20 Years After 9/11, Anti-Arab Imperialist Racism is Alive and Well
The Chicago Reporter   |   September 17, 2021
The idea that anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism started after September 11, 2001, is one thing many progressives get wrong. At least since the late 1970s, the U.S. government has been racially profiling Arab immigrant activists through surveillance and the corporate media has been portraying Arabs as savage misogynists.  read more

Help for Afghan Women Was Needed Before Takeover
The Chicago Reporter   |   August 27, 2021
In the short week since Kabul fell to the Taliban, the U.S. corporate media — and those who uncritically buy into it — are once again beating the drum that calls upon Western heroes to save Afghan women from Islamist extremism. While a New York Times headline reads, “Desperate Afghan Women Wait for U.S. Protection,” CNN sensationalizes the issue with shocking stories of the Taliban killing women.  read more

To Abolish Prisons and Militarism, We Need Anti-Imperialist Abolition Feminism
Co-authored with Clarissa Rojas
Truthout   |   July 16, 2021
Abolition begins with dismantling the heterosexist, racial and imperial framework of the military and prison industries. Since the turn of the 21st century, the prison- and military-industrial complexes have not only expanded, but they are revealing now more than ever how deeply intertwined they are. At this moment of multiple global crises and the spirit of prison abolition in the air, we must seek paths toward confronting militarism, imperialism and the prison-industrial complex at once.  read more

Palestinian Feminists Are Resisting Colonization by Fighting Sexual Violence
Truthout   |   July 15, 2021
Sexualized violence invoked in service of the Israeli state furthers settler-colonialism through domination and control. Earlier this summer, several news outlets reported that the Palestinian American Community Center (PACC) in New Jersey, where Palestinian Americans gather for community organizing, civic engagement and humanitarian relief efforts was “bombarded with threats for 7 hours.” Yet perhaps due to the patriarchal culture underlying the U.S. media, the news reporters did not give much focus to the highly gendered and sexualized nature of these threats, which were laced with language about sexual violence and rape.  read more

We Will Not Stop Talking about Palestine
The Chicago Reporter   |   May 26, 2021
Moments after President Biden thanked his team for their efforts in “bringing about a cease-fire” (that was actually brought about by Palestinian resistance), the social media posts of Palestinian and Arab American progressives across the U.S. echoed a similar sentiment: “We will not stop talking about Palestine just because a cease-fire was announced.” Two assumptions underpin this sentiment. First, for Arab Americans, the concept of “cease-fire” is meaningless as long as Israel continues colonizing Palestine.   read more

We Must Commit Ourselves to Long-Term Solidarity with Palestinian Liberation
Truthout   |   May 25, 2021
Forging solidarity means equipping ourselves for the battle of narratives that is crucial to the Palestinian struggle. As many sectors of our society are celebrating the “ceasefire” between Palestine and Israel, a chorus of Palestinian voices are blasting across social media echoing a shared consciousness that this ceasefire could never be enough. It is not only recent events but what Palestinian historian Sherene Seikaly explains as the century-long struggle to remain on one’s land in the face of persistent ethnic cleansing that inspires this sentiment.  read more

Let’s Celebrate Mothers Who Are Fighting to Set Their Loved Ones Free
Co-authored with Souzan Naser and Johnaé Strong
Truthout   |   May 9, 2021
On Mother’s Day, let’s join these mamas and stewards of care who are resisting state violence and injustice globally. Now is the time for healing the many divine forms of the feminine, led by Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color (BIPOC), mothers and the stewards of our next generations. As the world is coming face to face with the truth of our mortality through COVID-19, intensified authoritarianism, land confiscation, border control and mass incarceration, anyone who parents will experience Mother’s Day in struggle. Indeed, mother-survivors of victims of police violence, torture, deportation, incarceration and war have walked this road for decades.  read more

University Needs to Do Better When Identifying Race
The Chicago Reporter   |   May 5, 2021
After decades of institutionalized racism against people perceived to be Arab, Middle Eastern, or Muslim in the U.S., it is a great disappointment that the University of Illinois continues to categorize Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) students as racially white in data, surveys, and university records. These populations face significant levels of racism across the U.S., in the state of Illinois, and on college campuses. To fight racism and discrimination and quantify it, this group must have its own designation separate from white. read more

El Saadawi Was Much More Than News Media Portrayed
The Chicago Reporter   |   April 15, 2021
On March 22, 2021, renowned Egyptian Arab feminist Nawal El Saadawi died of natural causes. A former comrade, she authored more than 50 books and her work has been translated into more than 30 languages. It is no surprise that many corporate media obituaries have misrepresented her contributions, focusing only on aspects of her work that align with the sensationalized racist ideas that circulate across U.S. society about Arab and Muslim women.  read more

