Are Muslims the Third Most Islamophobic Group in America? 16 Sep 2022, 12:57 am

I have always liked data. Numbers and facts are an important way to anchor my thinking on the world.

So I was excited to read over the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding new poll on American Muslims. Most results are unsurprising. American Muslims tend to be more religious than many other faiths (“second only to white Evangelicals (83%)”). and they are far more likely to identify as independents and Democrats, as opposed to Republican.

But the most interesting part of the report is what it says about the rise of what it calls “Islamophobia” among the Muslim Americans. In fact, while Islamophobia declined among other groups, it has increased among Muslims. Indeed, according to its findings, Muslims tend to be more Islamophobic than all the other groups except Evangelicals and Catholics.

The report tries to make sense of this unexpected finding in terms of what it calls “internalized oppression,” a theory according to which minorities “internalize the negative stereotypes.” This is why, the report suggests, younger Muslim Americans who were born after 9/11/2001 were more likely to harbor Islamophobic beliefs, since they grew up in “a country that has demonized their identity in popular culture, news media, political rhetoric, and in policy. Research suggests that this kind of steady drum- beat of bigoted ideas and state actions have a detrimental impact on the target group’s self-image and mental health.”

The authors speculate that “internalized prejudice may actually be a defense mechanism against the trauma of bigotry at the hands of the dominant group by agreeing with those in power but believing one has the choice (locus of control) to not be like those tropes.”

I don’t buy this explanation. I think something else is going on, something I see among some of my children’s friends. Let me explain.

First, the authors are silent about how Muslim Americans may have strong sentiments about fellow Muslims who do bad things in our name. The report mentions 9/11 only in the context of the ensuing Islamophobia without addressing how Muslim Americans perceived the fanatics who attacked America in the name of our religion. In a way, Islamic extremists have done far more damage to Muslims’ self-image than any external Islamophobia. Think about the rise of ISIS, the recent sectarian killings in New Mexico, or even the attack last month on Salman Rushdie.

More than self-image is at stake. Far more Muslims have been killed by fellow Muslims than Islamophobes.

Second, I think there is a generational shift going in America. The 9/11 era is over. Between the Ukraine war, the menace of Russia and China, there are new sources of fear for Americans – and thankfully it’s not us. Now that the US withdrew from Afghanistan, and the Iraq War long over, most Americans have moved on. Plus, if you look around, in tv shows, news, media there are Muslim Americans popping up everywhere. Our existence is being normalized by the weight of time. The key people who haven’t caught on this – or don’t want to – are the beneficiaries from the Islamophobia industry, like the authors of the study above and Nihad Awad to name a few.

Most Muslim Americans live peacefully with the rest of our fellow Americans. But that is not to say that our community does not have serious problems. Key among these is that we have allowed our most prominent spokespeople to themselves entrench unfortunate stereotypes in the public imagination.

I hope my children’s generation can be proud of their Muslim identity and also critical of fellow Muslims who try to manipulate that identity for their own extremist and divisive agenda. I worry that otherwise they may become self-hating, which would be a disaster.

CAIR Can’t Have it Both Ways 16 Sep 2022, 12:50 am

How was your summer vacation? I was back in Egypt and spent more time offline than expected. Being offline is great, by the way. I highly recommend it.

Being in Egypt was an experience. Every time I go home it amazes me how much has changed… and how nothing has changed. The first thing I noticed was how bad the economy was. And then there was the omnipresent police. Any Egyptian has very mixed feelings about this powerful and omnipresent force in Egyptian society. They keep us safe, in theory anyway, but also keep us on edge.

I was thinking about this when I saw the latest CAIR report: “Feeling the Hate: Bias and Hate Crimes Experienced by Muslim New Yorkers.” The big take-away: “The report found that while 64 percent of Muslims have experienced a hate crime, bias incident, or both, only 4 percent of Muslims reported a hate incident to law enforcement.”

I’m old enough to remember when CAIR urged us not to talk to law enforcement. Back in 2011, CAIR chapters circulated posters with the slogan: “Build A Wall of Resistance: Don’t Talk to the F.B.I.” Back in the heyday of the so-called War on Terror, CAIR was always wary of US law enforcement, warning us that we couldn’t trust them.

Lo and behold, 12 years later, CAIR now bemoans the fact that so many Muslims do not report incidents to police. Our communities are now reaping what CAIR sowed for over two decades.

