Kuwait, UAE and Qatar have all developed something in common this year, a penchant for locking up political Islamists without trial. Now the three countries differ significantly in both the scope, and the nature of the debates that have surrounded these detentions, but nonetheless cutting corners leads one to see a growing, “Islamists versus the state” narrative which is building across the Gulf.

In Kuwait, the followers of Musallam al-Barrak, a former opposition MP critical of the ruling emir, recently suffered rubber bullets and tear gas when they tried to prevent police forces from arresting him. In the UAE, the state claims to be uncovering support amongst the Emirati population for the Muslim Brotherhood as well as al-Qaeda and has detained without due process more than 100 of its citizens; while in Qatar two Islamic political activists, Muhammad Issa al-Baker and Mansour bin Rashed al-Matroushi, spent a month in detention without trial following the delivery of a letter to the French Embassy, in which they complained bitterly of French government actions in Mali.

I am not suggesting the actions of the three governments are identical, but their actions all present a similar conundrum: In the case of Kuwait and Qatar, the protagonists view the world through a Salafist lens and possess views which are deeply unpalatable to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In the UAE, it is also fair to say that some of those detained think similarly, though the scale of detentions there makes it hard to make a fair judgement about every individual.

It is certainly true is that we should not be fooled by the rhetoric of human rights into believing that hard-line Islamist actors are a positive force for change. But they are legitimate expression of Islamic politics by some Gulf Arabs, and like it or not are a reflection of a wider strain of opinion which runs through a sizeable minority of Gulf Arab society.