Rest in Power: Nawal El Saadawi, Intersectional Egyptian Feminist
Co-authored with Therese Saliba
Ms. Magazine   |   April 4, 2021
Nawal El Saadawi provided us with a framework for challenging capitalist patriarchy and the impact of U.S. global domination on women in the Arab world. We remember Nawal El Saadawi, the renowned Egyptian feminist, physician, writer and activist, as our charismatic and outspoken mentor, from her arrival in Seattle in 1994 to teach at the University of Washington.  read more

Including Arab Americans in the Biden Administration Is Not Enough
Arab Center Washington DC   |   March 11, 2021
Reprinted in Jadaliyya   |   March 25, 2021
In a series of unprecedented moves, President Biden has included six Arab Americans in his administration; partnered with Arab Americans; increased the refugee admission cap; explicitly named the problem of anti-Arab bigotry and committed to end it, and ended the Muslim Ban. Yet rather than quickly deeming these as “victories” for Arab American communities, we need to look beyond individual policy stances or political slogans. Instead, we need to explore the root causes of the problems that Biden claims his partnership with Arab Americans will address and ask ourselves to what extent the Biden administration is committed to unraveling the underlying systems that maintain anti-Arab bigotry or the structures that make policies like the Muslim Ban possible.  read more

Vaccines Aren’t Enough to Prevent the Spread of COVID-19 in Prisons
Ms. Magazine   |   March 3, 2021
The lack of COVID-19 protections in prisons show officials believe that inmates are less than human, that they do not deserve to be protected from death like everyone else, and that their lives do not matter. After a long struggle led by prison justice activists, the Illinois COVID-19 vaccination plan now includes prison inmates, who are starting to receive the vaccine along with prison guards and essential workers. To be sure, vaccination is a good and necessary step. Yet it is not all that is needed and does not make up for the terrible horrors inmates and their loved ones, especially their mothers, have endured throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.  read more

Blatant Racism against Muslims Is Still with Us
The Chicago Reporter   |   March 3, 2021
Shortly after his inauguration, President Joe Biden reversed former President’s Donald Trump’s Muslim Travel Ban, stating those actions are a stain on our national conscience.” This stance aligns with that of the tens of thousands of protesters who, at the time the first Muslim Travel Ban was enacted in January 2017, took to the streets and to airports across the country with slogans such as, “We are all Immigrants,” “Standing with Muslims against Islamophobia,” and “Stop Hatred against Muslims.” To be sure, the Muslim Travel Ban is a racist policy. It seeks to keep out or deport people perceived to be Muslim based upon the racist assumption that “they” are violent potential terrorist enemies of the U.S. nation. The ban was an executive order that prevented individuals from primarily Muslim countries, and later, from many African countries, from entering the United States.  read more

Seven Lessons the US Left Can Learn from Egypt to Resist Post-Election Fascism
Co-authored with Atef Said
Truthout   |   November 3, 2020
Defeating Trump isn’t enough; we must focus on long-haul movements against settler-colonialism and racial capitalism. Leftists across the nation are terrified about the aftermath of the U.S. election. Whether Donald Trump wins or loses, many are deeply anxious about the possibility of far right white supremacist violence. If Joe Biden wins, many worry he will betray the demands of the Movement for Black Lives and return us to a status quo that disregards the lives of Black people, people of color, immigrants, Indigenous people, working-class people, women, queer and transgender people, and people with disabilities.  read more

Mothers of Victims of Police Don’t Want Your Pity. They Want Solidarity—and Justice
Ms. Magazine   |   September 30, 2020
With his face pinned down on the cold concrete floor and the weight of Derek Chauvin’s body pressed against his neck for over eight minutes, the final cries from George Floyd repeatedly calling for his mother reverberated in minds and hearts across the nation last May and ever since. The cry of a dying child for their mother has inspired grave sympathy across the globe for centuries. From the ways the media sensationalizes the grief of Afghan and Iraqi mothers who lost children in the war on terror, to how U.S. culture remembers the grief of Black mothers who lost enslaved children to lynching, our world is full of sentimentalized beliefs that the suffering of a mother is unlike any other.  read more

Radical Mothering for Abolitionist Futures Post-COVID-19
Co-authored with Souzan Naser and Johnaé Strong
Abolition Blog   |   June 18, 2020
Reprinted in Truthout
The initial effects of COVID-19 coupled with the current uprisings against police violence have torn us from our common sense of normalcy. This sudden shift in the toxic state of living under the violence of racial capitalism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism affords us the opportunity to uplift centuries of communal wisdom that abound all around us. The current pandemic made it increasingly apparent that capitalism, not simply COVID-19, is the disaster.  read more

