In a significant development, the UAE government just approved a new visa system devised to attract major talent to the country. 

The new scheme, which was passed by cabinet on Sunday, will allow foreign workers to apply for permanent residency. 

But, there’s a catch: they kind of have to be geniuses.

“The United Arab Emirates is the land of opportunities,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the vice president of the UAE and the ruler of Dubai, said on Twitter. Attracting top talents will “add to our economy and future,” he added.

Under the current law, the UAE doesn’t offer permanent residency to foreign workers.

And so, this initiative, according to Khalid Al Ameri, an Emirati ­columnist and social commentator, "seems to go hand-in-hand with the UAE’s strategy to build a country at the cutting edge of economic and social development."

"The United States has an O-1A visa for individuals with 'extraordinary ability' in science, education or business," he writes. "The UAE aspires to be a nation built on knowledge and innovation ... For that, we need to give the people we attract and the people who live here the ability to call this country home."

The ruler of Dubai has ordered that committees be set up to identify “the vital sectors that will be open for specialized visas, and to draw a plan to attract the most notable, exceptional regional and international talents,” according to Bloomberg, which quotes a statement carried by the official WAM news agency. 

No further details have been given as to what the new visa will look like. 

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) recently conducted a test to show the world just how bad Islamophobia really is. 

Inside Out London, a BBC One project that distribute real life stories and investigations in England, sent out identical CVs by two "fake" candidates - Adam and Mohamed - to 100 job vacancies to see if a Muslim name will play a role in depicting how many interviews the candidate will land. 

The findings revealed that the English-sounding name (Adam) was offered three times the number of interviews than an applicant with a Muslim name (Mohamed), despite the fact that both CVs laid out an identical set of skills and experiences. 

British Muslims are "less proportionately represented in managerial and professional occupations than any other religious group," according to the BBC. 

The BBC findings were based on a small sample size, however previously conducted academic studies prove just the same. 

In fact, Muslim men are 76 percent less likely to be employed as opposed to their white Christian counterparts, according to research conducted by the Research Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. 

"What we've identified very clearly is that the Muslim-sounding person's CV is only likely to get an interview in one out of three cases," said Tariq Modood, a professor at the University of Bristol after analyzing the findings.

"I thought the response rate would be less than 50 percent [for the Muslim-sounding name] so it's worse than I thought, especially in a city like London."

Islam is the second largest religion in the United Kingdom - with Muslims making up 4.5 percent of the total UK population. 

In 2014, a record 3,046,607 Muslims were reported to be living in England and Wales – representing 5.4 per cent of the population in those areas. 

Some London neighborhoods are nearly 50 percent Muslim. 

There are 77,000 Muslims in Scotland and 3,800 in Northern Ireland.

Despite the vast number of Muslims in the country, Modood among many others have been required to use different names at work. 

"I had a student job where the employer looked at my name and said 'Oh, that won't do, introduce yourself as Terry Miles' or something like that. I was very unhappy to do so," Modood said.

With Islamophobia on the rise, Muslims in the UK are doing what it takes to counter those misconceptions.

Recently, the Muslim community in the UK launched a "Visit My Mosque" campaign, inviting hundreds of Britons to visit and get to know the Muslim community first-hand. 

More than 150 mosques took part in the project.