Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar: Muslim-American Perspectives on U.S. Foreign Policy

FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach here at CFR.

As a reminder, this webinar is on the record, and the audio, video, and transcript will be available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, as well as on the Apple Podcasts channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

We’re delighted to have Salam Al-Marayati and Nazita Lajevardi here with us to discuss domestic and international policies that affect and matter to American Muslim communities, and diversity, trends, and priorities of the bloc.

Salam Al-Marayati is the president and cofounder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, or MPAC, and oversees MPAC’s civil engagement, public policy, and advocacy work. He’s an adjunct faculty member at Bayan Claremont, a board member of the Muslim Reform Institute, and advisor to several political, civic, and academic institutions seeking to understand the role of Islam and Muslims in America, and throughout the world.

Nazita Lajevardi is an associate professor of American political science at Michigan State University. She received her PhD from the University of California, San Diego, and her JD from the University of San Francisco School of Law. And she focuses her research on sociopolitical discrimination of Muslims in the United States. Her work has been published in the American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, and Politics and Religion. She has authored and coauthored three books on the intersection of politics and race, religion and policing in America, and her most recent book is entitled, Outsiders at Home: The Politics of American Islamophobia in 2020.

So welcome to you both. Thank you very much for taking the time to be with us. I thought we would first turn to you, Salam, to hear your perspective on the topic at hand, on Muslim-Americans and U.S. foreign policy. And so I will turn first to you.

AL-MARAYATI: Thank you. Thank you, Irina, for the invitation, and to the Council on Foreign Relations for hosting this very important discussion, especially as we approach the elections. And I think the elections really are highlighting some of the key issues for the American Muslim community, both domestically and overseas.

And what—you know, there have been several polls done among the American Muslim community. And one of the issues, obviously, that is at the top of the list is what’s happening in Gaza and Palestine. Number one, because this has religious and historical significance to Muslims worldwide. It’s not just a Palestinian Arab issue. It is a Muslim issue. And, as we see here in the United States, it’s become an issue for social justice, especially on U.S. campuses. And the vilification of students who are protesting the genocide in Gaza is also a very important policy issue that is affecting academic freedom, and civil liberties, and civil rights, and really the tradition of protest on U.S. campuses.

So Gaza has really encompassed an array of issues for not only Muslims, but for all people, and for American Muslims and all Americans. And one of the issues, I think, that’s important from a U.S. perspective is that there still is no political solution that is on the table from the United States. The United States—you know, people ask, why is Gaza more important than other areas where there is suffering? Definitely there’s suffering in Sudan. There’s suffering throughout the Middle East. There’s suffering in South Asia, other Muslim-majority areas, with the Uyghurs.

The reason why Gaza is a priority for American Muslims is because the United States is actually funding, and providing weapons, and providing political cover for, at the very least, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the region. And while Hamas is definitely a concern, and is on the terrorist list, and from a counterterrorism perspective it is very important to deal with groups like that, the actions by the United States and Israel has just exacerbated the situation, has caused more human suffering. And also, in terms of Israeli hostages, has not benefited them. And in terms of Palestinian hostages in Israeli jails, they remain without any end in sight. So this is a priority issue for American Muslims. And it’s actually become an electoral issue, as some of the polls have suggested, that—especially with the Democrats being able to win more votes in battleground states if they took a position. They’ve decided not to, for various political reasons that we can discuss later.

This leads to the second foreign policy issue, which is actually the broader foreign policy issue. And that is what the United States’ national security policy is. And it singles out Islam as the one religion with the problem of militancy. So if you look at the website of the Office for the Director of National Intelligence of foreign terrorist organizations, almost all of them are Muslim. There’s no transnational White supremacist group. There’s no group that commits acts of terrorism against Palestinians in, let’s say, the West Bank, the occupied territory, or the Palestinian territories in the West Bank. There is no Hindu supremacist group on that list. It is primarily looking at Muslim terrorism as the only major problem the United States has.

And some people can say, well, that’s because of the religion, which is a source of Islamophobia. A lot of it has to do with policy. Where the United States has had military incursions or war that has resulted in the rise of militancy, you’ve seen these groups pop up. And so now the United States has to deal with them. But the real problem, from an American Muslim standpoint, is that this is what affects our civil liberties. And so when the White House is calling for a national strategy to combat Islamophobia, well, this is a major source of it. This is why we have watch lists that comprise—most of the people on that list are Muslim.

This is why there is a cloud of suspicion on the American Muslim community. This is why I am stopped at airports, and many Muslims are stopped at airports, or detained, or maybe some of them have their bank accounts frozen. Or why there is surveillance in our communities because we’re under a foreign terrorist organizational policy regimen, as opposed to what’s called domestic terrorism policy regimen—which provides white supremacists with civil liberties and protections that prevent the United States government from doing things like surveillance or stopping them at airports or doing anything unless they commit a crime.

So there’s that double standard of foreign terrorist organizations from domestic terrorist organizations, and how Muslims are put under the foreign rubric, so to speak, and therefore people—therefore, Islamophobia originates from that, and then it spills over to the larger public that has suspicions towards American Muslims, and results in hate crimes. So that Islamophobia strategy has to deal with the systemic problems, as well as the social problems.

