There were personal costs to pay, of course, given the ferocity of Zionist propaganda that has accompanied the genocide. Most recently, in November 202,5 her visa to the United States was revoked in an extraordinarily petty move, which was nonetheless celebrated by Zionist organizations, many of which had spent months attacking both South Africa in general and her in particular for having had the temerity to challenge their bloody assault on Palestine.

But for Pandor, the vindication of being on the right side of history was well worth it. Speaking at Ottawa during a whirlwind trip through Canada just days before the cancellation of her visa, she described the feeling when, after months of personal attacks, professional snubs, and outright mistreatment by both local rivals and foreign peers, her case was found to have been valid all along: “Thanks be to Allah, it’s a wonderful feeling.”

Not that there was any let-up in the urgency of the Palestinian cause, of course. With the genocide still afoot, she emphasized the importance of civil society and mass, organized international solidarity. Palestine’s plight required, she said, that its supporters “build a united global front” in support. This front can not afford parochialism, sectarianism, tribalism, and hatred.

Background

Pandor grew up amid the downtrodden black majority in apartheid South Africa in a family with both educational and political roots. Her grandfather, Zachariah Matthews, was a professor renowned throughout Africa, who was exiled from his homeland after opposing apartheid in 1956 and became a diplomat for the newly independent Botswana before he passed away. Though he was also exiled, Zachariah’s son Joseph Matthews, Pandor’s father, ended up taking a different route: after apartheid ended, he left his father’s party, though he served a few years as minister in charge of police in a subsequent coalition cabinet. By contrast, Pandor, like her grandfather, spent her political career in the African National Congress, which has ruled South Africa for the past three decades.

The African Congress’s rise to power in 1994 came at the end of several generations’ worth of struggle, where they were the main, banned party representing South Africa’s downtrodden majority against the apartheid regime. Their leader, Nelson Mandela, is renowned in anticolonial circles for, among other things, his unfettered solidarity with Palestine, famously remarking, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” It was this internationalist solidarity that Pandor inherited; speaking at an event arranged by the Justice for All organization, she emphasized the need for human dignity and freedom across borders – highlighting, along with Palestine, the cases of Rohingya, Uyghurs, and Kashmiris as oppressed people deprived of their rights.

From South African Apartheid to Israeli Genocide

“Pandor stressed the importance of civil society as nimbler, more flexible form of activism than reliance on officialdom” [PC: Al Jazeera]

But Pandor also emphasized certain key differences. In South Africa’s minority rule, the majority workers in unions were able to organize and protest on account of their importance to the South African economy, thus pressuring the same apartheid regime that deprived them. This is not applicable to Palestine, especially under the current genocide, where the role of international solidarity becomes that much more important.

Pandor stressed the importance of civil society as nimbler, more flexible form of activism than reliance on officialdom: civil society can also afford to stick to its principles in ways that officialdom may not. In taking political stances on principle, she remarked, “For some of us, we are there for freedom, for others we are there for the selfie – and actions will tell which one [is which].”

As an experienced diplomat, she lamented the limitations of even multilateral international bodies and particularly urged the reform of United Nations institutions to break free of the control of the major powers: “It is tragic that the body we rely on for peace and security,” she said, was dominated by five member states more responsible between them for global insecurity and war than the others put together.

The role of principled activism was therefore paramount for Pandor, who quoted Mandela’s advice to youth: “Be a person who makes trouble, but make good trouble.”

South Africa’s Fight for Justice, Home and Abroad

Fighting for a just cause dovetailed neatly with Pandor’s understanding of Islam, to which she converted earlier in life. The African Congress had a considerable amount of support among South Africa’s Muslim minorities, many of whom had been engaged in the campaign against apartheid. For Pandor, faith in Allah enabled her to withstand frequent barbed attacks from political opponents. These could go from sweeping bigotry, as evidenced by much of the attacks on South Africa’s current government in recent years, to the pettily personal: she drily recounted how rivals attacked a slight British inflection in her accent, having studied and taught in Britain in her youth.

Education was Pandor’s first job, and after a stint leading South Africa’s equivalent of a senate, the first woman to do so, she held a number of ministries largely related to educational advancement. She also served a brief stint as interior minister, and ended her ministerial career with five years as South Africa’s foreign minister. As a veteran politician well-versed in the cut and thrust of power, her initiative in a principled cause meant that much more. So too did her emphasis on the importance of civil society, something located well outside the realm of the corridors of power.

Since it threw off apartheid in the 1990s, South Africa has generally been seen as a leader on the African continent and is often catalogued among rising states in the international system. With that system having long been dominated by first colonial, and then Cold War superpowers’ competition, Pandor emphasized the importance of this moment in history: when these “Global Northern” powers, who have dominated international relations for centuries, are in flux. It was a huge opportunity, she said, for the “Global South” to reconfigure international relations to a more equitable keel.

It was only a few days later, after her trip to Canada, that Pandor found that her visa to travel to the United States had been revoked. This stemmed partly from a general hostility toward South Africa by the United States, especially during Donald Trump’s current reign, where far-right activists regularly and speciously claim that Pretoria’s anti-apartheid measures discriminate against the white minority.

This reached such a stage that Trump personally berated South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa for this fictitious oppression and offered asylum to white South Africans fleeing the country, a ludicrous proposition that even baffled many of its intended beneficiaries. And it also stemmed from a linked Zionist campaign against South Africa, which is accused of being in cahoots with Hamas to malign the Israeli state. Pandor, the highest-profile Muslim minister, a black veteran of the anti-apartheid movement, and the lady who took Israel to court, was a central target.

Throughout it all, the South African has kept a dry wit, a stiff upper lip, and an iron will. “Remain engaged until freedom is won,” she said at Ottawa. “That is all.”

Related:

– Who’s Afraid Of Dr Naledi Pandor? – Zionist Panic and a Visa Revoked

– When News Becomes Propaganda: Gaza, Genocide, And The Media

The post Iron Principle Under Pressure: A Profile Of Naledi Pandor appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

With Israel’s recent recognition of Somaliland, many in the Muslim world are hearing about the country for the first time. It is an unfortunate introduction to a nation that, for those who have followed it, has long been a quiet success story. Somaliland has been synonymous with peace, stability, post-conflict reconstruction, reconciliation, and democratic governance in an otherwise unstable region. Now it is reduced to a single data point and reframed almost entirely as an Israeli project. That framing has come to define the country in the eyes of many.

For those genuinely interested in Somaliland’s history, Mark Bradbury’s Becoming Somaliland presents a comprehensive account. For shorter reads, see nearly any serious article written about Somaliland prior to this week’s announcement. They all tell the same story of resilience despite the odds.

Why Somaliland Deserves Recognition

Somaliland was a recognized state before voluntarily entering a union with Somalia in 1960; a union that failed because political power was centralized in Mogadishu. The presidency and premiership were held by Somalia. Budget allocations were deeply unequal, with Somaliland receiving roughly 10 percent of national spending despite representing at least a quarter of the population.

More devastatingly, a prominent clan in Somaliland, the Isaaq, was targeted as a matter of state policy. Military communiqués instructed senior officers to “break the back of the Isaaq,” advising them to “leave nothing but the crows,”; language widely understood as genocidal intent. These findings were backed up by a 2001 UN Report that concluded “the crime of genocide was conceived, planned and perpetrated by the Somali Government against the Isaaq people of northern Somalia between 1987 and 1989.” Human Rights Watch documented that at least 50,000 Isaaq civilians were killed by the Somali state between 1987 and 1989, with locals estimating as many as 100,000 lives lost. The scale of destruction left the capital and other major cities in Somaliland flattened. The trauma and devastation formed a major impetus for autonomy.