(There is a parallel here between CAIR and the American Far-right in feeding the perception of persecution and conspiracies by evil force, but that’s a post for another time.)

CAIR has benefitted from painting Muslims as helpless targets of conspiracies and is deeply invested in keeping Muslims in a constant state vigilance and victimization. It has built a brand leveraging Islamophobia, both real and imagined, to solicit donations. But Nothing CAIR does aims at addressing the root cause of Islamophobia. That so many Muslims decide not to report incidents of harassment shows the extent to which CAIR has failed even in its nominal mission.

A Ramazan Awakening 28 Apr 2022, 8:17 pm

Waking up every morning before dawn has always been my favorite part of Ramazan. This month, as I’ve awoken for Sahar, amazing childhood memories have surfaced in my heart and mind – like re-discovered treasures from the distant past.

In those days my family lived in a government officers’ colony in Lahore, in one of the uniformly designed and neatly-maintained two-story red brick houses. Each block of homes was separated by playgrounds and green open spaces. The colony had once belonged to the Raja of Poonch and was named after him: The Poonch House Colony. Elites and intellectuals lived in that gated enclave: lecturers, professors, public servants divided in housing blocks according to official rank and seniority.

My family used to sleep in the courtyard with rows of charpaye (wooden cots) surrounded by guava and mango trees. To make sure the residents woke up in time to prepare a Sahar meal for Ramazan, a Dhool Wala (man with a drum) would suddenly appear for the holiday season. Strolling through the colony in the darkness, he would pound the Dhool and chant: “Sahri ka waqat ho gya – Udth jana jee!”  Wake up – it’s time to prepare for Sahar!

A sound heard in the dark is haunting and grips the heart, especially when it emerges in the distance and then comes closer and closer. No children ever saw the mysterious Dhool wala, but his haunting solitary voice accompanied with a solemn beat captivated me.

The pounding Dhool would wake me from deep slumber, and I eagerly popped up from my wooden cot to join the pre-dawn preparations. I watched the lights turn on in windows throughout our neighborhood as mothers began cooking. My mother always started by making parathas as the servants rushed to help set up the dastarkhwan. The fragrance of her cooking mixed with the smoke from the bawarchikhana window that opened onto the courtyard lured me to rush into the kitchen to grab the first sizzling Paratha.

Now in 2022, we need our own Dhool Wala to awaken us from our slumbers. Too many of us are today in darkness, a kind of new jahiliyya. It’s time to seize the moment and prepare for a new dawn.

What do I mean beyond the metaphor? We need to insist that our religious community institutions no longer tolerate corruption, that courageous women are no longer silenced when they demand justice, and that abuse of power by men is no longer silently accepted.

Udth jana jee! my fellow Muslims. Let us all hear and harken to the banging drum that calls us to fulfill the true meaning of Ramazan. Eid Mubarak!

Yassir Qadhi in a Porsche 21 Mar 2022, 1:45 pm

Readers, you are not deceived. That is indeed none other than Al Maghrib icon Yasssir Qadhi behind the wheel of a Porsche Boxster sportscar with the top down. And no, I did not hire some private detective to snap this compromising photo exposing the salafi-vangelist leading a double-life. Qadhi himself made it his LinkedIn profile picture.

I’m not sure what kind of message Qadhi is trying to send: That all the Zakah donations to Al Maghrib have been put to good use??? My best guess is that he is trying to impress one of Al Maghrib’s key target audience: teenagers, particularly teen boys.

What I do know is that piety and money rarely make for a happy mix, and that cocktail should always be treated with suspicion. I remember the Al Rayyan craze that shook Egypt when I was growing up. At the heart of the scam was a pious businessman with a long beard, surrounded by people including former Al Azhar teachers, dozens of clerics. He pitched Al Rayyan as a “Money Employment” company, but really it was an investment fund that became all the rage. In addition to being a halal “Islamic investment,” the promised return rates were much higher than any bank could offer. The “company” preyed on two factors: ordinary people’s pious desire to avoid interest-based financial dealings – and their desire for profitability.

Appropriately for Egypt, the whole venture was (pardon the pun) a pyramid scheme. By the time the scam collapsed, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians had invested their hard-earned life savings. Many were expatriates working in the Gulf who believed they would make a quick buck abroad before returning home to retire comfortably. When the pyramid collapsed, they had to delay retirement by many years. Friends of my family were caught up in the scam, with devastating consequences.

