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- Co-authored, with Professor John Esposito, the 2008 book Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think
- Was appointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama to serve on his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
- Stated that the Western view of Sharia is "oversimplified," and
that the majority of Muslim women around the world associate Islamic Law
with "gender justice"
- Views the United States as a nation rife with discrimination against Muslims
Born
in Cairo, Egypt in 1974, Dalia Mogahed immigrated
to the United States with her family at age 5 and later became a
naturalized American citizen. She earned
an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the University
of Wisconsin, and then a master's degree in business administration
from the University of Pittsburgh. After completing her schooling,
Mogahed took a job as a marketing researcher for Procter &
Gamble. Today she is a senior analyst and executive director of the
Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, a research center that collects and
analyzes data on the views of Muslim populations around the world.
She also directs the Muslim-West Facts Initiative, through which
Gallup and the Coexist Foundation disseminate the findings of the
Gallup World Poll.
In her role with Gallup, Mogahed in the
mid-2000s
led a
large-scale survey of Muslims in many nations. She subsequently
reported that, according to her research, most Muslims worldwide support
democracy and freedom of speech; are just as likely as Americans to
reject terrorist attacks on civilians; and rarely (only 7%) embrace
political radicalism. These findings served as the informational
foundation for Who
Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think—a
2008 book that Mogahed co-authored
with Professor John
Esposito. In addition, Mogahed's Gallup survey provided
key data for Feisal
Abdul Rauf's “Shariah Index Project” (SIP), whose objective
was to “define, interpret and implement the concept of the Islamic
State in modern times.” A May 2008 analysis by Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, however, exposed Mogahed's statistics as deeply flawed.
In a 2007 speech in Aspen, Colorado, Mogahed
said that terrorists try "to exploit broadly felt legitimate grievances" in order to gain new recruits. According
to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, "She also appeared to
suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood might be a peaceful alternative to
jihadists."
In a 2007 interview
on Link Television, Mogahed was asked to comment on the harsh
punishments (like stonings, canings, and dismemberment) associated with Sharia Law.
She replied that Muslims generally tend to view Sharia as a framework for achieving "a more just society," "protection of human
rights," and "rule of law."
Mogahed has consistently
defended Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), both of which have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. At the Religion Newswriters Association's annual conference in Washington, DC in September 2008, she stated
that it would be unfair for those groups to be "disenfranchised"
because of "misinformation" about their alleged ties to Islamic
radicals. "[T]here is a concerted effort to silence, you know,
institution-building among Muslims," said Mogahed. "And the way to do it
is [to] malign these groups. And it's kind of a witch hunt."
At the same September conference, Mogahed stated
that "'Islamic terrorism' is really a contradiction in terms" because
"terrorism is not Islamic by definition." Dismissing the claims of
actual terrorists who candidly cite Islamic scripture as the motivation
behind their actions, Mogahed said: "My response to that is, you know,
Cuba calls itself a democracy, but that's not what we call it." To even
suggest that Islamic doctrines might somehow be related to terrorist
activity, she added, was "counterproductive" and a "gift" to terrorists,
allowing the latter to be seen as "legitimate" and as "moral freedom
fighters."
Together
with such notables as Feisal Abdul Rauf, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, and American diplomat Dennis Ross, Mogahed was
a leading voice in the Leadership
Group on U.S.-Muslim Engagement (LGUSME), which in September 2008 issued a
154-page paper replete with recommendations for improving America's relationship with
Muslims globally. A number of those suggestions were eventually
adopted by President
Barack
Obama's administration. Most significantly, the LGUSME paper exhorted
the United States to engage opposition parties in Egypt (including the Muslim
Brotherhood), and to use intermediaries to engage Hamas—in
hopes of moderating the terror group.
In early 2009, Mogahed
stated
that “Muslim concerns over injustice have been
largely dismissed by the previous [Bush] administration, leaving a
vacuum exploited by extremists.” Further, she recommended that “a
senior member of the [Barack Obama] administration go on a ‘listening
tour’ of the U.S. and hear what Muslim Americans are concerned
over”—most
notably, issues like “racial profiling, discriminatory
immigration policy, and the erosion of civil liberties.”
