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Dear Friend,
We write as chair of the Board of Directors of Muslim Advocates (Saema Somalya) and as chair of the Executive Director Search Committee (Farah Brelvi) to share this exciting news. It is our genuine honor to announce that visionary civil rights leader Omar Farah is the new Executive Director of Muslim Advocates!
Watch a video announcement from Omar!
Omar is widely respected in both the American Muslim advocacy world and the U.S. civil rights sector. He has made his mark by marrying an advocacy rooted in grassroots with broadly applicable constitutional principles. As our new Executive Director, he brings to Muslim Advocates the goodwill and experience he has earned from his years listening to and centering the diverse voices of the Muslim and other marginalized and intersecting communities with whom he has worked.
Omar comes to us from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a cutting-edge national legal advocacy organization. At CCR, Omar worked on some of the most trenchant challenges facing American Muslim communities today—litigating against post-9/11 abuses of power by representing Muslims detained at Guantánamo Bay, and building institutional xxxxxxs against white nationalism and institutional racism by helping to establish and expand CCR’s presence in the American south. Omar even partnered with Muslim Advocates on the landmark lawsuit that helped shut down the NYPD’s unconstitutional surveillance program targeting Muslims in New Jersey!
We both believe that Muslim Advocates does vital work. As the new board chair, Saema has already spent many long nights working to ensure that Muslim Advocates can thrive. Farah, one of MA’s co-founders, has spent the past year as an interim executive director working directly with the staff of Muslim Advocates. Based on the privilege of these roles, we have been driven to find the absolute best person to take the helm of this organization that we love. The Executive Director Search Committee cast the widest net possible and spent months exhaustively interviewing leading lights of the Muslim and civil rights worlds to ensure that the best of the best was chosen. Without hesitation and with full conviction, we can say that Omar Farah is that person.
We hope you join us in welcoming Omar to the Muslim Advocates family. It has been an absolute pleasure getting to know him and we are thrilled that you now have the opportunity to do the same. Before we hand the mic over to Omar, we need to acknowledge a few of the many folks who worked hard to make this transition point a success: outgoing Board Chair Rashid Alvi; Muslim Advocates’ other Co-Interim Executive Director Asifa Quraishi-Landes and Executive Director Search Committee members Mohammad Fadel, Kameelah Mu’Min Rashad, Naiel Iqbal, Kanya Shabazz and Eric Naing. We are indebted to the entire staff of Muslim Advocates for their thoughtful participation and engagement in the search process and to the full Board for its unanimous and enthusiastic support of Omar as the choice to lead the organization.
That someone as thoughtful, brilliant and admired as Omar chose to come to Muslim Advocates is also a testament to you all and your commitment to this organization and its mission—and for that we are grateful to you.
With excitement and gratitude,
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Saema Somalya,
Chair, Board of Directors,
Muslim Advocates
&
Farah Brelvi,
Chair, Executive Director Search Committee,
Co-Interim Executive Director,
Muslim Advocates
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Nice to meet you Friend,
My name is Omar Farah and as you now know, I have the immense honor of becoming the next Executive Director of Muslim Advocates. Before I share more of what that means to me, I want to acknowledge the horrific violence in Albuquerque. The outpouring of love we have seen for the families of the victims and for the Muslim communities in the region has been an inspiration that we all must honor by working tirelessly to reject violence and hatred.
As Albuquerque has shown, the heart of all social justice movements is people and Muslim Advocates is nothing without its people. The success of this organization depends entirely on its incredible staff, dedicated board and our community of tireless partners and supporters. I know it is challenging to even think about in our world of remote, fractured connections, but I genuinely look forward to coming to know you all personally. The work ahead for Muslim Advocates is daunting, but also exhilarating. I look forward to sharing the journey with you all. With your help, I have absolute conviction that Muslim Advocates will make incredible, enduring contributions to the cause of social justice.
Muslim Advocates must both defend against injustice, but also bring our institutional capacity, legal and advocacy expertise and resources to help catalyze the social change Muslim communities are striving for. That mission makes Muslim Advocates unique. In my estimation, Muslim Advocates is an indispensable part of the social justice landscape with the reach to touch the full breadth of the Muslim experience. Muslim Advocates should take pride in its role as a leader in the broad, intersectional and truly courageous fight that is underway to guarantee all of our rights and safety.
As I join the Muslim Advocates’ team, I will be partnering with the staff as we build a cohesive, values-based culture to guide our work, expand our organizational capacity and amplify our messaging to reach ever broader audiences. But even as we do all of that, it is our commitment to be everywhere our communities need us to be—listening and engaging with humility, strength and rigor to develop cutting-edge legal and advocacy interventions.
This fight is personal to me. As a civil rights attorney, I have carried the stories of my Muslim clients who endured torture and decades of unjust imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay all with the full, legal authority of the federal government. For the last several years, I have also been leading the Center for Constitutional Rights’ expansion in the American south—an initiative expressly intended to respond to systemic white nationalism as well as economic, gender and so many other modes of oppression. Those experiences have shaped me and compelled me to push back against abusive state power.
As the new Executive Director of Muslim Advocates, I will continue to be steadfast in my commitment to working to dismantle systemic oppression by listening to communities on the frontlines, understanding the full, intersectional complexities of the challenges they face and working with them toward our collective liberation.
Thank you for welcoming me to the Muslim Advocates community. Your support and kindness is invaluable to the organization and to me personally as its newest member.
In solidarity,
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Omar Farah,
Incoming Executive Director,
Muslim Advocates
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