And so I’ll just leave it at that, as two major issues that obviously create a lot of other foreign policy and domestic issues. And mainly, you know, from the foreign policy perspective, the United States has to come up with a political solution on Palestine, which it has not. It says it supports a two-state solution, but votes against statehood whenever it’s in the United Nations. And it says it wants human rights and democracy, but there’s really no human rights and democracy that it is supporting anywhere in the Muslim world—whether we’re talking about Tunisia or we’re talking about what’s happening to the Muslims—or human rights for the Muslims in India, or in other places. So human rights and democracy, it still is a major challenge and an aspiration for all of us.

FASKIANOS: Thank you, Salam.

Let’s go to you, Nazita.

LAJEVARDI: OK. Well, good afternoon, everyone. I was asked to speak a little bit about diversity among U.S. Muslims, what identity means to them, as well as some of their domestic priorities currently. And so I just kind of want to start off by introducing American Muslims to folks who are attending this webinar. In 2017, the Pew Research Center estimated there’s about 3.45 million Muslims living in the United States. It’s important also to note that Muslims have been in the United States since the country’s founding, when about 30 percent of enslaved Africans who were forcibly brought here were of the Muslim faith.

There is immense diversity of all sorts among the U.S. Muslim population. So the majority of Muslims in America are of immigrant backgrounds, that is to say either themselves they are immigrants or they have at least one parent who was an immigrant, leaving only about a quarter of them being third generation or more. And this is important because when you consider when immigrants who are of Muslim background arrived in the United States, actually many of them arrived in the year 2000 or later. There’s also incredible amounts of racial diversity among the U.S. Muslim population. Because of our poorly constructed racial categories, about 41 percent identify as white, which includes the MENA category. About 20 percent are Black. Eight percent identify as Latino, 28 percent as Asian, and 3 percent as other.

I also want to highlight that the U.S. Muslim population is growing. So from over just a ten-year period of time, from 2007 to 2017, the Muslim population rose by over a million, from 2.3 million to 3.45 million. In terms of identity and religion, I think it’s really important to understand that the Muslim faith, that the Muslim identity, is very important to American Muslims. About two thirds of U.S. Muslims in the most recent Pew survey said that religion is very important to them. A majority of Muslims still pray either all five times of their prayers per day, or some of their daily prayers. And so really religion means something very, very important to Muslims, with the same survey finding that about 97 percent of respondents either completely or mostly agreed that they were very proud to be Muslim. And so it’s important to recognize that U.S. Muslims are very attached to their faith community and to their faith identity.

About 80 percent in that same survey also indicated that they felt a very strong sense of belonging to the Muslim community in the U.S. And the reason I’m prefacing this is to say that when something happens that affects Muslims worldwide and it affects Muslims in America, it has a very, very deep sting for Muslims, regardless of this diversity that exists and that is intrinsic to this population. It’s also important to note that Muslims are very dissatisfied with the country’s direction. And so, you know, almost two-thirds of American Muslims in 2017 reported that they were dissatisfied with how the country was going. And that has sort of increased gradually, even since the Bush years. And over half of Muslims have consistently said for over a decade that it has become more difficult to be Muslim in the United States. So that is to say that there has been an enduring sense of Islamophobia, and harassment, and discrimination that has been affecting U.S. Muslims for a very long period of time.

And so before I conclude, I just kind of want to give a little bit of a snapshot, and also to echo Salam’s comments earlier, about U.S. Muslim public opinion. I want to first highlight findings from an ISPU poll that was conducted in three swing states, battleground states, of Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. It was fielded between June 20 and July 8, 2024. This is really critical poll. It showcased that the war in Gaza, the genocide in Gaza, is the most important Muslim priority, regardless of an individual’s partisanship, age, or ethnicity. It’s the—again, right, it’s the most important issue, regardless if you’re a Biden voter, a Trump voter, or a swing voter who has decided to withhold your support for Biden or for Trump. The majority of all Muslims across these three states say that the war in Gaza is one of their top three most important priorities on which they’re going to judge a candidate.

The Pew Research Center also did a study this past spring, in April. And they found that most U.S. Muslims say that their sympathies lie entirely or mostly with Palestinian people. Nearly two-thirds said that their sympathies lie entirely or mostly with the Palestinian people. And that’s a stark difference with the general public in the United States, where relatively few adults, or about 16 percent, indicated the same. It’s also important to note that U.S. Muslims very, very much want humanitarian aid to go to Palestine and to Palestinian people, and they want military aid to Israel to be halted. In fact, over two-thirds, 69 percent, of U.S. Muslims favored aid going to Palestine, but only 8 percent of Muslims favored aid going to—military aid going to Israel. In fact, 65 percent of Muslims opposed any military aid going to Israel.

