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9/15/2024
Assalamu Alaikum,
Over the last few years, our staff at Emgage have fended off misinformation and attacks intended to tarnish and discredit the critical work we are doing in and for the Muslim community. For the most part, we refused to give baseless allegations any legitimacy or stoke the flames of division, which is what detractors want, but enough is enough.
Our team at Emgage is exceptional. It is my greatest honor to lead this organization, which is filled with some of the brightest minds in policy, community organizing, and civic engagement. Unfortunately, across the country, my team is being muzzled, harassed, and blocked from participating in critical work. This is a loss for our entire community.
I don’t want to be writing this letter. I would rather be supporting my team and helping to build political momentum for the Muslim community ahead of this incredibly critical election. But Emgage will no longer allow the smear campaign led by Nadia Ahmad and Ahmed Sheikh (and whoever is funding them) over the years to go unchecked.
Emgage in action.
At Emgage, our mission is to authentically amplify the voices of Muslim Americans and ensure that our work reflects the diversity and values of our community. We remain committed to transparency, inclusivity, and open dialogue to better serve and represent our shared interests. Nadia and Ahmed’s latest attacks, which are riddled with lies and misinformation, omit the body of work that Emgage has taken and done in support of Palestine and the liberation of Muslims in India and Kashmir, and the needs of Muslim communities domestically and abroad.
Emgage Action successfully advocated for the passage of the Uyghur Human Rights and Forced Labor Prevention Act. We helped secure with partners an end to the Muslim Ban on day one of the Biden administration by advocating for it with President Biden as a precondition for our support. We saw a historic number of Muslim Americans appointed to the federal government in 2020, and supported the introduction of the NO BAN Act in Congress.
Emgage has always been clear on our support for peace in the Middle East based on justice and the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people. We support the end of the Israeli Occupation, the right of Americans to engage in boycott activities, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Since October 7, 2023, Emgage Action has actively advocated for an immediate ceasefire, engaged in principled dialogues with political leaders, and mobilized the community through voter outreach and public forums. Our efforts include direct engagement with President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, among others, advocating for a ceasefire and conditioning aid to Israel, and protecting our students on college campuses.
Nadia and Ahmed’s actions create Fitna. They aren’t interested in helping our community.
Over the past year alone Nadia and Ahmed have written over a dozen articles attacking Emgage’s strategy, intentions and questioning our commitment to peace, safety and justice for Muslims all over the world. But let’s be clear: they are not journalists — no, writing obsessively (and repetitively) about Emgage seems to have been their chosen hobby for the last four years. Every article they have written about Emgage includes unsubstantiated claims that are “supported” by other articles and substacks they write themselves.
They are surrounding the community in an echo chamber of hate that is of their own making.
That hate is not just reserved for us as an organization. It extends to a deeply personal level. Ahmed has repeatedly suggested that Emgage was not founded by Muslims. A quick review of our founders will demonstrate that this claim is false. What Ahmed really seems to be claiming is that Emgage was not founded by people he considers valid Muslims.
There are myriad ways to practice Islam, and we honor them all. One of our core values at Emgage is that we welcome and accept all Muslims and people of other faith traditions who want to work with us. Whether you are Sunni or Shia, Muslim-born or revert, Arab, South Asian, White, Latino or Black, whether you are actively practicing or not — Emgage is for you.
This seems to be a foundational division between Emgage and Nadia and Ahmed. We care. We care about all Americans, we care about the human rights of others — not just our own, narrowly-defined community. We will engage with and show kindness to everyone, whether we disagree with their views or not.
Our focus remains on empowering Muslim Americans to engage fully in the political process, ensuring that our community’s diverse interests are represented and advocated for effectively. We understand that not everyone is going to agree with our approach, and that’s okay. We encourage dialogue within the community and have taken feedback and adapted our approach accordingly. But for Nadia and Ahmed to deliberately manipulate information in their now 4-year smear campaign against our organization and our leaders is intolerable and frankly, either naive or dismissive about what it takes to see political progress for a marginalized community.
Nadia operates in the same system she so adamantly opposes and criticizes Emgage for.