In
April 2009, Mogahed was
appointed
by President Obama to serve on his Advisory Council on
Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, making Mogahed the
first
veiled Muslim woman to serve in the White House. She explained
that her duty, in this post, would be “to convey ... to the
President and other public officials what it is Muslims want.” Nihad Awad, the pro-Hamas executive director of CAIR, said:
"Congratulations to Ms. Mogahed on this well-deserved appointment. Her
knowledge and expertise will be an asset to this important council. The
American Muslim community can feel confident that she will be a balanced
and valuable resource on the vital issues the council must address."
Also
assigned to the Department of Homeland Security's Advisory
Council, Mogahed testified before the U.S. Senate on how the
American government could effectively engage with the Muslim community. Further, Mogahed
was named to the Department of Homeland Security Working Group
on Countering Violent Extremism.
In May 2009, Mogahed
spoke at the 34th
annual conference of the Islamic Council of North America; the event was co-sponsored by the Muslim American Society, which was founded to serve as the Muslim Brotherhood’s
formal American franchise.
Mogahed claims to have played a significant role in helping to draft the speech that President Obama delivered in Cairo in June 2009.
In a July 4, 2009 speech to the Islamic Society of North America
(ISNA), Mogahed depicted supporters of violent jihad as people who
crave freedom and democracy but "believe more than do the mainstream
that their
society, their faith and their way of life is threatened, militarily
threatened and in some ways even culturally threatened by the West."
"They're more likely to believe that there is a war against their
faith," said Mogahed. "They are also more likely to say that moving
toward greater democracy
will help Muslims' progress."
In
early October 2009, Mogahed was interviewed
on a British television program hosted
by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir
party, which seeks to facilitate the creation of a worldwide Islamic
state governed by Sharia
Law. When Bsis and another guest (also a Hizb-ut-Tahrir member)
stated
that Sharia should be “the source of legislation” for all nations
in the world, and repeatedly condemned the “man-made law” and the
“lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism” that exists in
Western societies, Mogahed did
not dispute any of their assertions. Instead she stated that
the Western view of Sharia was “oversimplified,” and that the
majority of Muslim women around the world associate Islamic Law with
“gender justice.”
Also in 2009, Mogahed
lamented:
“Islamophobia in America is very real. Gallup finds that
Muslims are among the most unfavorably viewed groups in the U.S.…
This presents a grave danger to America as a whole. The disease of
racism, by definition, is a bias in judgment....”
In
a 2010 interview
with The
National,
an English-language publication based in the United Arab Emirates,
Mogahed said that her research indicated that "there is just no
correlation between
religiosity and violent extremism," and that "the majority of people in
the
Middle East believe in principles of free speech, free press and a
representative government."
In April 2010, the Investigative Project on Terrorism
reported:
"Since joining the White House council, Mogahed has worked quietly to
ensure that CAIR and ISNA are active participants in its work. And she
has reached out to radical Muslim groups like the Islamic Circle of
North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Muslim
Public Affairs Council (MPAC) as well."
That same month, Hudson Istitute fellow Lee
Smith, author of The
Strong Horse:
Power,
Politics, and the Clash of Arab, wrote: “Dalia Mogahed may be the most influential person guiding the Obama
Administration's Middle East outreach…. Mogahed alone has regular
access to the White House, through its Senior Director for Global
Engagement, Pradeep Ramamurthy, and through Joshua DuBois at the
office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.”
In
addition to her aforementioned affiliations, Mogahed is
also
a member of Women in International Security, the Brookings
Institution's Crisis in the Middle East Task Force, and the
World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on the Arab World. She
serves on the boards of Freedom House and Soliya, and is a
nonresident senior public-policy scholar at the Issam Fares Institute
for Public Policy and International Affairs (based at the American
University of Beirut). In 2010, Arabian
Business
magazine recognized Mogahed as one of the most influential Arab women
in the world, and the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre included her in its 2009 and 2010 lists of the world's 500 most
influential Muslims.
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