Since withdrawing from the union in 1991, Somaliland has been saddled with failures that are not its own. Somalilanders live with the consequences of a collapsed Somali state next door. They are effectively trapped, unable to travel freely, holding passports that grant entry to very few countries. The country cannot meaningfully leverage its natural resources because international investors are reluctant to commit capital in an uncertain legal environment. Oil and minerals remain locked in the ground.

Somaliland is repeatedly told to wait for Somalia to right itself. After more than three decades, that demand is wearing thin. Somalia continues to struggle with corruption, patronage, and fragile governance. Somalilanders are expected to remain hostage to that reality indefinitely.

Why Recognition Matters

Being a recognized state enables access to international investment, bilateral trade, tourism, and travel. It allows education systems and professional credentials to be formally recognized. It better facilitates improved health outcomes and prevents deaths from curable and preventable diseases.

Somaliland and Somalia rank among the lowest globally on social development indicators. In Somaliland’s case, the government has effectively operated like a nonprofit state, relying on port revenues, taxes, and remittances. There is no access to sovereign debt or international capital markets. Even its reserve banking relies on Djibouti’s patronage. Infrastructure projects and basic social services often depend on the generosity of partners such as the UAE. This is not a viable long-term model for any country.

Residents wave Somaliland flags as they gather to celebrate Israel’s announcement recognizing Somaliland’s statehood in downtown Hargeisa. [PC: Farhan Aleli/AFP via Getty Images]

Most importantly, recognition has been the collective aspiration of Somaliland’s 6.2 million people. It is a legitimate national ambition, and one to which every people is entitled.

Why Somalilanders Are Celebrating

What Somalilanders are celebrating is not Israel. It is proximity to recognition. Speaking with friends and family back in Somaliland, the mood is jubilant and gleeful. Crowds are beaming with a sense of pride for a promise that has begun to come true. Yet for many non-Somalilanders, the jubilation is difficult to understand as they remain fixated on who recognized Somaliland first. This, I believe, misses the point entirely. Somalilanders do not harbor any special affection for Israel. They abhor the genocidal state as much as any Muslim, but for Somalilanders, the significance of the moment lies in the fact that recognition has begun at all.

That said, there have been videos and images of Israeli flag-carrying youth, outrageous comments from excited but ignorant Somalilanders. The individuals publicly praising Israel or Netanyahu represent a small minority. The same few images and videos are circulated repeatedly by observers, unfortunately seeking to make a broader political argument. This amplification is deliberate and misleading.

A Call For Caution And Respect

Everywhere in the Muslim world, we are led by despots and tyrants who sell out their people and the broader Muslim world. With every leader and every instance of betrayal, we are reminded that the government is not its people. We can condemn governments for their decisions, but we do not condemn an entire population for its aspirations.

Much of the online discourse has devolved into abuse. Accusations of disbelief and moral betrayal are casually deployed. Scripture is quoted selectively, while the same standards are rarely applied to Muslims from countries that maintain cordial, strategic, transactional, or openly friendly relations with Israel.

Moralizing From Comfort

“Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.” – Lord Farquaad

It is easy to condemn choices that do not affect you. From the comfort of warm homes in the UK, the US, or Canada, people lecture those living with limited access to opportunity, mobility, and capital. I’ve heard some say, “you don’t drink seawater just because you’re thirsty,” in relation to Somaliland’s deal with Israel. A more astute and honest comparison would be, you don’t chastise the man in the desert with nothing to eat but swine.

Somaliland could have been recognized by Somalia itself or by any Muslim-majority state. None did. Instead, Somaliland was left to navigate a world where others preferred to prop up a nominal government with little legitimacy in Somalia itself and virtually none in Somaliland.

To tell Somalilanders to refuse recognition from Israel is, in effect, to tell them to reject recognition altogether. To condemn its people to permanent isolation.

What Were Somaliland’s Options?

Former US president Joe Biden captured a well-understood concept in electoral politics when he argued, “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” It may feel moral to hold Somaliland to an ideal, but a fairer and more practical assessment of reality demands comparison to the alternative. If Somaliland had rejected Israel’s recognition, it still would have been a signatory by default.

The reality of the matter is that Somalia itself had sought closer ties with Israel and was actively pursuing inclusion in the Abraham Accords through U.S. lobbying efforts. The Somali government paid conservative lobbyists BGR Group $50,000/month in an attempt to curry favor with the new US administration, block potential US -Somaliland recognition, and, notably, join the Abraham Accords, as evidenced by leaked email correspondence. These efforts failed not because of moral restraint, but because Somalia lacks effective control over its territory, most especially the Gulf of Aden.

While many continue to approach this issue through a moral lens, international politics does not operate on virtue. States act in their own interest. To expect otherwise from Somaliland is divorced from reality.

On Instability And Fear-mongering

Claims that recognition will destabilize the region raise a basic question: what stability, and for whom?

Somalia remains deeply unstable, with credible threats of political fragmentation and rival administrations. Somaliland, by contrast, has maintained internal stability for decades.

Assertions that recognition will trigger armed escalation from various tribes are routinely overstated. Claims that largely reflect a limited understanding of local political dynamics. While tensions exist, as they do in any plural society, they have not and do not constitute an existential threat.

Claims that this will strengthen the Somali-based Al-Shabaab terror group are also misguided. Al-Shabab has no operational presence in Somaliland and remains focused on overtaking Mogadishu as they continue to make inroads towards the capital. Recognition does not meaningfully make them more or less likely to be motivated to overthrow the Mogadishu government.

What Comes Next?

Condemnation from Arab, Muslim, and African states presents challenges, but it is not the deathblow opponents to Somaliland recognition might think it is.

Even if the United States, the United Kingdom, the UAE, and other Somaliland-friendly countries deny Somaliland’s legitimate claim to independence today, there is little reason to believe that position will not change in the near future. States operate on their own timelines and through their own processes, and any serious observer of international politics knows there is little daylight between Israeli, American, and Emirati strategic interests in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Stern words and denunciations may slow momentum, but they no longer amount to a death sentence for Somaliland.

The precedent has been set. Over time, more states will recognize that propping up a nominal Somali government while ignoring Somaliland’s lived reality is neither principled nor sustainable. Turkiye will seek to maintain its control over the Somali government, Saudi Arabia will attempt to counter Emirate influence, but sooner or later, states will operate in their own interest.

With the seal of recognition broken, Somaliland will need to make the case for recognition to countries beyond Israel: to prove to the Muslim world that they are worth a second look.

And while I recognize the stain of normalizing relations with Israel may never be washed out, I hope this recognition results in lives saved through improved economic conditions, better healthcare, and stronger educational outcomes. More than anything, I hope there is an opportunity to reintroduce Somaliland to the world in a way that we can all be proud of.

[Disclaimer: this article reflects the views of the author, and not necessarily those of MuslimMatters; a non-profit organization that welcomes editorials with diverse political perspectives.]