And just before I conclude, I want to—I want to—I want to just sort of highlight that this issue is of grave electoral consequence domestically for American Muslims. Muslims would offer great electoral support to any candidate who would reduce military aid to Israel. And so the same ISPU poll that I just referenced found that over 75 percent of both—of Biden supporters, of Trump supporters, or swing voters would actually offer electoral support to a candidate who would reduce military aid to Israel. So this is an issue of grave, grave importance to them.

And finally, before wrapping up, I’ll just say that all of this has been incredibly impactful for U.S. Muslims at home. And so this genocide that is unfolding has had dire consequences for Muslims at home. Over 70 percent of U.S. Muslims have said that discrimination against them has risen since everything began last October. And that’s according to a Pew study. And in my own research, I found that U.S. Muslims, over 80 percent, have been afraid of increased negative news coverage towards them, increased hate crimes towards them, and that Democrats would ignore them electorally. As well as there’s fears that there would be more tensions between them and American Jews. So majorities really are worried about their standing in U.S. politics.

So I’ll leave my remarks there, and just say thank you.

FASKIANOS: Nazita, for that poll—the Pew poll that you’re referencing, when was that done, again? Because you were mentioning Biden.

LAJEVARDI: Yes, the Pew poll comes from April 2024.

FASKIANOS: April 2024.

LAJEVARDI: So there was—I referenced two Pew polls. The first one, I was painting the demographic portrait, comes from their 2017 study. But there is a more recent Pew study that was released in April ’24.

FASKIANOS: Right. OK, so that’s before the switch to Kamala Harris.

LAJEVARDI: Yes.

FASKIANOS: OK, great. Thank you both so much. We’re now going to turn to all of you for your questions.

(Gives queuing instructions.)

So we have a first raised hand. I will go first to Jordan Reimer, or Reimer. Jordan, if you can correct my pronunciation, please. (Laughs.)

Q: Hi. Good afternoon. Jordan Reimer from the Strong Cities Network. Salam, so nice to see you again.

Question is, you know, a lot of what you talked about sounds very familiar. And I feel like if we had this conversation ten years ago, we would have heard the same thing. And I’m just wondering, over the past twenty years how do you feel the perceptions of the American Muslim community has changed? Or are the feelings still the same just, you know, there’s a new war going on right now? Thank you.

AL-MARAYATI: Yes. Thank you, Jordan. Good to hear your voice again.

I think perceptions in general have gotten better. I think that our presence, our civic presence, where you find more American Muslim elected officials, you find more American Muslim—American Muslims on TV, even commercials you see an increase of Muslim figures in various commercials. So there’s definitely an effort for inclusion of American Muslims. However, the level of intensity of anti-Muslim animus has gotten worse.

So when there is anti-Muslim animus—you see, for example, the murder of a six-year-old child in Chicago, for example, because he was Muslim. And the culprit said, “I hate Muslims,” or something to that effect. It was—it was very, very violent, very grotesque. The shooting of three students in Vermont who were wearing keffiyehs is another example.

Trump’s travel ban, if you look at the amicus brief of the travel ban in the Supreme Court, those who wrote for their travel ban are some of the most notorious Islamophobes in our country that are financed to do nothing but to smear Muslims. And they framed the issue as a national security threat to the United States. Where Justice Sotomayor, in her dissent, said: They’re using stereotypes of Muslims just to promote their national security frame. So it comes down to national security policy that has intensified the anti-Muslim animus in our society, while more Americans know Muslims, they understand Muslims, Muslims are more engaged. But I feel that the danger actually has gotten worse.

And then—and I think to your other point, Jordan—I’m sorry, I forgot—yes, it’s a continuation of a lot of the post-9/11 policies and narratives that are resurfacing now, that Muslims are a threat, Muslims should be suspected—I mean, they are under suspicion, you know, let’s do more surveillance on them. So all of that is coming back. Let us investigate Muslims who are supporting Palestine. In fact, even after 9/11 most of the charities—Muslim charities that were shut down were actually doing work in Palestine. They had nothing to do with al-Qaida or 9/11. So that is resurfacing in terms of discourse in America. It hasn’t—it hasn’t reached the level of new legislation, but there is a lot of the old policies that are coming back from the post-9/11 era.

FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you.

I’m going to take the next question. Oh, great, Farah Pandith from the Council on Foreign Relations. Farah, are you able to just ask your question rather than having me read it? Oh, she cannot. OK. So I’m going to read it. (Laughs.) So Farah, her question is: Can you please go deeper on the generational differences vis-à-vis foreign policy? Salam, you talked about policy, but I want to understand more about the knowledge you think American Muslims have on larger U.S. foreign policy, and if the point being made is broader, that all U.S. foreign policy and domestic policies is biased against Muslim communities in America and Muslim majority countries. So, for example, are U.S. policymakers specifically making policy toward, say, Malaysia, because it is a Muslim-majority nation, or does U.S. foreign policy tilt a specific way and ignore Muslims who live as minorities there, for example, France, India, and so on?

