Muslim Americans in Government

Extremism (CVE), a program predicated on the notion that Muslims are more dangerous to society than other people (https://ehsan.substack.com/p/mpacslong-con-cve-and-gaslighting). There was serious money (https://www.dhs.gov/ news/2016/07/06/dhs-announces-countering-violent-extremism-grant-program) behind this effort before it eventually fizzled in Muslim spaces.

One character in this scene was Hedieh Mirhamadi, who moved from speaking at Islamic centers (https://www.startribune. com/what-maryland-s-test-lab-can-teachminnesota-about-thwarting-radical-recruiters/379484141/), while secretly working for the FBI (https://www.politico.com/ magazine/story/2016/03/fbi-muslim-outreach-terrorism-213765) to entering the world of Trump supporters (https://www. fox6now.com/news/i-was-duped-davidclarke-says-ex-business-partner-was-amuslim-brotherhood-operative) to starting her own Christian ministry to trade on her former Muslim status (https://resurrectministry.com), which has marketing power on its own. It’s depressingly easy to scam Muslim leaders.

Of course, Muslims will consider the overall benefit and harm when it comes to supporting politicians. They may donate, campaign and vote for those with whom they disagree on specific issues. However, this is different from people who are not Muslim or, in some cases, are actively hostile to Islam taking advantage of our influence and money to cause harm.

DOING POLITICS BETTER Politics can be a means of improving the conditions of people’s immediate lives or achieving greater justice in a society. It’s also an excellent way for the unscrupulous to gain wealth, power and influence unjustly. Muslim American nonprofits and leaders should be more careful about vetting each other.

The community, nationally and locally, has many grifters and bad-faith actors. Buyer beware! Do politics like you pray, with ihsan (excellence). You know that you cannot pray on a filthy carpet. Your politics should be no different. ih

Ahmed Shaikh is an attorney, former ISNA Executive Council member and co-author of “Estate Planning for the Muslim Client” (ABA Publishing 2019). He also writes a newsletter evaluating Muslim nonprofits (ehsan. substack.com).

COMPILED BY ISLAMIC HORIZONS STAFF

The Associated Press exit polls of Nov. 6, 2020, revealed that 35% of Muslims voted for Donald Trump and 64% for Joe Biden. A separate poll from CAIR found that 17% of Muslims voted for Trump — up by 4 percentage points from its poll in 2016 (“2020 Muslim Voters Presidential Election Exit Poll,” Nov. 3, 2020; www.cair.com).

However, Biden’s White House team includes very few Muslim Americans, and those only primarily in junior- and mid-level positions. Uzra Zeya, a 1989 graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, has served in the State Department for nearly three decades. She is now Undersecretary of State for arms control, democracy and human rights. Her previous job experience includes working as CEO and president of the Alliance for Peacebuilding (www.allianceforpeacebuilding.org), a nonprofit that seeks to end violent conflict and promotes peace globally.

Among her former postings are chargé d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Paris (2014-17); acting assistant secretary and principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (201214); and chief of staff to the deputy Secretary of State (2011-12). She has served as a U.S. diplomat in New Delhi, Muscat, Damascus, Cairo, Kingston and other capitals.

She left the State Department in the summer 2018, alleging that the Trump administration was bent on reversing decades of gains made by minorities and women. Since then, Zeya has served as deputy executive secretary to the Secretary of State, director of the Executive Secretariat Staff, UN General Assembly Coordinator, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a senior advisor at Albright Stonebridge Group.

At Georgetown, her alma mater, she serves on the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy’s board of advisors.

Zeya, an Indian Muslim who speaks French, Arabic and Spanish, was awarded France’s highest civilian honor: the Légion d’honneur.

Maher Bitar, a Palestinian-American (JD, Georgetown University) who has served as the general counsel for House Intelligence Committee Democrats since 2017 and played a key role, as Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) top legal adviser, during former President Trump’s first impeachment, has a new job: National Security Council senior director for intelligence programs. This position serves as the day-to-day

connective tissue between the intelligence community and the White House.