Related:

– What A Rubio: United States Throws Weight Behind Israel After Aggression On Qatar

– 150 Muslim Leaders And Institutions Now Say Arab Muslim Nations Should Cancel Abraham Accords, Suspend Oil Sales, Close Airspace To Israel, And Send Diplomatic Aid Mission To Gaza

The post Op-Ed: Understanding The Somaliland Recognition Decision – A Counterargument To The Prevailing Muslim Consensus appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Although the decree did not list a reason, critics have often accused Suwaidan of being an “Ikhwani” – referring to the Islamist political movement that retains widespread intellectual and cultural influence throughout the Muslim world and won the 2012 election in Egypt before its subsequent ouster in a coup. Although the Ikhwan had a longstanding relationship in the twentieth century with Arab monarchies such as Kuwait, often providing much of the professional and educated class, the relationship strained in the twenty-first century and in some cases broke down following the “Arab Spring” protests that saw the movement briefly rule Cairo after winning the 2012 election.

Suwaidan’s career was a case in point; he was long a welcome figure in the Gulf, lecturing and writing, and spoke on a television channel owned by Saudi prince Waleed bin Talal. In 2013, shortly after a coup partly supported by Riyadh against the Ikhwan government in Cairo, Waleed sacked Suwaidan for belonging to “the Brotherhood [Ikhwan] terrorist [sic] movement.” This occurred amid a broader crackdown on Ikhwan-affiliated figures.

Suwaidan was accused of having styled himself a member of the Ikhwan during a trip to Yemen, even though the Yemen Ikhwan, known as Islah, had a longstanding relationship with the Saudi government. The irony was further compounded when Saudi Arabia was forced to repair ties to Islah after they emerged as a major opposition to the Houthis, who seized control of Yemen the following year; that relationship persists today, though Saudi tolerance for Ikhwanis outside Yemen remains low. Hostility toward Ikhwanis and other independent Islamists has been frequent under an increasingly strong-arm Saudi government since then: to cap off the irony, Prince Waleed himself would be theatrically imprisoned for alleged corruption by Riyadh in 2017, by which point the anti-Islamist campaign had peaked to include a spurious blockade on Qatar.

It is unclear if the revocation of Suwaidan’s citizenship is linked to a similar anti-Islamist impulse in Kuwait, which, like Qatar, has traditionally been one of the Gulf states friendlier to the Ikhwan. What is known is that Kuwait is also close to the United States, where anti-Islamist, and especially anti-Ikhwan, discourse is a staple of the far-right and especially of the Zionist lobby. Suwaidan had widely lectured and spoken against the Israeli genocide.

 – by Ibrahim Moiz for MuslimMatters

Related: 

– Syria Returns To The World Stage: Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s Mission To New York

– Democracy, Citizenship, And Islamophobia: The Making Of A New India

The post Kuwait Strips Prominent Thinker Tariq Suwaidan Of Citizenship appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

The post Who’s Afraid Of Dr. Naledi Pandor? – Zionist Panic and a Visa Revoked appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Tributes And A Legacy of Defiance

Imam Jamil in his youth, known then as H. Rap Brown

The death in a high-security prison of veteran civil rights activist and community imam Jamil “Rap Brown” Amin has brought forth a tide of grief and tributes from throughout the United States and beyond. A pioneering and influential figure in the 1960s civil rights movement, imam Jamil’s life ended in a quarter-century of imprisonment under hotly contested charges and repeated refusals of appeal that could not staunch his influence as a groundbreaking activist and community leader within and beyond the Muslim and black communities.

Tributes have poured in for an aged activist long seen within his communities as a political prisoner falsely accused of crime and vindictively imprisoned despite a terminal illness. “Unsurprisingly,” remarked activist Zoharah Simmons, “the carceral system was unwilling to show any mercy for Brother Jamil…refusing a compassionate release! They made sure he would spend his last days under federal lock and key. But the State didn’t have the last word. Brother Jamil was bloody but unbowed.”

Outrage, Love, and Community Grief

Kalonji Changa mourned the imam, who “was not only my spiritual leader, he was one of my movement leaders, so I take his death personal. They allowed him to go blind and suffer the ravages of cancer while denying him the basic, life-saving medical care owed to any human being, let alone a political prisoner!”

The imam Omar Suleiman wrote, “For years we fought to free him. Today he is free. From prison to paradise God willing. He never lost his dignity, his voice never shook. His innocence was proven, but the system didn’t care. We cared. We loved. And InshaAllah, we will continue to move forward with his legacy.”

Who was this community leader that has attracted such fierce loyalty and affectionate solidarity? We will proceed to recount the remarkable life of Jamil Hubert Abdullah Amin Brown, who played a notable but largely overlooked role in the history of the United States, its civil rights and minority rights, decolonial struggle, and Western Islam.

Rap Brown

Nicknamed “Rap Brown” for the razor-sharp wit that he frequently used to cutting effect in firestarting condemnations of the American status quo, Jamil Abdullah Amin was born as Hubert Gerold Brown at Baton Rouge in 1943, growing up in Louisiana during the “Jim Crow” heyday. He and his elder brother Ed Brown were involved in activism for the rights of the widely downtrodden black community, reading widely and plunging into student politics.

Brown joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which began sit-ins and protests against racial segregation and discrimination in southern universities. In summer 1963 he witnessed its protests at the Maryland town Cambridge, led by Gloria Richardson, and was convinced that black activists needed to retain the right to fight back against violent intimidation.

Under Surveillance and Pressure

Though Richardson reached an accord to end Cambridge’s official discrimination with attorney-general Robert Kennedy, the brother of American president John Kennedy, civil-rights activism would repeatedly find itself in the cross-hairs of both racial prejudices as well as Cold War paranoia.

Even conciliatory variations of minority activism, such as the trend led by the preacher Martin Luther King, were routinely vilified as communist subversion not only by reactionary bigots but by many politicians and by officials as senior as Edgar Hoover, the sinister doyen of American security who directed his Federal Bureau of Investigation to use what can only be described as secret-police tactics against civil rights leaders. Unapologetically outspoken activists such as “Rap Brown” were a prime target of Hoover’s “Counterintelligence Program”, often called Cointelpro.

This drew a correspondingly sharp response from activists such as Brown; though he had been involved in legal civil-rights actions, such as the registration of black voters, he increasingly reserved the right to respond to violent provocation. Activists such as Brown, Malcolm Little, and Stokely Carmichael were also influenced by the decolonization of Africa and coordinated with liberation movements in African, Muslim, and decolonized, often leftist, countries, whose struggle they saw as linked to their own: in a reflection of this influence, the trio would change their names to, respectively, Jamil Abdullah Amin, Malik Shabazz “X”, and Kwame Ture.

Cold War and Confinement

After Malcolm’s murder, Ture, who led the Nonviolent Committee with Jamil as a major lieutenant, set up the Black Panthers movement, whose grassroots organization and “shadow governmental” structure immediately attracted subversion by Hoover’s agency. Jamil, who succeeded Ture as leader of the Nonviolent Committee, changed its name to “Student National Coordinating Committee” because, he quipped, “violence is as American as cherry pie.”

Indeed, the 1960s were a violent period, with assassinations claiming the lives of not only Malcolm but the Kennedy brothers and King. In this context and against significant intimidation, Jamil saw little need to adopt nonviolence as an inflexible principle. “Black folks built America, and if America don’t come around, we’re going to burn America down.”

This attracted caricatures of firebrand trouble-making; in fact, Jamil proved a thoughtful, disciplined organizer who would nonetheless hold his ground under fire with an often blisteringly sharp tongue. Though open to negotiations, he refused terms set by what he saw as a plainly unjust status quo.