AL-MARAYATI: I mean, let me—let me—let me answer the question in two parts—at least two parts. I’m not saying that all U.S. foreign policy is biased against Muslims. I mean, the United States defended Bosnia. So there definitely was no bias there. It was definitely the right thing to do, and it was something that resonated, obviously, throughout the Muslim world in what the United States did for Bosnia. And the same thing for the Uyghurs. I think the United States, at least rhetorically, is supporting the Uyghurs. What it’s doing in terms of policy, I don’t know.

I’m saying that the counterterrorism policy, the national security policy, is what is biased against Islam and Muslims. And that is something that we, in the foreign policy arena, both, you know, non—you call me a non-expert, I don’t know, community advocate, whatever you want to call me, as well as people in government who are running policy, we have not had a discussion about it yet. There’s no discourse on that issue in terms of how U.S. national security policy is skewed against Muslims, especially those in the Middle East—against the Palestinians, for example. And the war in Iraq, I mean, a million people—more than a million people died. Eight hundred thousand children under the age of five were killed in those wars, the two Gulf Wars.

So there’s definitely something there that shows a level of devastation and destruction that is beyond what the United States has done anywhere else in the world. And then that results in a lot of our civil liberties being violated, because we stand up against war. We stand up against these policies. So we are accused of being anti-American, or we’re accused of being antisemitic because we’re against what Netanyahu is doing against—in Gaza. So that results in anti-Muslim animus and bias towards Muslims in the United States as well.

And then in terms of expertise, I mean, I have to say, with all due respect, American Muslims know a lot more about the region than some people in Washington do. It’s not just that, hey, we’re the experts so just listen to what we have to say. We’ve listened to what you’ve had to say for—not you, Farah—but people in Washington, you know, for decades, and look where it has ended. More war, that results in more militancy, that creates more terrorism, and then we get blamed for it as Muslims.

So it’s time to include those who know the region in the discourse on the issue, with the experts in Washington, with community representatives, with people who know the region and really are dedicated aspirationally to restoring human rights in the region and promoting democracy. That’s what we’re calling for. We’re not saying that we know it all, but we believe that our exclusion from the discourse has resulted in these failures, and at the end it’s hurting America. It is not in the United States’ long-term interest, or short-term interest for that matter, to continue these status quo policies.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. And just to say, Farah Pandith, as Salam knows, but just for the group, was the first ever special representative to Muslim communities. She was appointed by Hillary Clinton in 2009. So she worked very, very much on these issues, and continues to do so. So I’m sure all of you are familiar with her work.

I’m going to go next to—let me just go up here—to Donald Frew, who has written a couple of questions. He’s an elder at the Covenant of the Goddess. So the first one is for you, Nazita: Do we know if Muslim Americans have a different perception of Kamala Harris than they do of Joe Biden? So have you seen—has Pew come out with another poll? I mean, there hasn’t really been much time, so.

LAJEVARDI: Yes, Irina, I don’t have any national data. But I can—I can tell you anecdotally that the conversation has shifted a little. It still looks like American Muslims are not going to give Harris the kind of support that she might need to actually be quite successful in swing states. I think the last percent I saw was about 40 percent support, that Jill Stein has done quite well among American Muslims in terms of somebody who is more aligned with their policy support. So I’m sure something is out there that I haven’t seen, but what I’ve seen most recently is that American Muslims are sort of divided now between Jill Stein and Kamala Harris.

I do want to sort of make a point of saying that I think American Muslims can distinguish Kamala Harris from Joe Biden. I think many people hold Joe Biden personally accountable for what is taking place and how the travesty in Gaza has manifested. But I think that they still feel quite ignored by Kamala Harris. The fact that a Muslim—that the Palestinian American representative, I think, from Georgia, was not able to present or speak at the Democratic National Convention as sort of a representative for uncommitted voters is something that was very painful for Arab American, Muslim American people in the United States.

Who really mobilized in a very quick fashion—I just kind of want to say, this is something that we should all be very encouraged by, that there are people who were able to use their votes to press upon Joe Biden and the administration, that this was something that could harm him electorally. That in Michigan, my home state, over 100,000 people voted uncommitted should not be ignored, because that primary election took place in February, and organizing happened just weeks before. So, you know, I think that that is all to say that, yes, they have a different perception of Kamala Harris than they do with Joe Biden, but it’s not necessarily one that they are encouraged by.

And many of them feel divided. And that’s not to say that they would support Trump, but I think the option of a third-party candidate or staying home is something that is still very real, and very electorally consequential for Democrats. So even if the humanitarian argument here is not resonating with them, hopefully an electoral one will wake them up.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

We’re going to go next to a raised hand from Azza Karam.

Q: Yes. Good afternoon. And many, many warm greetings and gratitude to Salam and Nazita for your excellent presentations. And thank you once again, Irina, for hosting another great one.

The question will seem a little bit strange, but it is a rather candid one. I believe that, along the lines of Farah’s question—and, Salam, I think you’ve done your best to speak to this with—also with Nazita’s lots of statistics. But the fact is that there is a tremendous amount of suspiciousness and, frankly, just outright hatred of Islam and Muslims, not only in America but globally. And I’m wondering, we keep talking about impact on foreign policy, impacting on different politicians, et cetera. But is there not something else at the root that we should perhaps be trying to tackle differently?

