‘Be Proud. Be Loud’: A Muslim Zionist’s Mission

Anila Ali lost “almost everything” for standing with Israel after October 7. Now she’s convening moderate Muslims, Christians and Jews in Washington to prove the extremists wrong.

When Anila Ali talks about why she does this work — the delegations to Israel, the rallies, the fatwa issued against her by the Iranian regime — she doesn’t reach for strategy or politics. She reaches for something simpler.

“I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do,” she told me. “It’s the right thing to do to stand up to bigotry, anti-Israel hate, anti-Jewish hate. That’s what we are doing. We are speaking up as moderate Muslims — one, who love America, and two, who understand where we come from and where our Islamic heritage comes from.”

For Ali — a Pakistani-born former California schoolteacher, founder and president of the American Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council (AMMWEC), and the first Muslim woman named to Hadassah’s list of “18 American Zionist Women You Should Know” — the case for standing with the Jewish people isn’t a political calculation. It’s theology.

“It comes straight from the Bible and the Torah,” she said. “We are the Abrahamic lineage, and many of our people have forgotten that. So we keep reminding them: go back to the Quran. If you’re a Muslim, you cannot hate the land of the prophets, you cannot hate the people of the prophets, and you cannot hate Israel.”

The morning everything changed

Ali traces her turning point to the days after October 7, 2023 — and not only to the atrocities themselves, but to the reaction she heard from people she thought she knew.

“For me, the sexual violence done in God’s name — Allahu Akbar — God’s name being desecrated. It was a no-brainer,” she said. “If I’m a Muslim, I’m going to stand up and tell the truth.”

What broke her heart was closer to home. “What hurt me most was when my friends, people I had known were Muslims, were speaking out and saying, ‘Oh, the Jews deserved it. The Jewish women deserved it.’ That’s when I said, ‘Oh no, my people have been indoctrinated. Their moral compass is skewed, and I must be the voice to bring it back to moral clarity.’”

She did — and paid for it. When she spoke at the March for Israel rally in Washington, the Iranian regime issued a fatwa against her. She describes losing friends, support, and standing in parts of her own community. She does not describe regret.

“I look back and I say I am so happy that I did — although I lost almost everything.”

“But I knew I’d done the right thing,” she continued. “October 7th was a desecration of God — the God that we all worship, the Abrahamic people. To say Allahu Akbar and commit those crimes is against the sanctity of our Lord.”

She frames the attack itself as a strike against a future that was already arriving. “October 7th happened because Saudi Arabia was signing on to the Abraham Accords,” she argued. “Things were going to change in the Muslim world. And guess who didn’t like it? The Islamists. They couldn’t stand that Saudi Arabia — the bastion of Sunni Muslim leadership — would shake hands with the Jewish brother.”

‘There is no word Palestine in the Quran’

Ali is unflinching on the point that gets her called a traitor in some circles: that Islam’s own scripture, read honestly, affirms the Jewish connection to the land.

“Islam believes that the land of the Children of Israel belongs to the Children of Israel. There is no doubt. There is no word ‘Palestine’ in the Quran at all.”

She tells the story of an imam who approached her just that morning. “He said, ‘Ahl al-Kitab — we cannot hate the People of the Book.’ And I said, ‘Then you’re a Zionist.’ He said, ‘It’s in the Quran.’”

That, she says, is the quiet majority that gets drowned out. “There are so many religious people in the Muslim community who understand this — even imams,” she said. “But they get shouted down. They are harassed, intimidated. And not everybody can tolerate that.”

Ali wears the contested label without flinching. “I am a Zionist,” she said. “I’ve been given many awards for being a Muslim Zionist — and so are many imams.”

Why BDS “hurts the poor”

On the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement — which she first encountered decades ago in Irvine, California — Ali’s critique is grounded less in ideology than in economics and consistency.

“I’ve heard it before, that Coke is Israeli. Okay. The medicines are Israeli — are you going to boycott that?” she said. “Are you going to boycott things from India because India and Pakistan are fighting? But it’s always directed at the Jews, and the one Jewish state.”

She points to a 2018 visit, when she met Palestinians crossing into Israel to work in Israeli factories. “They told me, ‘We carpool, it’s right here.’ I asked how long it takes. ‘About an hour.’ I said, ‘It takes me longer to get from Orange County to LA.’” What those workers valued, she said, was concrete: “‘We get human rights, we get labor rights, we get healthcare — and we love working here.’ These are the things the Islamists don’t like to hear.”

“You hurt people when you say BDS. Who are the workers? Not the rich people. In this conflict, you hurt Palestinians.”

A message to frightened teenagers

Some of Ali’s sharpest words are for educators and administrators — and her warmest are for the students caught in the middle. Told that Jewish high schoolers describe feeling alone, afraid and unsure of what to say, she answered like the teacher she was for two decades.

“Be proud and be loud. I used to teach my kids: you’ve got to stand up to bullies. Be louder than them, and they’ll back off.”

But she wants the adults held accountable, too. “We have to confront our educators, our administration. Why aren’t you enforcing the rules? Why do these rules apply to everybody else, but not to the Jewish people? Do they not have the right to be protected?”

Follow the money, she urges. “We all know things run when there’s funding. If we can’t stop the Qatari funding, we can at least question it.”

Washington, July 13: building the coalition

All of this converges on what Ali is building next. On July 13, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., AMMWEC will convene a conference she describes as an effort by moderate Muslims to hand their Jewish and Christian neighbors a platform — and to show the country what an interfaith pro-Israel coalition actually looks like.

“It’s about bringing Muslim Zionists together to say, ‘This is who we are. Our Quran says it, we believe in it — and we are not going to be shouted down,’” she said. “I want someone to be able to stand up and say, ‘I’m from Atlanta, I’m a Muslim, I support the Jewish people and the State of Israel, and I’m proud.’”

The larger goal is structural. Ali says the aim is to give Jewish communities in every state a partner to work with. “So far we’ve covered about 10 states,” she said. “Inshallah, we’ll have Christians and Muslims for the Jewish people in every state in America — proud Zionists who understand the Quran, who know how to tackle this bigotry and hit it on the head.”

She is clear-eyed that the movement she’s fighting is not really about the Jews at all. “A lot of people in America have understood this movement is not about Israel, it’s not about the Jews — it’s about taking down America, a country that has given us refuge,” she said. “That’s not Islam. That’s Islamism. That’s radicalization.”

Against that, her answer is coalition, courage, and a refusal to be quiet.

“We’re not going to be afraid. We’re going to stand together.”

The AMMWEC conference takes place July 13 at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. Learn more about Anila Ali and AMMWEC at ammwec.org.