In spring 1965 he joined a delegation that met Kennedy’s successor in the presidency, Lyndon Johnson, and was alarmed at the level of deference shown in what was effectively a negotiation. When Johnson complained that the activists’ nightly demonstrations had disturbed his children’s sleep, Jamil gave his condolences for the inconvenience but added that “Black people in the South had been unable to sleep in peace and security for a hundred years.”

Escalation, Resistance, and the Road to Arrest

Johnson did introduce civil-rights protections, but only at the cost of a militaristic foreign policy whose cauldron was the Vietnam war. For Jamil, who linked the struggle for civil rights to international solidarity against colonial supremacism, this was an unacceptable compromise.

In typically cutting parlance he called Johnson the“the greatest outlaw going” for his militarism abroad: “He fights an illegal war with our brothers and our sons. He sends them to fight against other colored people who are also fighting for their freedom.” This matched the views of the Black Panthers, who attempted to merge organizations and promoted Jamil to their honorary “justice minister”.

Jamil’s call, influenced by decolonial struggles abroad, for urban insurgency against oppression put him on thin ice, and the security establishment soon swooped. In summer 1967 he revisited Cambridge, which had dishonored its end of the 1963 agreement; he was promptly arrested in hotly disputed circumstances for supposedly inciting a riot; police chief Brice Kinnamon claimed to have staunched a “well-planned communist attempt to overthrow the government”, and governor Spiro Agnew alienated most black voters with his insistence that Jamil had been responsible. The case attracted widespread attention and was interrupted when the courthouse was bombed; Jamil went underground for eighteen months before he was sentenced to a five-year imprisonment.

Revolution by the Book

During his five-year imprisonment, Jamil converted to Islam. When he emerged, still only in his mid-thirties, and moved to Atlanta he led a life that belied the propaganda that had depicted him as a reckless troublemaker. In fact, he focused on quiet community building, beginning at the mosque and spreading out through the community, both Muslims and otherwise.

In one of his last interviews, delivered from prison, he quoted the Muslim caliph Umar Farouq ibn Khattab’s statement that Islam depended on community, which depended on leadership, which depended on allegiance and commitment to the roles and guidelines outlined by Allah. Thus a community, the incarcerated and ailing imam took pains to emphasize, depended on commitment to the path set by the Creator.

Jamil lived by his words, and set by personal example a thriving community of black Muslims grew in west Atlanta; Masood Abdul-Haqq, who moved there in autumn 1992, saw “the West End Muslim scene [unfold] like some sort of Black Muslim Utopia. A soulful adhan was the soundtrack to Black children of all ages in kufis and khimars playing with each other on either side of the street. The intersecting streets near the masjid gave way to a large covered basketball court, on which the game in progress had come to a halt due to the number of players who chose to answer the melodic call to prayer.

Overlooking this scene from the bench in front of his convenience store, like a shepherd admiring his flock, was a denim overall and crocheted kufi-clad Imam Jamil. Before I heard him utter a single word, it was obvious to me that I was in the presence of a transcendent leader.”

Building a Model Community and a Revolutionary Ethic

Khalil Abdur-Rashid, who grew up in the same community, noted that Jamil “would retain his devotion to changing the prevailing system and worked to teach his community to cultivate an alternative way of living that is not indicative of token social justice programs. He taught the importance of the five pillars of Islam and revolutionary ‘technologies of the self’ that, when actualized at the communal level, transform the society into a better one.”

Remarkably in a period where neoliberal economics and a burgeoning drug epidemic had ravaged much of the urban United States, the imam took pains to combat such social evils, which he linked to spiritual and material impoverishment. Man was not, he would emphasize, an animal consigned to give in to its appetites, and to surrender to such social evils was both personal and communal harm.

Though privately regretting certain “unseemly” language in earlier work, Jamil never compromised on his belief in communal liberation and emphasized the role of spiritual and personal development in his later writings, tying together personal and political progress for the community in his Revolution by the Book.

He visited these themes again at the funeral of his longstanding comrade Kwame Ture, and influenced his elder brother and longstanding influence Ed to embrace Islam as well. Though he maintained a low profile, he played a major role in leading what was by all accounts a dynamic and profound society; Atlanta mayor John Johnson gave the imam with an honorary police badge as a token of appreciation for his social work.

Confinement in the age of “War on Terror”

Yet with the end of the Cold War and the replacement of communism as a major irritant with “radical Islam”, Jamil once more found himself in the crosshairs of state paranoia. As a well-known Muslim who had collided with the state a quarter-century earlier, he was sporadically questioned whenever an incident of “Muslim terrorism” came up during the 1990s. In spring 1999 he was pulled up for allegedly imprisoning a policeman, simply because he had kept the badge given him by the mayor.

The following spring, two policemen tried to bring him in, did not find him at home, and after leaving were shot, one fatally. The survivor accused Jamil, even though his description of the suspect was wildly different and another individual later confessed. In any case, the accusation was enough to bring Jamil into custody. Capitalizing in large part on the anti-Islamic paranoia that took hold after 2001, the prosecution managed to convict him in spring 2002 and he was put in a high-security prison.

We need not recount at length the story of Jamil’s trial beyond the curiosity that key pieces of evidence were pointedly ignored, as was the confession of another man, and that the authorities, eventually as high as the Supreme Court, refused appeals and even clemency in light of the elderly prisoner’s failing health. The case bore similarities with his imprisonment in the late 1960s: contrived charges that ran rougshod over contrary evidence, coupled with paranoia relating to the alleged threat of the day: communism in the 1960s, “radical Islam” now.

A Passing That Echoes Through History

It is small wonder that supporters considered Jamil a political prisoner deliberately left to perish in a high-security confinement absurd for a sick, dying old man. Changa, who had been introduced to both Islam and revolutionary activism by the imam, was unequivocal: “This was a cold, calculated, STATE-SPONSORED EXECUTION designed in the high offices of the colonial apparatus!” He referred to it as “the assassination of an aging prisoner, carried out not with a noose, but with a waiting list and a bureaucratic denial slip!”, and “the refinement of the colonial terror—using the prison hospital as the final torture chamber for those deemed too dangerous to live in freedom, and too old to survive neglect!”

But he ended on a calmer note: “Imam Jamil al-Amin was a prisoner of conscience until his very last breath. Now, by the mercy of Allah, he is truly free of their chains…Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un. To Allah we belong, and to Him we shall return.”

Editors note: MuslimMatters offers our condolences to the Amin family and those who loved Imam Jamil Al-Amin, to his followers in the Dar movement. We learn from his life and commitment to Al Haq. We encourage people to attend his Janazah bi Gha’ib that is being held in several locations.

Related:

Book Review of Revolution by the Book by Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (Formerly known As H Rap Brown)

What Does the Civil Rights Movement Mean For Muslims?

The post A Remarkable Life Unbowed: Jamil “Rap Brown” Amin appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

For the besieged Palestinians and much of the world, the ceasefire was a small sigh of momentary relief, a temporary respite from the daily destruction. And yet, the difficulties have not ceased; by all accounts, they are still continuing as we ask how the Palestinian people can even begin to rebuild all that they have lost. 

Here at home, a sense of helplessness sometimes haunts us as we watch such unspeakable suffering. But we are not helpless, and there are simple but powerful things we can do right here in our communities to show our support.