It is important to highlight the gravity of Nadia’s contradictions. In her latest effort to undermine Emgage, Nadia attacks the bravery and influential grassroots organizing of the Uncommitted Movement. She criticized the collective effort of writing “uncommitted” on the ballot, calling it a strategy to “dilute Muslim political power and further marginalize their voices.” However, Nadia herself penned an op-ed outlining why she is ‘Nominating “Ceasefire Now” for President,” a knock-off version of Uncommitted. Nadia claims that Ceasefire Now “is a movement that acknowledges the complexities of the genocide in Gaza and seeks to address them through diplomacy, dialogue, and a genuine commitment to human rights.” Nadia criticized the Uncommitted Movement’s strategy and then turned around and co-opted it, leeching off of the hard work and the influence of the movement to build up her own profile. We have offered our support and resources to the Uncommitted movement, and joined them at their sit-in at the Democratic National Convention. We’ve hosted panels and community sessions with leaders of the campaign, like Abbas and Laila, and have worked to platform their voices.
Additionally, Nadia criticizes the Uncommitted Movement for “quietly negotiating with the Harris campaign for months.” Yet she herself is a committed Harris delegate who endorsed the Vice President the day President Biden dropped out of the race.
We have refrained from questioning her motives and strategy in the hopes of moving forward, but the hypocrisy is too loud to ignore, and the disruption of critical work is too detrimental to our community.
Nadia and Ahmed have made their motives clear; they operate only to fulfill their self-serving interests, and as a community we must see through the consistent lies and deceit.
Who does Emgage support?
Part of Nadia and Ahmed’s twisted lies include that Emgage partners with the ADL, the AJC and endorses candidates that work against the interests of Muslim Americans. This could not be further from the truth.
We support qualified candidates — not only Muslims — for public office. But we don’t just support anyone. We follow a very robust vetting process that includes a questionnaire, interviews with candidates, engagement with the community, and research on the candidate’s fundraising, viability, qualification, and track record.
We endorse candidates based on their commitment to — and actions on — diversity and tolerance and specific positions on issues that research shows American Muslim communities care about as both Muslims and Americans.
In Nadia’s latest article, she criticizes us for not supporting Pervez Agwan in Texas. We have a simple response to this: we did not endorse this candidate primarily due to the allegations of workplace misconduct levied towards him and a senior campaign staffer. But it seems that wasn’t cause for concern for Nadia.
Nadia and Ahmed also purposely omit the pro-Palestinain candidates we have supported over the years. Most recently, we backed Summer Lee, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, and Ilhan Omar — all candidates who were targeted in their primaries for their vocal support of Palestine.
We can assure you that every candidate we endorse is closely vetted to ensure that their values are aligned with those of Muslim Americans. In politics we’re often left with a choice between two candidates, neither of whom is perfect. And in cases in which an endorsee later takes a position out of step with our values, we refrain from endorsing them again. But we would never endorse a candidate who holds a view or acts in a way that would hurt our community.
Where do we go from here?
Emgage has long supported allies who have walked shoulder-to-shoulder with our Muslim communities and advocated for our voices to be heard in political discourse. As our democracy hangs in the balance heading into the 2024 election, we know that collective action can shape a future rooted in justice and equality. We aren’t perfect and have made mistakes, but we will always work with people who share our vision for human rights and justice, and empower those within our community to take an active role in the civic process. This is our commitment to each and every one of you.
And to my Emgage team — I am sorry that the obsessive articles and WhatsApp messages from these individuals and their small band of collaborators has had such an impact on your ability to do your work. I will continue to defend your integrity, champion your successes, and fight against these unfounded allegations so that you can create the change we all believe in.
I know that this letter will not stop the attacks. Nadia and Ahmed will publish new articles (with the same claims) next month and the month after that. But we’re too busy to continue defending ourselves against baseless attacks at each turn. Right now we want to focus on what matters most: turning out voters and mobilizing our community ahead of this critical election.
We will continue to move forward and welcome those who want to join our fight for peace, safety, justice, and unity.
In solidarity,
Wa’el Alzayat