One of the things that strikes me was, for instance, that we know that antisemitism is also alive and well. And I’m thinking attempts to counter antisemitism over decades, some of them have been working. And I’m wondering if there’s lessons to be learned either from such attempts, or together with some of our brethren, if you will, from those communities, that might—there might be something we could do together to counter. Because we keep focusing on Islamophobia, which I completely concur is absolutely important. I say it exists hugely. But the question is, can—how can we impact on people’s feelings in a way that might have—where we might get some lessons learned from others? Could there be something tried that we haven’t tried before?

And I know, Salam, you have a huge legacy of working in this space. I just—I just want some ideas that are—that are not your average intellectual conversation about how we can impact on foreign policy, when we know that Muslims are hated, and Islam is hated. Thank you.

AL-MARAYATI: Nazita, you want to go first?

LAJEVARDI: Sure. I mean, I think that’s a really profound question. It’s a very hard one to answer, of course. I want to kind of touch on two things, because from the research perspective I think maybe it can help to inform some things. So discrimination is very consequential for American Muslims. Research is showing that it keeps them away from the polls, especially when it comes from other members of the public. It disengages them. My own research has found that when Trump would make hateful speech throughout the 2016 campaign, American Muslims would actually reduce their visibility online. And they never really recouped that visibility again. So it’s decreasing speech. It’s decreasing comfort with being in public spaces.

And the second thing I wanted to raise is that, in terms of your question about antisemitism, absolutely, antisemitism has risen. But something that I’ve tried to urge upon policymakers and my colleagues in academia alike is antisemitism and Islamophobia are related. Actually, my own research has found that in 2017, online hate speech towards Muslims and towards Jews were actually coming from the same far-right actors. And offline hate against Muslims and offline hate against Jews followed exactly the same patterns of online hate. So if the same actors are sort of being able to replace anti—Islamophobia with antisemitism, and it’s manifesting and coming from a very similar place, I think we can try to show that there are coalitions here, right? There are people who are experiencing very similar things. From different faith groups, yes, but, alas, it’s coming from very similar actors, and the experience is still hit home in a very similar way. And I think that’s perhaps one fruitful avenue forward.

But, yeah, Salam, do you have any other thoughts you’d like to share?

AL-MARAYATI: Yeah, no, number one, the origin of antisemitism and Islamophobia is it is the same. The programs in Europe, the anti-Muslim sentiment that created the Crusades and the attack not just on Muslims, but on Orthodox Christians and Jews. The Inquisition, that targeted both Muslims and Jews in the Iberian Peninsula. And, by the way, the Jews who fled Spain at that time, many of them were taken up by the Ottomans. And so 400,000 Jews, in one report, were refugees, fled to the Ottoman Empire, and lived there as Ottoman Jews. And they maintain their identity as Ottoman Jews, many of them to this day continue that legacy. So there’s a—there’s a history that we’re unaware of in terms of the similarity on what Muslims and Jews have had to suffer and, you know, in terms of antisemitism and anti-Muslim animus emanating mainly from Europe.

That, unfortunately, has transferred to the United States in some ways, especially those that maintain a Eurocentric lens in terms of history, in terms of the future, and what they want to see. They see—they continue to see Jews and Muslims as threats to Western civilization. And I agree with Dr. Azza that we should do more creatively to work as Muslims, and Jews, and Christians, and atheists, and people of all backgrounds—Hindus and Buddhists—to combat this hate, and to show that religious pluralism is the answer to religious nationalism. Because that’s where it comes from.

And religious nationalism is not religious. It’s exploiting religion for political power. I mean, when you talk about Islamist groups, for example, in much of the Middle East and South Asia, these are religious nationalist groups that are not really concerned about Islamic ethics. They’re concerned about getting power by using Islam in that way. And the same thing for a number of these religious national groups here in the United States, for example, as well as Europe in some cases. And so that’s one thing we have to combat.

And the other thing that I think we have to remember is that the majority of the people are not advocates of this hatred. The majority of Americans are not. The majority of Americans want to see religious pluralism. I don’t know if you want to call it a vocal minority, but it’s definitely a group that is funded, is organized, is out to target Muslims and Jews in the United States. And it comes from a Christian nationalist background. Some of them are Christian Zionists who, you know, number more than a number of Jewish Zionists, for example, in America. But they believe that, you know, we should get rid of all Palestinians, wipe out all Palestinians, for the second coming of Jesus.

So there’s something that is ideological. That is, I want to—I don’t want to give it the term philosophical, but you know what I mean? It’s something that you can’t just look at in a concrete way and say, this is what we need to do about it. It needs to be dissolved with truth. It needs to be dissolved with compassion. It needs to be dissolved with love. And so many other things that we need to engage more. The basic problem I see for American Muslims is that we still live in an insular environment. We’re still sequestered in our communities, and complaining about, you know, things all the time to each other.

