Writer Uninvited From Muslim Group’s Conference For Talking To Zionists
Wajahat Ali speaks onstage at Katie Couric podcast LIVE: The Muslim Next Door during SXSW at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2018 in Austin, Texas. Image by Nicola Gell/Getty Images for SXSW
(JTA) —A Pakistani-American writer said he was uninvited from speaking at a conference by a major Muslim group because he wrote about engaging in dialogue with Zionists.
In an article published Wednesday in the Atlantic, Wajahat Ali criticized the Islamic Society of North America for uninviting him from its annual conference. Ali, a contributing op-ed writer to The New York Times and an award-winning playwright, recently published an article in the same publication in which he spoke to Israeli settlers and Palestinians living in the West Bank.
The Washington, D.C.-based writer said the Islamic Society’s decision was part of “a years-long campaign by some online activists and religious leaders to limit the range of voices at such events.”
Ali said the opposition he faced stemmed from his involvement with the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative. The Jerusalem-based institute’s program promotes Muslim-Jewish dialogue.
Ali’s article included a letter to him from Altaf Husain, the Islamic Society’s vice president in the United States, saying that conference speakers “are expected to support broadly our values as a unifying Islamic organization,” including supporting “Palestinian people of all faith traditions in their struggle against occupation and dispossession.”
Husain’s letter also seems to reference a tweet Ali made about saying the Arabic phrase “Allah Akbar after taking giant dumps,” calling it “troubling.” Allah Akbar means “God is the greatest.”
In the Wednesday article, Ali denied being a Zionist or “a supporter of Israel’s occupation” and said the tweet had been a joke.
Ali did not respond to a JTA request for comment in time for publication.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