On November 29th, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People will be globally observed. This day, established in 1977 by the United Nations General Assembly, commemorates the adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan (UN Resolution 181) on November 29, 1947, to advocate for the establishment of a two-state solution and for the Palestinians’ right to return to their homes. We can show our solidarity and support for our brothers and sisters on this day and even during the entire month of November. Here are some suggestions of what we can do:

1. Fly a Palestinian flag at every home and/or organization to show support for Gaza and Palestine. Another option is to wear a Palestinian flag pin on your lapel, jacket, hijab, bag, etc. 
2. Organizations and allies of the Palestinian people can screen documentaries/films on the oppression and systematic genocide that occurred, and in some cases, is still occurring in Gaza and in Palestine (a suggested list is included). Have multiple showings if possible.
3. Host talks and discussions on the situation in Gaza.
4. Wear Palestinian pins, bracelets, colors, and or the kaffiyeh during the month of November in support and remembrance of the Palestinian people and their fight for survival.
5. Take consistent and regular action, letting your elected officials know that you expect them to uphold justice for the Palestinian people (through phone calls, letters, emails, visits, etc.).
6. On Nov 29th, encourage fasting and extra prayers in solidarity with the Palestinian people (prayer is one of the most powerful things we can do).
7. Continue activism (in any form that works for you [eg, fasting, prayers, contacting elected officials, supporting the BDS movement, hosting talks, wearing Palestinian colors/kaffiyeh, etc.]) to protest the ongoing occupation and brutal genocide. Continue until the Palestinian people are free.

The following list of films, documentaries, and videos all showcase powerful stories of the Palestinian people. Their voices carry through loud and clear, asking us to hear what they are trying to share. Many of these films have won multiple awards and accolades:

1. • Gaza: Journalists Under Fire (www.bravenewfilms.org)
   • The Voice of Hind Rajab (official trailer on YouTube)*
   • Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (official trailer on YouTube. In theaters Nov 5)
   • Starving Gaza (Al Jazeera)
   • This is Gaza: Witnessing the Israel-Hamas war (YouTube, Channel4.com)
   • It’s Bisan from Gaza, and I’m still Alive (YouTube)
   • The Night Won’t End: Biden’s War on Gaza (Al Jazeera, YouTube)
   • Israel’s Reel Extremism (www.Zeteo.com, YouTube)
   • In Reel Life: Hidden War
   • 3000 Nights (Netflix)
   • Resistance, Why? (YouTube, Vimeo.com)
   • Ma’loul Celebrates its Destruction (Justwatch.com)
   • 5 Broken Cameras (Apple TV) 
   • The Wanted 18 (Amazon Prime, Justwatch.com)
   • Aida Returns
   • Farha (Netflix)
   • Ghost Hunting
   • Naila and the Uprising
   • Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege
   • Eleven Days in May (Al Jazeera)
   • Al-Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe (YouTube, Al Jazeera) 
   • The War in June 1967 (Al Jazeera, YouTube)
   • The War in October: What Happened in 1973? (YouTube, Al Jazeera)
   • The Price of Oslo (Al Jazeera, YouTube)
   • Jerusalem: Dividing Al-Aqsa (Al Jazeera, YouTube)
   • Palestine 1920: The Other Side of the Palestinian Story (Al Jazeera)
   • Gaza, Sinai, and the Wall (Al Jazeera, YouTube)
   • Israel’s Automated Occupation: Hebron (Al Jazeera, YouTube
   • Weaponising Water in Palestine (Al Jazeera, YouTube)
   • Rebel Architecture: The Architecture of Violence (Al Jazeera)
   • No Other Land (2025 Academy Award Winner! On Amazon, Apple TV, etc.)

This is only a partial list. There are many other films also documenting the plight of the Palestinian people. Please support these brave filmmakers as they share their stories. Together, we can show our solidarity with Palestine. This genocide is one that the whole world is watching in real time, and it is incumbent upon all of us to uphold justice in the face of such atrocities. There is much truth in the old adage “Together we stand, divided we fall”. Let us stand firm and united for Palestine. 

[*The film received a record-breaking 24-minute standing ovation after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize. Release date TBA. No USA distributor as of the date of this printing.]

Related:

– Watch, Learn, And Speak Out: Films And Documentaries About Palestine Made Available Online For Free

– From Algeria to Palestine: Commemorating Eighty Years Of Resistance And International Solidarity

The post November 29 Is The International Day Of Solidarity With The Palestinian People – What Will You Do? appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE for short, sent a chill through much of the Muslim populace and many other citizens with its brazen imprisonment of a visitor with a visa for no other reason than that his pro-Palestine advocacy had riled up far-right pro-Israel media personalities, who both incited and celebrated the move even as it sent a wave of revulsion through much of the world.

An analyst of Tunisian and Algerian descent educated in Britain, Hamdi came into particular prominence as a pro-Palestine commentator after Israel’s genocide of Gaza began two years ago, where his advocacy, analysis, and encouragement of both Muslim and non-Muslim activism against the genocide earned a wide audience. He is a respected, longstanding commentator on international affairs, risk, and intelligence, and has spent the last decade analyzing and advising on political affairs in countries including Britain, the United States, Syria, Turkiye, Pakistan, Tunisia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and others. His frequent appearances on The Thinking Muslim podcast hosted by political scientist Muhammad Jalal have been particularly influential, with millions of viewers, and he has been invited to speak at both Muslim and other events in multiple countries, including the United States. Abducted at San Francisco Airport, it took two days before Hamdi could see a legal team; among the lawyers who have spoken in his favour are the well-regarded Hussam Ayloush and Mariam Uddin.

The ICE agency, led by Kristi Noem in the cabinet and Tom Homan, has been notorious in its overreach throughout 2025. Purportedly fulfilling a vow by Donald Trump to deport illegal residents in the United States, it has frequently overstepped its authority and been accused on numerous occasions of lawless targeting, racial profiling, and abuse, inevitably aimed at minorities. The ruling clique has made a virtue of deportations with the promise that these will retrieve stagnant wages and “put America first.” This is part of a general surge of ultranationalist posturing with very real consequences.

Among the major posturers are Laura Loomer and Amy Mekelburg, whose ultranationalist messaging in this trend of putting “America first” has an additional irony in its consistent slant toward Israel and its interests. Though both are Jewish-Americans who claim to be standing up for Jewish rights, they have also repeatedly attacked Jewish organizations that fail to share their political stance. In addition to copious amounts of racial vitriol, both have squarely targeted Islam and repeatedly directed calumny and slander at the faith, its prophets, and precepts.

Loomer and Mekelburg are part of a wider intersection between the international right-wing and Israel, particularly the Likud party, whose leader, Benjamin Netanyahu-Mileikowsky, has pushed similar anti-Muslim rhetoric for over forty years and now presides over the genocide on Gaza. Such “influencers” proliferated both with the “war on terrorism” and the subsequent financial crash, both of which incentivized far-right invective with a disproportionate focus on Muslims: Stephen “Tommy Robinson” Yaxley-Lennon and Douglas Murray in Britain are similar provocateurs whose far-right messaging explicitly attacks Islam and glorifies Tel Aviv, whose genocide is portrayed as a civilizational war against Islam.

In the aftermath of Hamdi’s abduction, Mekelburg took to social media to crow, “WE DID IT, LAURA! ONE DOWN….SO MANY MORE TO GO!” [sic]

Far-right provocateurs such as Loomer have long attacked any form of public Muslim activity as linked to the “Muslim Brotherhood”, against whom she also incited in her celebration of Hamdi’s abduction. Among the many targets of this alleged “Muslim Brotherhood” ring is the Council for American-Islamic Relations, whose representative Ayloush noted that Hamdi’s case is linked to pro-Israel incitement against Muslims, that the imprisonment violated the American principles of free speech, and that “this is not the time to be intimidated.”

