With Friends Like These...

[Fact Checker]

April 18, 2025 MASJID SABIREEN RECAP

March 18, 2025 SUGAR LAND CITY HALL RECAP
Quote/"Last night, two organizers from Fort Bend Coalition for Justice stood before the Sugar Land City Council and respectfully requested a moment of silence for the 500+ lives lost in Gaza on March 18th. They were calm, collected, and simply asked for recognition of innocent lives taken.
Instead of compassion, they were met with anger and contempt from every single council member. The so-called “Muslim” council member, Naushad Kermally smirked and smiled as the last speaker was escorted out. Their punishment? A 60-day ban from attending council meetings, just for speaking truth to power."/Unquote. IG: https://www.instagram.com/fbcoalitionforjustice/reel/DHZX9capQ7F/

With malice to none!
This might not be instantly related to what is going on in Pakistan, but soon it will be.
The Nizaris, true to their 8th/9th C. CE Batini roots, have come out forcefully during the recent years as the frontline soldiers of the Zionists and global esoteric/occult and Masonic movements.
Not to get into theology or semantics here (the interested ones can study Imam Al-Ghazali's (may Allah have mercy on him) Fada'ih al-Batiniyya, if not in original then pl ensure a reliable translator), but there appears a phenomenon rising again across countries, as before during the 9th-13th C. CE. A new group of "Muslim Zionists" seems to be working hard to "normalize" the Zionist movement/state and promote "faith-washing" events to schism the Muslims further, with folks of Pakistani/Indian-origins at the forefront (just as they had occupied Yerushalayim under Gen (later FM, Sir) Ed Allenby in 1917). Heads up, especially to TPTB!

Pro-Palestine demonstrator handcuffed outside Sugar Land mosque during mayoral campaign event​

Authorities say the mosque's elders instructed them to remove the woman from the property.​

By Eric Killelea April 21, 2025
Amina Ishaq, a licensed clinical social worker and organizer of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, was handcuffed by authorities Friday, April 18 after protesting the appearance of Sugar Land council member and mayoral candidate Naushad Kermally at her mosque in the Houston area.
Ishaq and other Muslims protested Kermally's campaign stop at Brand Lane Islamic Center's Masjid As Sabireen in Stafford, accusing the Muslim politician of being a "Zionist" supporter.
Source
Not to Forget other similar "Muslim" "community workers" around you on this mission, such as Mr Khurram Wahid (Emgage, ADL), Mr Farooq Mitha (Emgage), Mr Amin Mitha (Emgage), et al. [One would not be surprised, if it transpires that elements of TPTB are also in cahoots with them]

Joe Biden, Emgage and the muzzling of Muslim America​

By Azad Essa Published date: 9 October 2020 02:21 UTC
Excerpts follow....

The story of Emgage​

Formed in 2006 by two Muslim lawyers from Florida, Khurrum Wahid and Farooq Mitha, the organisation was initially known as the Center for Voter Advocacy - before it changed its name to Emerge and later in 2016 to Emgage.
As an organisation, Emgage is made up of three legal entities. Emgage Foundation focuses on "Get Out The Vote" and registration of voters. Emgage Action is meant to advocate for issues important to Muslims, such as political literacy and civic engagement, as well as pushing back on policies that hurt the community. And Emgage PAC purportedly supports political candidates that align with the values of the community.
Its governance is made up of a national board, with its six local chapters in Michigan, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas, each governed by local boards.
Around 2008, the group focused on consolidating the Muslim vote for Obama.
Following the election of Obama, Mitha, who was previously a Fulbright Scholar in Amman, working on Jordanian-Israeli relations, and a partner at a law firm, joined the Obama administration as the special assistant to the director of the Department of Defense (DOD), in which he helped try to align small businesses with the urgent needs of the DOD.
From 2014, Emgage began to branch out of Florida, creating chapters in swing states where Muslim voters could make the difference between two candidates as their own bloc. In 2016, the group started its Get Out The Vote efforts across multiple states and received grant money.
[....]
Sarwat Hussain, co-chair of the American Muslim Democratic Caucus-National (AMDC-National), says she has been familiar with Emgage since 2012, and that her first interaction with the group's leadership involved her being told by an Emgage board member to downplay her "Muslimness".
[...]
In Wahid's letter to Muslim Americans last month, addressing his participation and that of three others from Emgage in MLI, the Muslim Leadership Initiative - a controversial scheme which, in part, brings Muslim Americans to Israel to study Judaism and Zionism - he tried to play down the impact four individuals might have had in an organisation made up of "100 staffers and national and local board members".
[...]
In March, the Biden campaign came under intense pressure after it was revealed that its Muslim outreach coordinator was a vehement supporter of India's right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Amit Jani, who had been appointed in late 2019 as Biden's Asian-American Pacific Islander (AAPI) outreach coordinator, also had the Muslim community in his portfolio.
Under pressure, the Biden campaign turned to Emgage's Mitha, who had in 2016 become the Muslim outreach director for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, for assistance. He eventually took on the role.
This meant that in March, Emgage was endorsing Sanders even while its co-founder was the Muslim outreach coordinator for Biden.

