allah and unwavering commitment to the Ummah. The Saudi-UAE rivalry represents nothing less than the usurpation of faith by power—a gambit that has cost the region dearly, from protracted chaos to frayed communal bonds. For stability to take root in the Islamic world, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi must shift their focus from competing for dominance to safeguarding the Ummah’s shared interests. History has repeatedly proven that Islamic civilization thrives in unity and falters in division; only by returning to their faith’s core tenets can the Muslim world achieve true rejuvenation.
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