We’re not spending enough time engaging the larger society. You know, we want halal meat. Great. We want our mosques, wonderful. You know, I was—I was commissioned to study Guantanamo back in 2007. And all they did was show me how they gave halal food and prayer mats to the prisoners. And they came and asked me, you know, how are we doing? You know, because they want to show me how they take care of the prisoners. I said, well, the medical metaphor is the operation was a success, but the patient has died. And I think in many ways we keep doing the same thing here. We do operations that we think is helping in terms of giving more religious rights to American Muslims, but we’re not thinking about human rights, and civil liberties, and real issues that profoundly impact our society as America.

And I think both Muslims and those who are not Muslim—Christian Jew, and people of no faith—I think we need to start thinking together about these issues, not just how is it going to benefit or harm Muslims or how is it benefiting or harming Jews. How is it benefiting or harming America? And having that collective discussion along those lines I think would be more effective than just looking at, let’s figure out what to do about Muslims.

FASKIANOS: Thank you very much.

So many questions and raised hands. I’m going to go next to Shaker Elsayed. If you could give your affiliation, that would be great.

Q: Sure. This is Shaker Elsayed, the imam and founder of Muslim Family Consulting. It’s a consulting organization.

And I would like to draw everybody’s attention to the fact that the money machine and the propaganda machine, on the part of those who hate Muslims or Jews or anything else, they are able to pump money into somebody like Trump campaign and get the American embassy moved to Jerusalem, and Jerusalem to be declared by America as the capital of Israel—the permanent, eternal capital. And so long as money can buy political direction, we will never get the political direction right. It works in Congress. It works in the White House. It works locally. And we are not addressing that issue. And I hope that our speakers can shed some light. How do we get money out of politics, so that politics would focus on reflecting what we all agree as the American values?

AL-MARAYATI: Sounds like we need a campaign finance reform discussion. (Laughter.) And I understand Shaker’s point, but the reality is, Shaker, I don’t think any—that’s not going to happen in the short term. The reality is, the system is what it is. And we have to deal with the elected officials as they are elected. And there’s still—there’s still time to influence them, to have them change the policy that is more aligned with what America claims, what America stands for, and that’s human rights and democracy. And it is not—it is not meeting those standards as it relates to Muslim-majority countries at this time, especially in the Middle East.

And I think that is the crux of the problem. So to get aligned and coalitions with people who care about the region, about the future of the United States, how it impacts us domestically as all Americans, and what it is creating here in America, and all this fear, and more national security programs, and more surveillance, and more arrests, and so on and so forth, that’s the conversation we need to have now. And that’s what needs to—that’s what needs immediate attention and change, along with—to repeat what I said before—demanding the United States government come up with a political solution.

You know, Zbigniew Brzezinski critiqued the U.S. policy, you know, twenty years ago, that with all these things are happening in the Middle East, we still do not have a political model for what to do in Palestine/Israel. It’s just we react to whatever’s happening there. And then there’s terrorist attacks, and then war, and then suffering, and then more war, and more terrorism, and so on and so forth. That madness has to be disrupted, first and foremost. And that’s the conversation we need to have with our policymakers.

FASKIANOS: Great.

I’m going to go next to Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons from the Interfaith Alliance: A record number of Muslim Americans are serving in the Biden administration. How has this affected policymaking?

AL-MARAYATI: I mean, in short, it has not, because many of them are lower-level staff. Like, you don’t have the assistant secretary of state for, you know, the Middle East, for example, or South Asia who is Muslim. Nobody on the national security team that is running policy is Muslim or Arab American, you know, for that matter, in terms of having a view that is different from, you know, the status quo policy. And so the representation at the top level is—remains anemic. It is practically zero.

At the lower levels and advisors, and we have Rashad Hussain, who’s the international religious freedom ambassador. It’s great. And we have a number of people—we have two judges who have been appointed by the Biden administration. Wonderful. It’s great progress. Very different from any previous administration. But in terms of actually affecting foreign policy, I would say that there’s still no representation at that level.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to go next to Eleanor Ellsworth with a raised hand.

Q: Good afternoon. Can you hear me?

FASKIANOS: We can.

Q: Good, good.

I just wanted to raise an example that could be emulated along the lines of getting people to know one another, people who embrace the Islamic faith with the people who embrace other faiths. Here’s the example. There was an Anglican-Islam dialogue about democracy that was carried on about a couple of years in the early 2000s. It was extremely well done. It was orchestrated from Great Britain, but there were fifty different cities here in the United States where we had small groups—I don’t mean too small, but let’s say twenty, twenty-five people, who committed for nine months to be together, get to know each other, break bread together, if you will, and not talk about religion, per se, but about democracy. That was what we all held in common. And I had the privilege of coordinating the San Diego Anglican-Muslim dialogue. And just can’t let this go by without bringing up a little glimmer of hope, because that was an extraordinary experience for everyone at the table.

