New Year Reflections

Happy New Year everyone. 

I mark this new year in a somber mood, yet I am still keeping my chin up and remaining clear eyed for what is ahead with the new administration. 

Yesterday we signed onto an amicus brief for a court case brought forward by parents whose children attend  public schools in Louisiana who are fighting against the new state mandate to display the 10 Commandments in classrooms. We also continue to follow a case in Florida, which we  supported with an amicus brief in alliance with a  group of Jewish women who filed suit against the state’s 6 week abortion ban  on the grounds that it violates their faith’s right to abortion. As MPV is often the go-to Muslim organization for progressive faith based advocacy initiatives, we anticipate many more cases in the coming months and years. 

Internationally, we’ve broadened our #ImamsForShe program beyond Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda to Burkina Faso and  Afghanistan. With this expansion, we’ll have a greater impact in the fight for gender equality as we work with religious leaders and scholars of Islam to promote an egalitarian interpretation of Islam, toward changing the religious and cultural mindsets that have curtailed women’s and girls’ rights which are indicators of a radicalized society. 

As we prepare for the years ahead, MPV has scheduled an in person  board meeting in March, where we will  tweak our activities for the next three years to ensure we are  more intentional in our advocacy work and to  incorporate creative arts into our program to cultivate empathy for our various advocacy causes. 

We hope to replicate more projects like “Witness”, a short fiction film about spiritual dignity that MPV supported with a community grant. The film is written by a young screenwriter and director and tells the story of an imam’s reckoning with a moral dilemma when he finds out that his daughter’s best friend and a committed volunteer at the mosque is  transgender. I see this short film as one we can screen to create space for invigorating discussions around trans folks and their rights, especially important given how trans folks and their rights were used as talking points to fire up hateful rhetoric and discriminatory mindsets in last year’s election. 

And unfortunately my own Muslim community was not immune to the impact of this rhetoric. In this past election, the Republican party received more Muslim votes than ever before. In part because of the Democratic adminstration’s unwavering support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but also as a result of General Michael Flynn’s courtship of the Muslim right to bring them into the Christian Right’s crusade for the so called “family values”, a euphemism for anyone who dares deviate from the heterosexual, cisgender, and patriarchal norm of the West.  We have once again regressed as a community. Conservative Muslims have no issue discriminating against others while demanding protection of their rights. What’s the point of heeding the Quranic call to demand justice for ourselves if we fail to do so for our non-Muslim kin who face the same marginalization and injustices that we do? 

Onward and upward…

Ani