Now I’m not saying Yasser Qadhi is operating his own version of an Al Rayyan Ponzi scheme, but some scam seems to be going on. For years he has been touring, lecturing, and building an internet persona as a preacher and scholar. He’s been poisoning young Muslims for years (I am particularly disgusted by the Al Maghrib social media ads preying on teens by warning about djinns and satan out to get them). Some people call Qadhi a closeted Wahabi, though no honest salafi would be caught showing off in a Porsche.

Here in America we have many cautionary tales of televangelists enjoying lavish lifestyles on the backs of their naïve congregants. It’s not clear whether Qadhi is just posing as a “baller” or actually living the high-life off duped donors. Either way, the photo is a warning. We can’t let our piety be taken advantage of by charlatans. They’re not out there for us or for Allah. They’re out for themselves.

Did Malik Faisal Akram Have No Mother? 17 Jan 2022, 8:04 pm

I am of course heartbroken by the synagogue hostage-taking in Texas. As a Pakistani, it hurts even more that once again our good name has been sullied by crazy people who take things too far. It’s a reminder we need to be much more careful about how we talk. We don’t always really mean what we say, and our language can sometimes get carried away. Then all it takes is one person without a filter to take us literally. And the next thing you know people are dead and Islam once again looks like an aggressive faith. We become the victims of our own mistakes.

In that spirit, I am looking at the death announcement from Akram’s community in Blackburn England. Take a look at their Facebook post below and see if you can tell what’s missing:

Aside from the fact they are honoring a terrorist, where are the women? This is insane.

I don’t think it is because Akram’s mother is embarrassed. More likely it’s what my Iranian friends tell me happens there, with obituaries leaving out mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. The announcement for a woman who has passed away never includes their photo: just a rose or faceless icon in hijab.

Has this same craziness come to England?

Maan Kay paoon talay janat per ma’an hai Kahan?

Update: Blackburn Muslim Community Facebook page has removed the obituary for the Synagogue hostage taker.

When You Discover You’re Being Watched 27 Dec 2021, 7:11 pm

I loved Christmas growing up. Even though Pakistan’s small Christian minority had overall been humbled by the dominant Muslim majority, the missionary hospitals and schools left over from British colonial rule were still the most desirable. I was born in Lady Willington Hospital, and my parents were delighted when I got into a prominent Catholic school. So I was exposed to Christmas early on. I found it bright and beautiful.

Preparations for Christmas began at school in early December. Decorations on the tree dazzled me. The lights and ornaments evoked a fairyland where reindeers flew and Santa delivered presents. The teachers were happier and less strict, and I even played an angel in the school Christmas play with a halo over my head and glittering white clothes. My parents never came to see the play.

In my life today, the dynamic is reversed. The outside world around me is filled with Christmas celebrations, while at home my family wrestles with how we relate to the holiday. It’s particularly a challenge with my American children. I don’t mind if they feel some of the seasonal magic, but I don’t want them to go too far. Some friends are less concerned and put up a Christmas tree in their home, but I can’t bring myself to do that.

Walking in the mall last week with the kids, we heard the Christmas carol “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” It’s a catchy melody but I suddenly noticed that the lyrics were a bit creepy: “He sees you when you’re sleeping / He knows when you’re awake / He knows if you’ve been bad or good / So be good for goodness sake!”

For some reason the song made me think of the latest headlines with CAIR, which suddenly announced that they had caught a spy. One of their veteran staffers had apparently been feeding inside information for years to an organization called The Investigative Project, a longtime nemesis of CAIR. The employee (with an unusual South Asian name Romin Iqbal that makes me wonder if he might be Christian) had even risen to be the head of CAIR’s chapter in Columbus, Ohio.

It’s a very strange story. Suddenly discovering someone you trusted has betrayed you makes you feel vulnerable. And the idea that your private affairs have been watched the whole time but someone not as friendly as Santa Claus is disturbing. The whole thing plays into the paranoia many have of being watched and judged, of worrying if someone close might betray us.

On the other hand, I know CAIR has betrayed our community. The organization claims to speak in our name, to defend our rights, and yet more and more of us know the truth: it is a racket run by corrupt and sexist men. Most of us are too afraid to say so publicly – because we know they are watching us and will not hesitate to destroy anyone who publicly challenges them. Just look at what happened to Lori Haidri. Nobody likes CAIR’s head Nihad Awad, but no one dares to take him on.