Hamdi’s ordeal serves to highlight a key point that he himself has long made about the significance of pro-Palestine activism and the drastic, draconian steps that the Zionist lobby has urged to undermine them.

Related:

– Sami Hamdi: “Muslims Must Abandon Harris” | Transcript and Summary

– Why Mehdi Hasan’s “Lesser Of Two Evils” Election Advice Is Wrong

The post Prominent Journalist And Analyst Sami Hamdi Abducted By American State appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

In addition to the pioneering history of Muslims in Canada, we must consider more recent history as well: the realities of Muslims in a post-9/11 world, contending with the surveillance state, illegal detention and torture, and ongoing harassment of Muslims in Canada. Figures such as Maher Arar and Omar Khader must have their stories remembered, and lessons learned from, on just how fraught our existence as Muslims in Canada truly is. The work of people like Monia Mazigh must never be forgotten, as it is the work that so many of us will need to draw from in our own confrontations with state-led Islamophobia.

 – Journey of the Midnight Sun by Shazia Afzal

In 2010, a Winnipeg-based charity raised funds to build and ship a mosque to Inuvik, one of the most northern towns in Canada’s Arctic. A small but growing Muslim community there had been using a cramped trailer for their services, but there just wasn’t enough space. The mosque travelled over 4,000 kilometers on a journey fraught with poor weather, incomplete bridges, narrow roads, low traffic wires, and a deadline to get on the last barge heading up the Mackenzie River before the first winter freeze.

This stunning picture book makes the perfect Islamic History Month storytime choice!

– Minarets on the Horizon by Murray Hogben

This book gives us a detailed look at the Muslim presence in Canada, starting with the pioneer settlers from Syria/Lebanon and the Balkans in the early twentieth century and moving on to the more modern midcentury arrivals from South Asia and Africa. Told in their own words, the stories in this collection give us a rare insight into the lives of these pioneer Muslims.

Punjabi men in the timber mills of British Columbia; Lebanese Arab peddlers on foot or horse cart on the rural highways of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba; men venturing north on dog sleighs to trade for fur; young women arriving to start families and soon to become family matriarchs; shopkeepers serving small provincial towns and big cities; and finally, students and professionals arriving in the postwar urban centres.

Wherever they went, they bore the brunt of xenophobia and acknowledged kindnesses, as they adapted and sought out fellow worshippers and set up community centres and mosques.

– Al-Rashid Mosque: Building Canadian Muslim Communities by Earle H. Waugh

Al Rashid Mosque, Canada’s first and one of the earliest in North America, was erected in Edmonton in the depths of the Depression of the 1930s. Over time, the story of this first mosque, which served as a magnet for more Lebanese Muslim immigrants to Edmonton, was woven into the folklore of the local community.

Edmonton’s Al Rashid Mosque has played a key role in Islam’s Canadian development. Founded by Muslims from Lebanon, it has grown into a vibrant community fully integrated into Canada’s cultural mosaic. The mosque continues to be a concrete expression of social good, a symbol of a proud Muslim Canadian identity. Al Rashid Mosque provides a welcome introduction to the ethics and values of homegrown Muslims. The book traces the mosque’s role in education and community leadership and celebrates the numerous contributions of Muslim Canadians in Edmonton and across Canada.

– How Muslims Shaped the Americas by Omar Mouallem

In How Muslims Shaped the Americas, Mouallem explores the unknown history of Islam across the Americas, traveling to thirteen unique mosques in search of an answer to how this religion has survived and thrived so far from the place of its origin. From California to Quebec, and from Brazil to Canada’s icy north, he meets the members of fascinating communities, all of whom provide different perspectives on what it means to be Muslim. Along this journey, he comes to understand that Islam has played a fascinating role in how the Americas were shaped—from industrialization to the changing winds of politics.

Despite my distaste with the author himself, this book does an excellent job of exploring both Al-Rashid Masjid and the Midnight Sun Mosque (the very same one from the picture book!), as well as pausing to pay homage to the victims and survivors of the Quebec City Mosque Massacre in Grande Mosquee de Quebec.

– Hope & Despair: My Struggle to Free My Husband, Maher Arar by Monia Mazigh

This book traces the inspiring story of Monia Mazigh’s courageous fight to free her husband, Maher Arar, from a Syrian jail. From the moment Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was disappeared into the bowels of Bashar al-Assad’s dungeons, Monia Mazigh worked tirelessly against the Canadian government, security intelligence agencies, and media to bring her husband home and get him justice.

She began a tireless campaign to bring public attention and government action to her husband’s plight, eventually resulting in his release and return to Canada. Arar and Mazigh’s story is a chilling reminder to all Canadian Muslims of the realities of living under systemic Islamophobia, and is an important lesson to us all on resisting and holding our government accountable.

– Systemic Islamophobia in Canada: A Research Agenda

Systemic Islamophobia in Canada presents critical perspectives on systemic Islamophobia in Canadian politics, law, and society, and maps areas for future research and inquiry. The authors consist of both scholars and professionals who encounter in the ordinary course of their work the – sometimes banal, sometimes surprising – operation of systemic Islamophobia. Centring the lived realities of Muslims primarily in Canada, but internationally as well, the contributors identify the limits of democratic accountability in the operation of our shared institutions of government

– Under Siege: Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation by Jazmine Zine

Under Siege explores the lives of Canadian Muslim youth belonging to the 9/11 generation as they navigate these fraught times of global war and terror. While many studies address contemporary manifestations of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism, few have focused on the toll this takes on Muslim communities, especially among younger generations.

Covering topics such as citizenship, identity and belonging, securitization, radicalization, campus culture in an age of empire, and subaltern Muslim counterpublics and resistance, Under Siege provides a unique and comprehensive examination of the complex realities of Muslim youth in a post-9/11 world.

This Islamic History Month, Canadian Muslim communities should take the time to honour our pioneering members, teach our youth about the Islamic history of Canadian Muslims, and educate ourselves on how to navigate living in this country that remains riddled with systemic Islamophobia.

Related:

From the MuslimMatters Bookshelf: Black (Muslim) History Month Reads

Muslim Women’s History: A Book List

The post Islamic History Month Canada: A Bookish Roundup appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

The dossier opens with a bold statement: The New York Times has served as a “mouthpiece for American imperialism,” helping to manufacture elite consensus around foreign policy that supports Israel’s military operations in Gaza. It identifies a pattern of biased reporting, selective framing, and omission of key facts that have contributed to the justification of war crimes.