During the Obama administration, he served as the NSC’s director for Israeli and Palestinian affairs and also as a foreign affairs officer at the State Department.

A 2006 graduate of Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, as a Marshall Scholar, he received a M.S. in Forced Migration from Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Center. In addition, he has worked with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Malaysia and the UN Relief and Works Agency in Jerusalem.

Bitar is fluent in Arabic, French, and German. Salman Ahmed, head of strategic planning in Obama’s National Security Council, joined the State Department as director policy planning. Ahmed was chief of staff of the U.S. Mission to the UN and senior policy adviser to the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

Before joining the Department of State in 2009, Ahmed (BS, New York University, Stern School of Business; MA, University of Cambridge) was a visiting professor and research scholar at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and worked for almost 15 years at the UN, including the post of chief of staff for the head of UN Peacekeeping Operations.

Ali Zaidi (BA, Harvard; JD, Georgetown University), who was a Stanford adjunct professor and Precourt Energy Scholar, is now the deputy national climate adviser under special envoy for the climate, former Secretary of State John Kerry.

Zaidi, the highest-ranking Pakistani American in the Biden administration, played a key role in drafting and implementing the Obama administration’s climate action plan and helped negotiate the Paris Climate Agreement — which Trump terminated and Biden restored on Jan. 20.

The former New York deputy secretary for energy and environment, he now serves under Gina McCarthy, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency. She was appointed as national climate advisor.

Prior to this appointment, Zaidi helped draft the Obama administration’s climate change plan and negotiate the Paris Climate Agreement. He has also served as an adjunct professor at Stanford and editor of the The Georgetown Law Journal. Zayn Siddique, White House deputy chief of staff, originally from Bangladesh but raised in New York, is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School. Among his previous positions are deputy policy director for Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign, as well as a senior policy adviser to his senate campaign, and a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. Circuit, and Judge Dean Pregerson of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

In between his clerkships, Siddique practiced law as an associate at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

Reema Dodin, Sen. Richard Durbin’s former floor counsel, research director and aide to his Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, now serves as deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs.

Born in North Carolina to JordanianPalestinian immigrants, she was the first Arab-American to receive an appointment to the Biden administration. She also co-authored “Inside Congress: A Guide for Navigating the Politics of the House and Senate Floors” (2017).

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley (‘02) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Law (‘06), she is also a Truman National Security Fellow, a New Leaders Council Fellow, an Aspen Socrates alum, a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Jenkins Hill Society — a consortium of women in politics supporting female politicians.

Biden’s economic team contains two officials with experience in working to close the country’s racial wealth gap: Sameera Fazili (Yale Law School; BA, Harvard College), whose physician parents migrated from illegally Indian-occupied Kashmir, was appointed deputy director of the National Economic Council (NEC). The council focuses on manufacturing, innovation and domestic competition.

She comes to the White House from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, where she was director of engagement for the Community and Economic Development Department. During the Obama administration, she was a senior adviser at the NEC and at the Treasury Department, where she spent time in the offices of Domestic Finance and International Affairs.

Before her government job, Fazili was a lecturer at Yale Law School’s Community and Economic Development clinic, where she helped start a community development financial institution (CDFI) bank and a local anti-foreclosure initiative. In addition, she expanded the clinic’s work to international microfinance. She also worked at ShoreBank, the nation’s first CDFI bank. Her work in finance has spanned consumer, housing, small business and microfinance.

Aisha Shah (born in illegally Indianoccupied Kashmir) is now a partnerships manager in the White House Office of Digital Strategy.

Raised in Louisiana, Shah previously worked as an advancement specialist for the Smithsonian Institution and as digital partnerships manager in the Biden-Harris campaign. Prior to this role, she worked as an assistant manager on the corporate fund of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, supporting the first-ever expansion of a presidential memorial.

Shah also served as a strategic communications specialist at Buoy, an integrated marketing firm that specializes in social impact communications, as well as spitfire strategies, where she enabled nonprofits to use pop culture as a tool for social change. ih