So the whole incident has left me confused – sort of like how I love the tune of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” but can’t stand the lyrics. On the one hand, I hate the idea of outsiders secretly inserting themselves into our affairs. On the other hand, we have been too weak to take deal with the problem of CAIR ourselves, But maybe that’s finally starting to change.

Anyway, wishing all our readers a Merry Christmas. And let’s all try to remember the main point of the song: Be good for goodness sake!

Our Un-Elected Kennedys: The Omeish Dynasty Gets the Al Jazeera Treatment 25 Nov 2021, 9:24 pm

The Omeish clan – formerly of Tripoli, now Virginia – are Muslim-American political royalty, somehow straddling the worlds of traditional Libyan Ikhwani elite and ultra-progressive American avant-garde. Some of my friends call them the Muslim Kennedys.

The Omeish clan pops into and out of the spotlight every few years. They are back in it, thanks to a new profile by Al-Jazeera Mubasher (the more explicitly Ikhwani-friendly branch of the Qatari network). It’s a puff piece, whose title translates roughly as: “Between the values of the East and the Western science, a Libyan Muslim family achieves academic and professional success in America.” (I watched it, dear readers, so you don’t have to.)

The patriarch is Dr. Essam Omeish, a son of Tripoli who moved from Libya to the US when he was just 15, speaking little English. Essam became a classic American success story. A brilliant student, he won many awards, attended Georgetown University School of Medicine, and became a renowned surgeon. He even treated some 9/11 attack victims as the surgeon on call at Alexandria Hospital.

While at Georgetown, Essam already displayed civic leadership ambitions, establishing a campus chapter of the Ikhwani-affiliated Muslim Students Association. He soon joined the board of Dar al-Hijrah (the DC metro area’s most prominent masjid, also Ikhwan-affiliated) and quickly rose to be its vice-president. Then-governor Tim Kaine appointed him to Virginia’s Commission on Immigration.

Essam is clearly ambitious, but his nerdy ideological fervor sometimes gets him into trouble. As a leader of Dar al-Hijrah he played a key role in hiring Anwar al-Awlaki as the imam in 2000. Al-Awlaki might have seemed like a young fresh face, but he soon became a leading al-Qaeda propagandist, inspiring folks like the Fort Hood Shooter and Times Square Bomber before a 2011 US drone strike killed him in Yemen. And in 2007, after some of Essam’s more radical speeches surfaced, Governor Kaine demanded his resignation from the Virginia Commission on Immigration.

With his own political ascent blocked, Essam has shifted some of his attention to his homeland, serving as president of the Libyan-American Association. The group appears to be an influence operation to secure US policy support for fellow Libyan Ikhwanis against arch-nemesis “Marshall” Khalifa Haftar. (اللهم أضرب الظالمين بالظالمين وأخرجنا من بينهم سالمين  – both sides are absolute disasters, but I digress.)

The chance to fulfill the Omeish clan’s political potential now falls to Essam’s children, who seem as academically gifted as their father. Like the Kennedys, they have an Ivy League pedigree (which Essam likes to show off): Abrar (Yale), Anwar (Harvard and Oxford – and with her father on NPR), Yusef (Yale), and another son still in high school. The oldest, Abrar, is already following in her father’s footsteps, having been elected to the board of Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.

If Essam is trying to build a dynasty around his worldview, then its scion would be his eldest Abrar, who appears in the Al-Jazeera video speaking excellent Arabic for someone born in America. But while linguistically fluent, Abrar shares some of her father’s tone-deaf political impulses. Last June she stirred up controversy when she took a hard left turn during a high school commencement speech. As one angry parent complained: “A rich girl who went to Yale and won a political election in one of the richest counties uses her position to teach our kids that they will be oppressed by a racist and capitalist society. Such a disgrace!”

It’s actually an impressive accomplishment that in one generation the Omeishes have become elite upper-class American Brahmins, despite their beards and hijabs. Maybe they are less Kennedys than the Muslim version of the Bush dynasty (though patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr. held some wacky views Essam might agree with).