The dossier meticulously documents the backgrounds of several prominent NYT figures, revealing deep personal and professional ties to Zionist organizations and Israeli institutions:

• Meredith Kopit Levien, CEO of The New York Times Company, has served on the advisory council of B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (BBYO), which promotes unwavering loyalty to Israel.
• Joe Kahn, Executive Editor, is linked to CAMERA, a Zionist media watchdog. He oversaw the controversial article “Screams Without Words,” which falsely accused Hamas of mass rape.
• Thomas Friedman, long-time foreign affairs columnist, has personal ties to Israel dating back to his youth and lived in a home seized from Palestinians during the Nakba.
• Isabel Kershner, Jerusalem correspondent, is married to a former Israeli military strategist Hirsh Goodman, and has two sons who served in the Israeli military. Goodman previously worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a Zionist think tank founded in 1985 and run by former AIPAC executives.
• Patrick Kingsley, Jerusalem bureau chief since 2021, has been criticized for embedding with Israeli forces and altering coverage under pressure from pro-Israel groups that led to the targeted killings of Palestinian poets, scholars, and teachers like Refaat Alareer by the Israelis.
• Ronen Bergman, contributor to the NYT Magazine, is a former Israeli intelligence officer and frequent speaker at AIPAC events.
• Natan Odenheimer, Jerusalem correspondent, served in Israel’s elite Maglan commando unit for four years. 
• Adam Rasgon who joined the NYT in 2024, previously worked at Zionist think tank Shalem Center, founded by one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s close advisors and funded by Trump mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, and later at WINEP to ‘disseminate the AIPAC line but in a way that would disguise its connections’. He cited them at least 17 times in his reporting without disclosure. 
• Jodi Rudoren, editorial director of newsletters, lived in a home taken from the prominent Palestinian-born academic, physician, and author Ghada Karmi’s family during the Nakba and bought by Thomas Friedman for the Times in the 1980s. She has longstanding ties to Zionist organizations.
• David Leonhardt, opinion editor, has justified Israeli military actions and echoed official narratives about attacks on hospitals after October 2023 by insisting that ‘there may be no way for Israel both to minimize civilian casualties and to eliminate Hamas,’ and that ‘Hamas is responsible for many of the civilian deaths’ in Gaza. “In November 2023, Leonhardt disseminated Israel’s narrative during the IOF’s first invasion of Al-Shifa Hospital, where hundreds of displaced civilians had been sheltering, framing the assault on one of Gaza’s most important hospitals as unfortunate but necessary.”
• Bret Stephens, opinion columnist since 2017, works for a Zionist advocacy group, the dark-money Maimonides Fund, where he works as the editor-in-chief of its journal, Sapir, in a blatant violation of the Times’ ethical guidelines. He has appeared at events across the country with the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential Zionist lobby organization in the United States.
• David Brooks, columnist since 2003, defended Israel during its 2014 assault on Gaza, one of Israel’s bloodiest assaults on Gaza, while his son served in the Israeli military. In one 2014 NPR interview, he claimed that exposing civilian casualties of Israel’s attacks was a ploy for sympathy by the Palestinian people, arguing that ‘Hamas has basically decided they want to see their own people killed as a propaganda coup.’ 
• Myra Noveck, long-time Jerusalem bureau staffer since 1999, has children in the Israeli military and is married to a Zionist writer Gershom Gorenberg.
• David Halbfinger, political editor, was described as the NYT’s “most Israel-friendly” reporter and attends a synagogue that fundraises for Israel.

The dossier argues that the NYT has played a central role in laundering misinformation that has justified Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. It highlights four major propaganda narratives:

1. The Hannibal Directive Cover-Up

Despite widespread reporting in Israeli media, the NYT has failed to mention that Israel issued the Hannibal Directive on October 7th, the Israeli military doctrine that calls to kill other Israelis to prevent them from being taken hostage. On October 7, 2023, this directive contributed to the deaths of many Israelis. Yet, the NYT continues to blame Hamas exclusively for the casualties, omitting this critical context.

2. The Mass Rape Hoax

The NYT published the now-discredited article “Screams Without Words,” alleging that Hamas weaponized sexual violence. The claims were refuted by forensic experts, family members of alleged victims, and the UN Human Rights Council, which found no credible evidence of rape. The article cited “sisters Y. and N. Sharabi, ages 13 and 16” as supposed victims of mass rape. However, a spokesperson for the Kibbutz Be’eri, where they were killed, came out and said, “No, they just — they were shot. I’m saying ‘just,’ but they were shot and were not subjected to sexual abuse.” Furthermore, the piece listed Gal Abdush as one of the main victims of Hamas rape, but multiple members of her family came out publicly to say she was not raped on October 7, 2023.

Haartez reported that “At Shura Base, to which most of the bodies (from October 7th) were taken for purposes of identification, there were five forensic pathologists at work. In that capacity, they also examined bodies that arrived completely or partially naked in order to examine the possibility of rape. According to a source knowledgeable about the details, there were no signs on any of those bodies attesting to sexual relations having taken place or of mutilation of genitalia.”

Ironically, these false claims were used to justify actual sexual violence committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian detainees, including minors.

3. The Al Shifa Hospital Lie

The NYT echoed Israeli claims that Al Shifa Hospital was a Hamas command center. Investigations by Channel 4 and the UN found no supporting evidence. Instead, the hospital was subjected to airstrikes, raids, and mass detentions, rendering it non-functional. Palestinian doctors reported torture and abuse at Israeli detention centers, with Israeli medical personnel allegedly participating in or condoning the violence.

4. The Hamas Stealing Aid Lie

The NYT reported that Hamas stole UN aid, citing Israeli and U.S.-backed sources. However, a U.S. government analysis and later NYT admissions found no evidence of systematic theft. This narrative was used to justify the establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) “aid centers” that became sites of massacres, where over 1,000 Palestinians were killed while seeking food. 

An IDF soldier stationed at one of these GHF aid centers told Haaretz, “It’s a killing field. Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces, I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons”. 

Whistleblower Testimonies: A Glimpse into the Horror

Two American whistleblowers—one a career Army veteran and the other a former Green Beret—provided harrowing accounts of the brutality at aid distribution centers. They described the use of live fire, mortar rounds, and tank shells against unarmed civilians. One recounted a woman collapsing after being hit by a stun grenade; another witnessed a man pepper-sprayed while collecting noodles. Their testimonies confirm that these operations were not humanitarian but killing fields.

One of them, Green Beret Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Aguilar, who was hired to guard one of the GHF aid sites, said to BBC News: “I witnessed the Israeli defense forces shooting at the crowds of Palestinians. I witnessed the Israeli defense forces firing a main gun tank round from the Merkava tank into a crowd of people, destroying a car of civilians who were simply driving away from the site… In my entire career, have I never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population.” He said, “Without question, I witnessed war crimes, I witnessed war crimes by the Israeli defense forces, without a doubt, using artillery rounds, mortar rounds, firing tank rounds into unarmed civilians, it’s a war crime.”

The Consequences of Complicity

The dossier concludes that The New York Times has not merely failed in its journalistic duty—it has actively contributed to the justification of war crimes. By laundering false narratives, suppressing dissenting voices, and maintaining editorial ties to Zionist institutions, the NYT has helped normalize genocide, mass rape, hospital bombings, and starvation in Gaza.

This exposé demands a reckoning—not just with the NYT, but with the broader media ecosystem that whitewashes and enables genocidal violence. Consider the case of Bari Weiss, who founded The Free Press. Weiss once described the killing of 50 Palestinians, including children, as an “unavoidable burden” of Zionism’s self-determination—a statement that would be unthinkable if made about Jewish victims. Yet, such rhetoric has not hindered her professional ascent. Instead, it has seemingly been rewarded.

The Free Press has repeatedly spread misinformation to defend Israel’s actions in Gaza. It misrepresented UN data to downplay civilian deaths, denied the existence of famine despite mounting evidence, and falsely blamed Hamas for aid-seeker massacres later confirmed to be carried out by Israeli forces. The outlet also praised the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has since been implicated in widespread violence against starving civilians.

