Since the suicide attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Muslim American voices like Zainab Zeb Khan’s “have been bullied into silence,” the founder of the Muslim American Leadership Alliance told an audience in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Monday.
“I call this coerced cohesion. If we dare to speak out against extremism, against antisemitism, against violence in our own communities, if we dare to do that, we are called traitors, bigots, Islamophobes,” Khan added. “The word ‘Zionist’ is spit at us as if it’s some sort of slur.”
Khan was one of seven speakers on a panel that ran for more than an hour at the Saban Theater after a screening of former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg’s documentary “Screams Before Silence,” which is about the sexual violence that Hamas committed during its Oct. 7 terror attack.
The “core problem” is that Islamists and those on the far political left “have had a monopoly on Muslim American representation,” Khan said. “The majority of mainstream Muslim American organizations are Islamists.” She added that she founded Muslim American Leadership Alliance “because Muslim Americans deserve better.”
She said that three groups—the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America and Islamic Circle of North America—were particularly at fault.
“The problem is going to continue as long as we have organizations like CAIR having a seat,” she said. “We need a political and civic engagement home for Muslim Americans that are not antisemitic, that are not with the grievance narrative and that are a counter to CAIR, ISNA and ICNA.”
“What’s sitting in Washington, D.C., today is a danger,” Khan said.
But when Muslim Americans like she share empathy with or support Jews, “somehow that translated into supporting and signaling—a signal of support for bombing Gaza,” Khan said. She added that some people describe themselves as anti-Zionist but not Jew-haters.
“That has become the reason why Sheryl made this film,” Khan said. “This is why the denial happens.”
Anila Ali, board chair and president of the American Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council, was another of the panelists. She urged attendees to consider the faces of the Hamas terrorists captured on video.
“What kind of husband, father, brother do you think they are? Isn’t that so sad for the Muslim women of the world?” Ali told attendees, “that those are the men that are representing Islam?”
Ali wondered aloud what has happened to the world that the girls and women who are victims of “the world’s biggest criminal organization—Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood in America”—need to be affirmed when they detail the atrocities they had to endure.
“Something is wrong in our moral compass that we are not able to stand with these women and say, ‘Hamas is bad for Palestine. Hamas is bad for Muslim women,’” she said. “Islam is going to suffer because of them.”
Ali told attendees that she is persona non grata at U.S. mosques, where women like she aren’t allowed to address worshippers.
“Why? Because I like Israel. I like Jewish people. Like my prophet of Islam, peace be upon him,” she said. “For 20 years, me and my Muslim sisters—20 of them have been harassed by the Muslim Brotherhood patriarchy that is in all these organizations.”
The event, which was sponsored by Justice for Women International, StandWithUs, Women’s Voices Now and Temple of the Arts, drew several hundred attendees.