Either way, the biggest controversy here is how an Ikhwani ideologue and his family have managed to define Muslim-American identity and placed themselves in the media spotlight, courted by journalists on the left and scrutinized by those on the right. No one appointed them as our elite spokespeople. They just inserted themselves.

It will be interesting to see how the Omeish dynasty evolves. Will their Ikhwani roots or their newfound wokeness win out? Embracing woke rhetoric might be politically expedient right now for Omeish generation 2.0 (despite their Ivy League privilege), but there is no saying when the dragon will turn around and burn the whole thing down. If you don’t get the reference, watch Game of Thrones.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Donkey of Kandahar 15 Sep 2021, 4:55 pm

It’s been a while. My apologies. Sometimes it’s hard to write. Here’s a small item to break the block.

Browsing Netflix a few weeks ago, I discovered “Ali’s Wedding,” an Australian rom-com with a twist. The movie follows an Iraqi refugee named Ali (Osamah Sami, who also wrote the semi-autobiographical script). He is a young man torn between his dreams and his sense of duty to family/community. Set inside Australia’s Iraqi Shi’a community, the film offered me a kind of look into a parallel universe. Some dynamics hit close to home.

You should watch the film, so I’ll try not to give away too much of the plot. The essence is that Ali’s older brother was meant to become a doctor but died some years ago from a landmine on the Iranian border. So Ali feels compelled to pick up the medical mantle to please his father, who has also arranged a marriage for Ali. But Ali gets bad test scores, dreams of being an actor, and does not love his intended wife. Instead he falls for Dianne, a Lebanese medical student. On one of their early secret “dates”, Dianne and Ali are surrounded by young Australian couples making out during movie screening. Amidst the amorous hubbub, the two gingerly touch each other’s pinkies.

When one of Ali’s plays (about Saddam Hussein) gets booked by an Iraqi community in Michigan, Ali suggests to Dianne that he “jump ship” while visiting America. In his wacky plan, Dianne should join him in the US because “In America, we can live like Australians!” It’s Ali’s way of recognizing how he often feels suffocated inside his expat community.

Making things even more complicated is that Ali’s father is a cleric and spiritual leader of the local community. He is a traditional yet relatively open-minded man, who stages plays and musical for the community that Ali often acts in. But there is a rival: the dour but ambitious Sayyed Ghaffar, who badly wants to replace Ali’s father as imam of the mosque. Trained in Iranian academies in the mold of the Iranian regime’s clerics, Ghaffar is self-righteous with no sense of humor. He wears a black turban to show off his direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad. When he hears Ali has been invited to perform his play in Detroit, he wonders why anyone would want to visit “The Great Satan.”

Sayyed Ghaffar makes his move for control by showing mosque members incriminating pictures of Ali and Dianne dating, forcing Ali’s father to tender his resignation because of the “un-Islamic actions” of his son. Yet the mosque members refuse the resignation because they don’t want Ghaffar as their Imam. He is far too judgmental and severe. Ghaffar then yells at people for preferring someone with a white turban (worn by Ali’s father) over his own black one. But even this appeal to the authority falls on deaf ears. Ghaffar storms out of the mosque, followed by only a few followers, including his brother-in-law (who apologies in advance to Ali’s father for leaving out of obligation to his wife… and that he will be back in a few minutes).

The mosque confrontation touched me, beautifully encapsulated the difference between a humane approach religion (represented by Ali’s father) and a haranguing one (Ghaffar style) that constantly calls out people for ‘deviating’ from ‘true’ Islam. Ali’s father smiles and encourages his community to improve themselves without sounding arrogant or patronizing. During his last sermon resigning, Ali’s father recounts the story of the donkey in Kandahar:

During the Abbasid Dynasty, a man and his son rode on a donkey. But once they reached the town of Kandahar the people abused them. They said, “Poor donkey. You make him carry two fit men.”

So the father rode and the son walked. But when they arrived at the next town, people cried, “Look at this fellow. He drags his young defenseless boy through the desert heat and he enjoys the ride of a lifetime. “

So in the next town, the son rode and father walked. But people shouted at the boy, “You are young. You are healthy. You make your elderly father suffer. He is marching in heat.”

So together, the father and his son decided to walk with their donkey. As they passed through the next town, people laughed.

“Look at these two idiots. Why don’t they ride their donkey?” And in every town, people criticized them.

In the end, the father said, “Stuff this.” And he and the boy carried the donkey on their back.