Beyond misinformation, The Free Press engages in more insidious propaganda. It has shifted its stance on attacks against Gaza’s hospitals—from denial to justification—despite overwhelming evidence and admissions from the IDF. The outlet rarely acknowledges Palestinian suffering or the mounting death toll, instead lamenting the reputational damage to Israel.

Weiss herself has a history of promoting Islamophobic views. She rose to prominence by targeting Muslim professors at Columbia University and has repeatedly blamed Muslims for rising antisemitism in Europe. She has also promoted Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who espouses extreme views about Islam and Muslim immigrants. Weiss’s support for Ali’s rhetoric—calling Islam a “cult of death” and advocating for the closure of Muslim schools—would be unacceptable if directed at Judaism, yet it has not hindered her career.

Weiss and her outlet are reportedly in talks to sell The Free Press to CBS News for $200–$250 million, a move that could give her influence over the network’s editorial direction. The elevation of Bari Weiss and The Free Press—despite their record of misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric—alongside the longstanding pro-Israel bias of institutions like The New York Times, signals a deeper crisis in journalism. As media power becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of ideologically aligned corporations, the boundaries between truth and propaganda blur. In this climate, narratives that justify war and suppress accountability are not just tolerated—they’re rewarded. 

The public must remain critically vigilant, because when media giants dictate the terms of truth, the cost is not merely misinformation—it is complicity in injustice, and the silencing of those who suffer most.

***

[This article was first published here.]

Related:

– Patrick Kingsley Of The New York Times: Genocide Whitewasher-In-Chief

– Media Coverage Of Ukraine VS. Other Conflicts

The post When News Becomes Propaganda: Gaza, Genocide, And The Media appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

This has not been as easy as it might seem, largely because the world is built on a diet of measuring ‘success’ – thus a successful child is one who attains high marks, receives accolades, has multiple degrees, until they are then successful in a high-paying profession. We’ve tried to make little adjustments to try and redress this; for instance, we might celebrate an end to their exams, as opposed to celebrating at the point of their results being released. To even purchase them gifts based on their effort, not based on their results.

Ultimately, we have been trying to encourage our children to experience the world as one that is connected to ihsan and taqwa – to not measure themselves by what the world informs them of what makes a human valuable.

Over the last two years, I’ve had the examples of others informing me of what a life filled with dignity looks like. The son of a friend took part in the Cambridge University encampment to protest the ongoing genocide in Palestine. The son was calling me seeking advice about what the encampment should and should not be doing. After a while, I called my friend to ask him about his son’s degree being at risk, and how he was engaging this action. My friend explained that he initially balked at the idea that his son might not be able to complete his education, but then reminded himself that a fulfilled life cannot be reduced to a degree from Cambridge, but has to be in the stances we take at times when courage is needed – no time more pressing than the midst of a genocide. I was impressed by my friend’s position – it seemed validating to know that other parents were willing to support their children take stances that might materially impact their futures.

More recently, I came to support the protests taking place at the SOAS Liberated Zone, where students have been attempting to force SOAS to divest from Israel academically and financially. In the process of making their demands, there has been a process of repressing pro-Palestinian voices among the student body by the SOAS student union and the administration of the Vice Chancellor, Adam Habib, known for calling the police on his own students during his previous role as the chancellor of a university in South Africa.

Among those who took part in the protests at SOAS is Haya Adam, a second-year Law and International Relations student who was suspended pending an investigation by the university. Although excluded from university premises, Haya continued to protest against the university and her personal treatment, highlighting the layers of complicity. Always at these protests, you will meet the wheelchair-bound Aunty Azza, the mother of Haya, staunchly standing by her daughter’s stance, regardless of the outcome. When you look at Aunty Azza, you don’t see a fear of her daughter’s future; you see a complete certainty in Allah’s Promise that a life lived in dignity and in defence of the oppressed, is far more valuable than anything else. Haya herself maintained that while she would always fight her suspension, she would never apologise for her advocacy of the Palestinian people.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak at a protest in support of Haya. As I listened to the other speeches and heard from Haya herself, I realised that there was very little I could actually do for her, other than express my solidarity. The protest was taking place just outside of the gates of SOAS, and I looked at the buildings that I would once frequent for my own Master’s in Law, having graduated twenty-one years ago. Seeing Haya, a small but very powerful young Muslim woman, I wanted to express my heartfelt solidarity, and so, when I took to the platform, I expressed that I would burn my SOAS Master’s certificate should she be expelled from the university – as an act of solidarity for her. My words were met with a great deal of applause, with Aunty Azza specifically taking me aside to thank me for my proposed gesture.

Two weeks later, I heard the news that Haya was indeed expelled after a sham investigation process. I thought back to my own public commitment to her that I would burn my certificate– and so I did, recording it to highlight my anger at the SOAS administration. This didn’t seem enough, though. It didn’t seem much of a sacrifice to just burn a piece of paper that I could easily re-order if I needed one again. I felt that there was no real sacrifice at the end of such a symbolic act. The following morning, I wrote to the SOAS administration to inquire into the process of having my degree unrolled from the university, as there is no formal process in doing so.

Since then, while the vast majority of people have expressed their support for my actions, there have also been some who questioned the efficacy of such an act. For them, burning or rescinding an accolade that I worked hard to attain (and I really did nerd out during my Master’s) was an unfathomable act. Why waste the time, effort, and money?

The first real answer is: because I told Haya I would do so. I hope that as long as I am alive, Allah will make me a man of my word, and because I had promised this, I decided that I would actually follow through. But, in the process of going further and seeking to rescind the degree, I came upon a different motivation for myself; one that desired to divest from these institutions and the stranglehold they have over what we consider to be a dignified and honoured life. That the Master’s degree means nothing to me in the midst of a genocide – that there is nothing that the accolade was able to give me that I could not have learnt from a book.

People spoke of it in terms of sacrifice, but to me, this small act of solidarity with our young sister was minimal at best. I did not go out and encourage others to do the same, and of course, they are welcome to. But this was not so much about how much change this would bring, as much as it was about divesting myself from a love of what we are taught ‘empirically’ makes us valuable. Haya, Aunty Azza, and our friends standing with them sent me their du’as, as did Palestinians – and so, all that is left is a hope that Allah accepts it – what is more valuable now? The du’as of the oppressed, or the certificate from a colonial institution invested in a racially segregated apartheid state? I haven’t come to think of it as a sacrifice, as much as it now feels liberatory.

Right now, there are hundreds of predominantly non-Muslims who have expressed their public support for the banned direct action group Palestine Action in the UK, forcing the police to arrest them. Just over a week ago, my friend, colleague, and former Guantanamo Bay detainee, Moazzam Begg, chose to be arrested alongside this group – all for the sake of sacrificing and taking risks to defend Palestine. Such actions are breaking the asphyxiation imposed on us by the global War on Terror – that arrest, charge, and conviction can no longer be seen as something to be ashamed of, but rather something that we celebrate as more and more people take risks for Palestine.

The world is changing, and with that, we must change our relationship to it. Can we encourage ourselves to sacrifice in different ways? Can we see our children expelled from their university campuses? Can we see ourselves being arrested for the sake of standing up for a cause? Can we see ourselves divesting from the very institutions that create harm in the world? If we can, then inshallah we will win – even if that means material loss in this life.

Related:

– Whistleblower Exposes Aid Organization’s Links With Israeli Military

– Foreign Affairs Official Resigns Over Gaza Genocide

The post On Burning Accolades And Sacrificing: Asim Qureshi Speaks Out About Decision To Burn His SOAS Degree appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.