Dear Friend,
Please accept our salaams and our warmest greetings — we hope you and your families are approaching the close of another challenging year in the best of health and spirits.
We are writing to thank you, on behalf of every member of Muslim Advocates’ staff and Board, for your support over the years. 2021 has been another eventful year for all of us, and at Muslim Advocates we have been grateful every single day that you have donated and made it possible for us to meet the challenges of this year. Your continued belief in our mission and support of our work in the courts, in other halls of power and throughout communities has helped us accomplish so much this year.
Your generosity made it possible for us to work alongside the family of Muhammad Muhaymin, Jr.—a Black, disabled Muslim man who was arrested and killed by police officers after he tried to bring his service dog into a public restroom in Phoenix, Arizona. When Mr. Muhaymin’s family sued the City of Phoenix, the City tried to seal the court hearing documents to avoid public scrutiny of its actions and practices. Muslim Advocates intervened, brought our legal expertise to bear and convinced a judge to unseal the records. We also helped the Muhaymin family connect with the U.S. Department of Justice, who then announced an important investigation into the actions of the Phoenix Police Department this summer.
Our work isn’t finished. We’re still reviewing the thousands of pages of documents from the record and working to ensure accountability on the part of the police. Your support allows us to continue to walk with Mr. Muhaymin’s family and your contribution helps us keep fighting alongside them. You supported Muslim Advocates’ fight to hold Facebook accountable for the dangerous, anti-Muslim content that is rampant on its site. After years of empty promises, in April 2021 we sued Facebook and its executives including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg for intentionally misleading Congress and the public about their ability and willingness to remove hate speech and content violating their rules.
Even before Frances Haugen’s whistleblower testimony and before the Facebook papers were reported in the media, Muslim Advocates was fighting on your behalf, telling the world how Facebook was endangering not just American Muslims but the public at large with their failure to prevent the spread of hateful content.
Muslim Advocates’ efforts to hold Facebook accountable for its actions were joined last week by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine and leading consumer groups – Consumer Reports, Public Knowledge and Upturn – who all filed amici curiae briefs supporting our lawsuit and our argument that Facebook is not above the law and must be held accountable.
Your support is essential now more than ever so we can continue this fight against Facebook and other companies responsible for anti-Muslim hate accountable. We hope we can continue to count on you. Muslim Advocates has always spoken truth to power, including when members of Congress spread anti-Muslim hate. When Rep. Lauren Boebert repeatedly attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar and called her a suicide bomber, Muslim Advocates worked in partnership with Bend the Arc: Jewish Action to file a formal demand for an ethics investigation of Rep. Boebert and we launched a campaign to pressure Republican leaders to hold her accountable and strip her of her committee assignments.
Your support is needed to continue our fight to hold Rep. Boebert accountable for her hateful, dangerous words and actions. As Muslim Advocates’ Senior Policy Counsel, Sumayyah Waheed wrote in the Washington Post on December 8, “[t]here is a direct line connecting anti-Muslim and antisemitic political attacks to violence. We saw [a] heartbreaking example of this recently when [Rep.] Omar played a terrifying, profane death threat she received after Boebert’s anti-Muslim tirade made headlines.”
Year end giving is an important time for Muslim Advocates. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, your generosity and support is what enables Muslim Advocates to work on behalf of American Muslims and all people to halt bigotry in its tracks, no matter where we find it.
Please consider donating to Muslim Advocates so together we can build a better future. We wish you and your family a happy, healthy and peaceful 2022.
Farah Brelvi and Asifa Quraishi-Landes Interim Co-Executive Directors Muslim Advocates |