AL-MARAYATI: And I just—I mean, I just want to underscore the point that there’s hope at the grassroots level. There’s hope in the interfaith engagement. There’s hope with the people. And that’s why I’m a big proponent of people-to-people diplomacy to support or to actually provide a direction for government diplomacy. If it’s just government-to-government diplomacy, we’re going to—it’s going to maintain the same—the same thing. Nothing is going to change. But so these people-to-people efforts are critical to changing the discourse that will eventually get to the policymakers, that we can then have a discussion with them on our policies, as Americans. Not as Muslims, not as Jews, not as Christians, but as Americans. That, to me, is—can be a gamechanger, if we’re to create a model of that kind of engagement with our government.

LAJEVARDI: Can I also just add that I think the university encampments—you know, we had over 100 different encampments that were set up in the spring across universities in the United States, and we had many, many more across the world. I think those spaces are also exemplary of what interfaith dialogue and transnational, cross-racial coalition building really looks like. If you spent time in these encampments, you could see members of different faith groups coming together, celebrating each other, speaking with one another, creating libraries, you know, praying together, breaking bread together. I think oftentimes we sort of ignore the younger generation, but I would say there’s a lot of hope, you know, as an educator—(laughs)—looking at the students and what they’ve built.

You know, when they imagine democracy, when they imagine what justice is, when they imagine what equality is, they’re imagining something aligned much more with what you’re talking about. And I think that it’s important to recognize that there are instances of this type of solidarity-making happening right now. It’s just that, unfortunately, they’re vilified in the media. But if you spend time in them, they’re really beautiful, beautiful spaces of this type of dialogue.

FASKIANOS: Great.

I’m going to go next to Anwar Khan.

Q: Can you hear me?

FASKIANOS: Yes.

Q: Salaam alaikum, everyone. Peace be with you all.

My question is for Salam and for Nazita. In the last twenty-five years, we’ve seen three major backlashes done against the American Muslim community—in 2001, in 2016, and in 2023. Every time, the Muslim community reacted to the backlash. What do we see now happening after 2023 in the Muslim community actions response here to public policy and to civil work that we may not have seen in 2001 and 2016?

AL-MARAYATI: Well, I mean, for example, I think our relationships—like, for example, 2016 or 2001, we were not on these kinds of conversations with the Council on Foreign Relations. We were not in Washington having public forums and conferences with public officials. We’re beginning to do that now. The reality is, Muslims are only 1 percent of the American population. So you can’t expect 1 percent to change any course, unless they connect to broader groups. And in terms of Palestine, I think what we can say is that if we want coexistence of Palestine and Israel in the Middle East, then we need to have coexisting narratives in America.

Why is—why is it that we have a dominant narrative, the pro-Israel narrative, and we are not allowing the pro-Palestinian narrative, that basically says, listen, of course, we want Jews in the Middle East. They have been part of the Middle East for 2,000 years. And Muslims are the ones who actually brought them back after they were decimated by the Romans, and they protected them throughout the centuries. So this notion that if Muslims are going to be in charge in any place that we’re going to wipe out Jews, that is part of the Islamophobic tropes. That’s a trope that we see too often. We need coexisting narratives.

We are not going to do that by pure political power. We are only 1 percent of the population. We’re not going to do that by just having more, you know, political action committees, for example, do more. No. We’re going to do that by engaging the larger society, by having a discourse in forums like the Council on Foreign Relations and other bodies that welcome this conversation, and we need to be problem solving not just coming up with the problems. Everybody knows what the problem is, or what the problems are.

But what are the some of the solutions, such as child marriages in Afghanistan. And now some of the—some of the countries like Iraq are considering to bring that back into legislation. Or every time that there’s a group that talks about sharia, then that issue comes up. Is it another trope? Or is there some—is there truth to it? If there is, then we Muslims have to be in the forefront of saying, this is not acceptable. We will not tolerate that. And if you want U.S. funding or U.S. support, then these policies of your country have to change, and especially in terms of claiming—if you’re claiming that you’re doing this in the name of Islam, this is not Islam. This is madness. So things like that—I think issues like that need to be addressed very honestly among ourselves, especially as it relates to U.S. policy.

FASKIANOS: Nazita.

LAJEVARDI: Yeah, if I can add, you know, I think the demography of the U.S. Muslim population is really important to take note of here. You know, Muslims are, on average, a lot younger than the rest of the American population. The reason I bring that up is that, as—you know, during the twenty-three years—twenty-two years that you just described, you know, we’re talking about a population that is increasingly becoming more U.S. born, that is increasingly becoming more involved in institutions, and in the labor market, that is more cultured. And so what you’re seeing is Muslims are gradually starting to present in spaces where they can be a part of the discourse. And I think, as the immigrant share sort of decreases and there’s more native Muslims—U.S.-born Muslims, you’re going to see more of an incorporation just because of that natural evolution. So more of an incorporation into the discourse.

I do want to say, though, that this is a key moment, right? I mean, we’ve been talking about this election. It’s important to recognize what is happening. I mean, Muslims are electorally mobilized and they have a number of allies, right? The MENA Muslim population is not by itself casting uncommitted votes. There are other people out there. There are many American Jews out there who are also withholding their support, who are also withholding their contributions, until they see change. And so I think that having a broader dialogue with other people, other groups, it has been really important. A lot has changed. There’s more visibility on account of Muslims. I mean, there’s—especially through social media, if you look at how Muslims have been able to spin—not even spin—but, like, to communicate a narrative, to communicate facts, to communicate information to the global community. I mean, I think it’s also showing just how much more the Muslim perspective is landing with the U.S. and also global population.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to go next to Ani Zonneveld.