Emgage and the ADL​

Since the Electronic Intifada accused Emgage of being a pro-Israel outfit, concerned Muslim Americans have been reaching out to the organisation to seek clarity on its relationships with other groups outlined in EI's expose.
For its part, Emgage released a statement on its recently created Medium page, rather than its official website, in which it affirmed "its commitment to Palestinians" and addressed what it described as "false claims".
But Emgage did not address allegations that it had links with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a pro-Israel organisation that in August was the subject of an open letter signed by more than 100 activist groups accusing it of "a history and ongoing pattern of attacking social justice movements led by communities of color, queer people, immigrants, Muslims, Arabs, and other marginalized groups, while aligning itself with police, right-wing leaders, and perpetrators of state violence".
When the outrage did not abate, Wahid addressed the Muslim American community in a letter posted on the Emgage website. In his attempt to quell the rising anger, Wahid chose to mitigate the issue by explaining that Emgage had no "programming" with the ADL. Emgage now has a section on its website, called "Fact and Fiction about Emgage" that says the organisation has no formal links with the ADL.
But in March, in an interview with MEE, Wahid spoke candidly about Emgage and the ADL, characterising the relationship with the ADL as "transactional":
Over the past month though, Emgage staff have embarked on a project of scrubbing their websites and profiles of connections with work linked with the ADL or AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying group).
Until September 2020, Wahid's profile on his own law firm website described him as a member of the ADL civil rights committee in Miami. This has since disappeared. Alzayat told MEE that Wahid left the position in 2018.

