Anila Ali lost “almost everything” for standing with Israel after October 7. Now she’s convening moderate Muslims, Christians and Jews in Washington to prove the extremists wrong.

When Anila Ali talks about why she does this work — the delegations to Israel, the rallies, the fatwa issued against her by the Iranian regime — she doesn’t reach for strategy or politics. She reaches for something simpler.

“I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do,” she told me. “It’s the right thing to do to stand up to bigotry, anti-Israel hate, anti-Jewish hate. That’s what we are doing. We are speaking up as moderate Muslims — one, who love America, and two, who understand where we come from and where our Islamic heritage comes from.”

For Ali — a Pakistani-born former California schoolteacher, founder and president of the American Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council (AMMWEC), and the first Muslim woman named to Hadassah’s list of “18 American Zionist Women You Should Know” — the case for standing with the Jewish people isn’t a political calculation. It’s theology.

“It comes straight from the Bible and the Torah,” she said. “We are the Abrahamic lineage, and many of our people have forgotten that. So we keep reminding them: go back to the Quran. If you’re a Muslim, you cannot hate the land of the prophets, you cannot hate the people of the prophets, and you cannot hate Israel.”

The morning everything changed

Ali traces her turning point to the days after October 7, 2023 — and not only to the atrocities themselves, but to the reaction she heard from people she thought she knew.

“For me, the sexual violence done in God’s name — Allahu Akbar — God’s name being desecrated. It was a no-brainer,” she said. “If I’m a Muslim, I’m going to stand up and tell the truth.”

What broke her heart was closer to home. “What hurt me most was when my friends, people I had known were Muslims, were speaking out and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)