Q: OK. Hi. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Ani Zonneveld, Muslims for Progressive Values.

So there’s so many points to cover, but I would like to just be clear on some things being said here. I think some of the antisemitism is from Muslims and some of Islamophobia is coming from the Jewish community itself. I don’t think we should kind of overlook that and just pinpoint it to just the Christian right. And I feel that the point that you made, Salam, joint narrative, is so key. The only way for us to really move forward as Americans, yes, to put our human rights up front and center—as in, human rights policy up front and center, and not be biased of one set of community over another that we’ve seen Israel versus Palestinian, right? But I think there is at the grassroots, like you say, there’s a lot of effort and there’s a lot of hope at the grassroots level, because there are joint conversations and narratives being organized between, for example, ex-radical Palestinians with ex-IDF soldiers. You know, going on a national tour.

And that’s something that is happening at the grassroots that I wish would be more prominent in the media. The media doesn’t cover all the good news, and that’s unfortunate because this is the sort of joint narrative of coming together that we need for Americans. What is from—you know, in this policy space, don’t our—what’s frustrating is, you know, doesn’t our policymakers, our government officials, really recognize that the only forward—way forward for peace is for this joint narrative, and for it to be in the interest of American foreign policy? Because the antisemitism is so wide all over the Muslim world and is really just rooted because of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

So my question is, what can we do to move our government officials, our policymakers, to really see that there really are some good solutions at the grassroots level, and with people like you, and I, and everybody working in this area?

AL-MARAYATI: Well, I—you know, the short answer, because I don’t think we have time to really cover all your points. Ani, which, again, good to hear your voice again. The short answer is, I don’t think criticism of Israel can be equated with antisemitism, or opposition to Israeli policies. And that’s what’s happening, especially on our U.S. campuses. If there is antisemitism—I mean actual harassment, targeting of Jewish students, any kind of physical violence, we will—we stand against that. But groups coming out and demonstrating against what they look at—what they deem as a genocide against the Palestinian people and calling for a ceasefire—sometimes we’re called antisemitic because we’re promoting a ceasefire. That is—

Q: Let me—let me correct. Yes, no, I was not—I was not—

AL-MARAYATI: I’m not saying you said that. I’m saying that this is what it is extending to. The short answer is, we need to have a discussion about what antisemitism is in terms of policy, and legitimate pro-Palestinian voices that continue to be squelched in our society. That’s number one. Number two, I believe that there needs to be the realization and the manifestation of American Islam. That it’s not a transfer or transplant of what we see in the Middle East or South Asia to the United States, but something that is organic and intrinsic to America, with American Islamic thought. I believe that a lot of these issues can be resolved with that—with that kind of manifestation.

FASKIANOS: All right.

Nazita.

LAJEVARDI: I was just going to add that, you know, on U.S. campuses there have been a number of panels that have taken place that have brought scholars of antisemitism and Islamophobia together. And that has sparked really interesting and important dialogue. But there’s something really fundamental when you restrict the speech of faculty and students on university campuses, and thereby the research that is done on these very critical questions. So I think—I think your question is important, and it’s about how to inform policy, but you can’t inform policy without the research. And the research is being halted, right? And the conversations at the university level that inform all of this dialogue is being halted.

Across universities right now, many, many schools have put out policies that are restricting speech about geopolitical views, for instance. And it has really brought upon a culture of silence and a conspiracy of silence that is probably going to reverberate and is going to inhibit the types of conversations that that you’re hoping for at a policy level. If those can’t take place on university campuses, how can we possibly have the information that we need to inform the policy debates? So I just sort of leave that with you.

FASKIANOS: I am sorry that we are out of time. We have so many raised hands and written questions we could not get to them all. There are—there are a couple in the queue about Christian nationalism that we did not get to, but I just would point you to a book that two of our fellows wrote, Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, entitled God, Guns, and Sedition. And it’s looking at the rise of far-right terrorism in the United States, and recommendations to stop its rise. So I point you toward that book. Sorry we didn’t take it head on here.

And thank you, Salam Al-Marayati and Nazita Lajevardi for today’s really great conversation. We appreciate your taking the time to be with us. We encourage you to follow them on X at @SalamAlMarayati and at @NazitaLajevardi. This is very hard to say. We also encourage you to follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy program at @CFR_religion, and to write us at [email protected] with suggestions or questions for future webinars. We look forward to hearing from you. Again, thank you for being with us, and we will continue the conversation.

AL-MARAYATI: Thank you. Really good—really good to be with you, Irina and Nazita. Pleasure to meet you.

LAJEVARDI: Likewise. Likewise. Thank you so much. This was wonderful.

AL-MARAYATI: Thank you.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Bye-bye.