But…We tie ourselves up in terrible knots trying to live up to the judgments of others.

We certainly do. I often wonder if I’m riding the donkey or carrying it – and of course, I can’t help but worry what other people in my community think of me. That’s why I have to remain anonymous.

Afghanistan, Eternal Heartbreak 28 Aug 2021, 12:43 am

Watching TV reports from Afghanistan feels like getting punched in the gut. Images of the Taliban taking over the entire country as women went into hiding and Afghan soldiers deserted en masse triggered something in me.

At first, it was just a big jumble of images and emotions. The World Trade Center towers falling on a clear September morning. Huge bombs exploding in the distant and imposing Afghan mountains. Soviet troops by the dozens riding their tanks through empty and burned Afghan villages.

Then emerged the image of Ragab, a kid I knew back in Egypt. He used to walk around spouting nonsense and dressed in short white pants, a budding beard, and the Gulfie-like white piece of cloth on his head. He fulminated about how our society was going straight to hell because we all became disbelieving “Kuffar”, how women were walking around “naked,” and how we all forgot about the “sacred duty” of Jihad. Ragab was the first person I ever heard mention Afghanistan. “No true Muslim would sit idle when the godless heathen atheist Soviets were killing innocent Muslims in Afghanistan!” he declared.

There were even cassettes (remember those great-grandfathers of iTunes?) circulating with firebrand preachers talking about “how the hour of holy war has come.” One of my neighbors, a veteran who had fought in the October war against Israel, sarcastically wondered: “So we’re supposed to go AGAIN into another war? We just came out of 20 years of wars against Israel. Now they want us to fight the Soviet Union?”

One day Ragab disappeared. I didn’t think much of it as I was only a kid, not really focused on politics, and Ragab wasn’t exactly my favorite person in the neighborhood. Only years later, after the US invaded Afghanistan, did I piece it all together. My cousin had sent me an old Egyptian TV clip of President Hosni Mubarak saying that anyone who wanted to go wage Jihad in Afghanistan could go. Whenever the TV showed US troops chasing Bin Laden in the Tora Bora caves, I would wonder if Ragab was there. He certainly never re-appeared.

So it seems that 40+ years after my old discussions with Ragab, Afghanistan is back to square one. Nothing changed… yet everything changed. That’s one reason it’s so painful to watch the news.

The truth is that we in the Muslim world owe Afghanistan big time. We all looked the other way as our rulers used Afghanistan to dump their problems far away. Only too late did we realize that this helped create a monster of Jihadism that came back much bigger and wilder to bite everyone in the ass. Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Libya all have a painful story to tell and all of them have one place in common: Afghanistan.

Here in America also, there is a conversation to be had about how the Establishment bungled its way through Afghanistan for 20 years with little to show for it. In the end, despite all the lives and treasure spent on it, the bad guys came back, and everything came unglued in a few days.

So that’s what I’m feeling: pain spiked with guilt, doubled in my case as an Arab and as a Muslim American. And I look as my American-born daughters watch the TV footage of Afghan women and girls now left for the Taliban to oppress and dehumanize. What am I supposed to tell them?

US Islamists Facing Political Setbacks under Biden Administration 29 Jul 2021, 2:22 pm

The May-June issue of ISNA’s newsletter Islamic Horizons carried an intriguing letter to the editor from Emgage CEO Wael Alzayat warning that “misinformation from within our community.” Alzayat was writing to protest “harmful and unsubstantiated claims” about Emgage is the previous edition of Islamic Horizons – an article that warned readers how to avoid “Political Scams under the Muslim Cover.”

This is the latest salvo in a major power struggle raging since for some time between Emgage, USCMO, and ISNA – with supporting props including Jewish groups, the Democratic Party, the 2020 Presidential election, and even Senate Judicial nominations. The struggle underlying these skirmishes is securing access to the Biden administration.

Back in September, Emgage (a grassroots voter mobilization and political advocacy group) was subjected to the equivalent of a botched character assassination attempt by the American Muslims For Palestine (AMP), which chided Emgage over some of its supposed connections to Jewish groups without naming specific organizations: 

“American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) is aware of and is addressing the grave allegations embroiling Emgage over its previous, and evidently ongoing, ties to Islamophobic and Zionist organizations..”