Emgage, MLI and faithwashing​

The Muslim Leadership Initative programme has been a major point of contention in the Muslim American community ever since it was first launched in 2014.
The programme, formed by Abdallah Antepli, a Muslim chaplain at Duke University, and the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, an Israeli think-tank, attempts to position the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a dispute between two religious groups. The MLI project involves academic study and a trip to Israel in which Muslim American "leaders" are given an opportunity to learn more about Judaism and Zionism.
Palestinians, in particular, have opposed the programme, calling MLI a "faithwashing" project for its attempt to recast Israel's ongoing settler-colonial project as a religious conflict between Muslims and Jews, a conflict that has "two sides". Moreover, Palestinians have repeatedly argued that participating in the project would contravene the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and further efforts towards "normalisation" with Israel.
Alumni of the MLI programme have gone on to narrate their "re-education" as Muslims confronting the Israeli-Palestinian crisis in TIME Magazine and The Atlantic.
At least four people within Emgage, including Wahid, are alumni of MLI.
Following Electronic Intifada's resurrection of these MLI skeletons, Emgage purportedly tried to clarify that as, an organisation, it never had a relationship with MLI, but individuals had travelled in a personal capacity - and that it had since adopted a policy that prohibited members of Emgage from participating in the programme.
But, even here, basic details about this resolution are not particularly clear.
Emgage's insistence that it has no joint work with Zionist organisations is also not entirely accurate, given the individuals and organisations it welcomes into its orbit.
For instance, in 2018, at its annual policy conference, titled "Upholding our Values: A Commitment to Tolerance," Emgage hosted Robert Silverman, then-US director of Muslim-Jewish relations of the American Jewish Committee, as a guest.
Emgage's insistence that it has no joint work with Zionist organisations is also not entirely accurate, given the individuals and organisations it welcomes into its orbit.
[...]
Emgage has bigger ideological problems to confront than interfaith trojan horses.
Several activists point to Alzayat's career as emblematic of the organisation's tendency to cheerlead some of the most conservative elements of American foreign policy.
Alzayat routinely points to his position as a senior adviser to Samantha Power, the former US ambassador to the UN, but before this, he held several positions in Iraq during the American occupation of the country.
The first was as the Provincial Affairs Officer for Anbar Province at the US embassy in Baghdad in 2007-8.
Alzayat "provided policy and operational guidance to Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Fallujah, Ramadi and al-Asad" during "the Surge," when then-president George W Bush sent additional troops to Iraq to quell a spike in violence. "The Surge" had catastrophic implications for Iraq. Alzayat also worked on the Egypt desk, as well as for the US ambassador to Iraq during the US military withdrawal.
Though Emgage has no policy on Iran, Alzayat is also known to invoke Israeli talking points when speaking on Iran.
Emgage has bigger ideological problems to confront than interfaith trojan horses.
For decades, US foreign policy in the Middle East has pivoted around Israeli interests, and Alzayat's approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict appears little different.
In a later question about Biden's policy that would not reverse Trump's decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, Alzayat prefaced his answer with: "We welcome the affirmation of the Jewish people's right to have an embassy- not an embassy- but a capital in Jerusalem," before going on to say that Biden's policy was "contradictory," because "it does not mention the Palestinian rights and aspiration for at least East Jerusalem".
[...]
Samia Assed, an activist from New Mexico and a Democratic Party delegate, told MEE that tokenised engagements such as MLI and MJAC had paved the way for "good Muslims" with whom Israel, the US power base, and their proponents, are happy to negotiate.
"As a Muslim American organisation they still haven't said 'Zionism is racism'. This should be normal for a Muslim organisation," said Assed. "There are Jewish organisations that are anti-Zionist. Why can't Emgage commit to that?
She says MLI divided the Muslim community, misrepresented the Israeli occupation, and turned ordinary demands for Palestinian human rights, dignity and self determination into "unreasonable" and "radical" positions.
"It is clear they made these concessions when they went into these partnerships. And there is almost a disconnect when you call them out on BDS. It is as if they don't know what you are talking about," Assed said.
"There is an obvious type of grooming that keeps them out of the mainstream concerns, the everyday concerns of Muslims on the street," Assed added.
Nazia Kazi is an associate professor of anthropology at Stockton University in New Jersey.
"These figures offer the guise of interfaith dialogue, Muslim visibility, or the chance to have a 'seat at the table' as a gloss for alliances with the state," she said.
"In my book, I write about 'US Empire's Good Muslim Cheerleaders'. By this, I mean the ranks of Muslims who silence, sidestep or disregard tackling the most egregious elements of American imperialism in exchange for visibility and legitimacy in the US racial order.
"I remain unsurprised at the cadre of Muslim Americans eager to step up in defence of US empire-building," Kazi adds.

Endorsing pro-Israel candidates​

Middle East Eye has found that Emgage has endorsed at least 20 pro-Israel candidates competing in November's elections, calling into the question the organisation's agenda and vetting process.
Out of the 41 congressional candidates endorsed by Emgage in 2020, MEE found at least 12 Congressional incumbents who co-sponsored or voted against the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) in Congress in 2019, had taken multiple sponsored trips to Israel, and collectively received upwards of $621,697 from the pro-Israel lobby since 2017.
In this election cycle, Emgage has endorsed more than 50 candidates across 10 states running for city council, state legislature or Congress.
[...]
since 2016, Emgage Action has received funding from the Open Society Foundation, culminating in a $1 million grant in 2019 to support, in part, their "Get Out The Vote" efforts. According to its 2018 annual report, 69 percent of its budget came from grant money, further exemplifying its disconnect from the community's grassroots.

Brown skins, white masks​

In August, some among the Pakistani-American community were jolted when they realised their independence day event with the Biden campaign had been organised by Jani. Multiple sources have told MEE that Mitha has repeatedly downplayed their concerns, defending Jani and describing him as a friend.
Whereas Muslim Americans are gradually being told in off-the-record briefings that Biden's policy on Palestine is "not where we want it" but "it's better than Trump," both Mitha and Emgage have yet to acknowledge that the Biden campaign continues to have a supporter of Hindu nationalism on his staff.
That Indian-American Muslims have been not been able to ascertain whether Mitha's defence of Jani stems from the fact that Mitha's role may still be an unpaid, stop-gap measure from the Biden campaign and that he might actually still be reporting to Jani is only grating them further.
"It is unacceptable for any Muslim organisation to support candidates that take money from Israel or pro-Modi supporters," Sarsour from MPower Change told MEE, declining to comment further on the ongoing controversy surrounding Emgage.
Source