The 21st Century Problem of Anti-Muslim Racism
Co-authored with Junaid Rana
Jadaliyya | July 25, 2019
A year into the United States Supreme Court decision that upheld the Trump Administration travel ban, the impact of this policy that mainly targeted Muslim-majority countries, and the conceptual and abstract terms from which it operates, have yet to be clearly articulated. The core issue at hand is the objectification of Muslims as migrants and racial others. Seen from the context of the global War on Terror, what is undoubtedly a Muslim Travel ban by the U.S. government, offers a significant moment for reflection and strategy-building for social justice movements. On 26 June 2018, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration travel ban in a 5-4 decision barring entry of immigrants from a number of Muslim-majority countries. Before the court was the question of whether this constituted a discriminatory form of animus⁠—an intent or motive to do harm based on hostility.  read more

Here we go Again: Saving Muslim Women and Queers in the Age of Trump
Jadaliyya   |   April 22, 2019
As I researched and joined political actions responding to the Muslim ban—the third iteration of which remains permanently in place—I was appalled by the trend of responses lacking any sort of feminist and/or queer analysis. When responses did mention gender, they wittingly or unwittingly reified the dynamic of centralizing forms of gender violence that can be explained through cultural and religious frames while obscuring the realities of gender violence inflicted by the US state and the Muslim ban itself.  read more

Organizing after the Odeh Verdict
Jacobin Magazine | January 14, 2015
Rasmea Odeh is a dedicated community leader and Palestinian-American activist. No wonder the US government went after her. On November 4, 2014, the US Department of Justice put Palestinian-American Rasmea Odeh on trial for allegedly lying on her naturalization application ten years earlier, when she did not indicate that the Israeli state arrested, convicted, and imprisoned her in 1969. On October 27, foreshadowing the injustices to come, Judge Gershwin Drain ruled that Odeh could not speak of her imprisonment in Israel.  read more

Justice for Rasmea Odeh
Middle East Research and Information Project   |   June 19, 2014
This past winter, I was privileged to participate in several events in Chicago organized by Rasmea Yousef Odeh, associate director of the Arab American Action Network and leader of that group’s Arab Women’s Committee. The events brought together anywhere from 60-100 disenfranchised women, all recent immigrants, from nearly every Arabic-speaking country. The attendees were there to learn English, share meals and stories, and discuss personal struggles, in everything from marriage and parenting to navigating the US educational and medical industries and the US immigration system. The women also talked about fending off racism. Together, they developed solutions for their own lives. read more

Filipino Workers in the Middle East: Frictive Histories and the Possibilities of Solidarity
In dialogue with Allan Punzalan Isaac and Sarita Echavez See
Center for Art and Thought   |   Spring-Fall 2013
The next installation of the DIALOGUES series, Filipino Workers in the Middle East brings together the anthropologist Nadine Naber and literary critic Allan Punzalan Isaac to talk about the many ways in which Filipinos as caregivers have become part of the national family throughout the Middle East. As Naber’s experiences with Filipino nannies on the cusp of the Arab Spring and Isaac’s analysis of the Israeli documentary Paper Dolls reveal, Filipinos’ incorporation into the family is frequently ambivalent and always strategic. Drawing on the work of anthropologist Martin Manalansan, they consider how “frictive histories”—the distinct histories and experiences that trail migratory bodies into sometimes uncomfortable contact—mediate and complicate the possibilities for worker solidarity between Filipinos and Palestinians who are variously and unequally deployed by the Zionist state in its construction of racial and geographic hegemony.  read more

Transnational Anti-Imperialism and Middle East Women’s Studies
Jadaliyya   |   July 2, 2013
Angela Davis, writing on US women’s prisons–where poor women, women of color, queer, and transgender people are disproportionately harassed, abused, and raped behind closed doors—asks, what if we named US women’s prisons as “secret” prisons, prisons that operate within the same political context and rely on similar forms of violence as the CIA’s secret prisons of the war on terror? Davis is referring to the CIA’s secret prisons in places like Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Morocco where suspected “enemy combatants” are tortured, sexually assaulted and raped. Individuals are tortured by US personnel at detention facilities directed by the CIA or by foreign agents within jails assisted by the CIA.  read more

Human Rights from the Ground Up: Women and the Egyptian Revolution
Institute for Policy Studies   |   June 27, 2013
To support women’s rights in Egypt, the international community must condemn state violence, support civil society, and work for economic justice. Amid ongoing battles over the shape of political systems in the Arab world, intense sexual violence against women in those countries, and protest movements by women fighting for their rights, advancing the causes of Arab women is of utmost importance. Yet international human rights advocates often confront the struggles of women in Arab countries far too simplistically.  read more

Imperial Feminism, Islamophobia, and the Egyptian Revolution
Jadaliyya   |   February 11, 2011
These are the words of Asmaa Mahfouz, a 26 year old woman whose Jan. 18 vlog is said to have helped mobilize the million that turned up in Cairo and the thousands in other cities on Jan 25. Asmaa’s vlog, like the stories of many Egyptian women of this revolution offer up a challenge to two key questions framing U.S. discourse on the Jan. 25 Egyptian revolution: 1) Where are the women? 2) and…”but what if Islamic extremists take over?”  read more