Then came a petition by various activists repeating very much of the same accusations. Finally, in October the USCMO (effectively the national steering committee of Ikhwani groups) issues a statement that aimed to be the coup de grace by finally naming names and officially kicking Emgage out of its coalition:

“In recent weeks, numerous Muslim and Palestinian Americans have expressed concern about reported ties between Emgage and Emgage leaders with anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian groups. Some of the specific concerns expressed to USCMO relate to:

—Emgage board members participating in the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), an offensive program which seeks to undermine Muslim solidarity with the cause of Palestinian freedom.

—Emgage directly partnering with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which weaponizes Islamophobia, lobbies to restrict the right to boycott for human rights, and regularly smears American Muslims who speak up for Palestinian human rights, including elected officials like Rep. Ilhan Omar, among other unacceptable conduct.

—Emgage and Emgage leadership directly working with the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which has praised anti-Muslim bigots like Daniel Pipes and Ayaan Hirsi Ali while also targeting Muslim Americans who support Palestinian freedom, among other Islamophobic conduct.

EMGAGE promptly pushed back with its own statement effectively calling USCMO bigoted, power hungry, and conceited:

Over the course of several weeks, Emgage repeatedly requested USCMO to postpone the discussions on these issues, many of which are either not based in fact or have previously been answered by Emgage, until after the election so we could collectively focus on turning out the Muslim vote and not divide our community. USCMO refused.

Emgage is an engagement organization, and repeatedly asked USCMO to not force us or its membership to develop a public blacklist of organizations that we or any USCMO members would be prohibited to work with. While Emgage does NOT partner with organizations that are harmful to Muslim Americans, we also do not cede space or retreat from engagement when it can benefit the Muslim American community. USCMO refused.

USCMO on multiple occasions “moved the goalposts” on Emgage as to the core issues of concern and the requested steps for Emgage to address these concerns to the satisfaction of USCMO. In the most recent meeting, USCMO’s leadership added a new redline for Emgage to comply with, that Emgage PAC had to rescind the endorsement of a Virginia congressional candidate based on his faith. Not only is Emgage PAC not a member of USCMO, but even if it were, it does not base its support of any candidate based on their faith.

Amidst all the finger-pointing, no one mentioned the elephant in the room: the Muslim Jewish Advisory Council (MJAC), an active partnership (at the time) between ISNA and the American Jewish Committee. ISNA’s own President and co-founder Sayyid M. Syeed took part in the initiative, along with other ISNA officials. Yet somehow none of the “fire and brimstone” over ties to Zionist groups got directed at ISNA (the publisher of Islamic Horizons!).

Emgage seems, for now, to have won the larger battle against USCMO. Its own board member Farooq Mehta was the Biden campaign’s head of Muslim outreach. Islamist groups who invested heavily in the Sanders campaign realized they backed the losing horse. They panicked in September and tried to take out Emgage and Mitha in the hopes of placing their own people inside the Biden administration. As it was, Mitha was appointed by the Biden administration to a position in Department of Defense and most of his fellow Muslim appointees in the administration are fellow “liberal” South Asians not in the USCMO camp.

To add insult to injury for USCMO and member groups, Judge Zahid N. Quraishi of New Jersey was appointed as the nation’s first-ever Muslim Federal District Judge. CAIR worked aggressively to shoot down his nomination, but to no avail. Judge Quraishi’s main sin in their eyes is that he’s not one of them. CAIR’s California chapter complained: “Just because somebody is a Muslim doesn’t mean that they automatically get our endorsement. We need answers.”

Islamist movements in the US have failed to gain any significant inroads with the Biden administration. The Muslim groups who played their cards right, like Emgage, have earned the rewards, and those who lost their gamble are left with little to show. ISNA at least had the decency to public Alzayat’s letter – though perhaps that’s just a sign of their trying to have it both ways. They hosted Bernie Sanders at their 2019 convention, but may recognize that the road to the current administration inevitably goes via Emgage.

Furthermore, this blow up shows yet again that US ikhwanis despite all their noise and leadership pose are practically a negligible force in national politics. This perhaps is the one idea they work so hard to obscure from American Muslims.

This is to maintain the sham that only they can be a gateway to the system. They are not. Even worse, One can argue that these groups are actually  the main reason US Muslims do not have much political influence or punch. Thus, one cannot but feel sorry for all the well intentioned US Muslims who still donate money to these groups thinking their dollars will bring positive change. Therein lies the tragedy.