Anyone who has spent any time at anti-Israel and anti-American protests since October 7 has seen them: the veiled Muslim women who inveigh against Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza and the “Islamophobia” they have endured while living in Western democracies. They enjoy a great currency these days. Western feminists—of multiple genders—like nothing better than to stand in solidarity with these women as they demonize Israel (and the West in general) while remaining largely silent about the suffering of women in Muslim-majority environments. Honor killings? Child marriage in Afghanistan? Hamas violence against women on October 7? The murder and rape of Christians and Yazidis in Iraq? Those are pretexts for “Islamophobia!” How dare you bring them up?
These days, the most prominent leader of the Hijabi Brigade in the U.S. is Nerdeen Kiswani, a hijab-wearing Palestinian-American activist and founder of Within Our Lifetime. Since 2015, Kiswani has positioned herself as a leading figure in the anti-Israel movement, using her visibility as a veiled Muslim woman to organize and lead dozens of aggressive anti-Israel rallies that openly endorse Hamas, Hezbollah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Houthis while demanding the elimination of the Jewish state.
In the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, massacre, she gaslighted audiences by describing the slaughter of 1,200 Israelis as a “prison break,” dismissed documented atrocities by Hamas as “lies,” and blamed the deaths on the Israel Defense Forces. Kiswani and her allies have even protested memorial exhibits honoring victims of the Nova Music Festival, labeling them “a rave next to a concentration camp.” Talk about legitimizing violence against women!
The strategy deployed by Kiswani and others is simple and effective: portray veiled Muslim women as the primary victims of Western “Islamophobia,” thereby deflecting attention from the widespread abuse of women—both Muslim and non-Muslim—perpetrated largely by Muslim men, all while enjoying the solidarity of Western feminists who prioritize anti-Israel activism over genuine women’s rights. Not all of the women in the Hijabi Brigade qualify as Islamists, but they help the movement by bullying its critics into silence.
Large Roster in U.S.
To be sure, Kiswani is not the only leader of the Hijabi Brigade. Historically, Linda Sarsour led the brigade from New York City, but was ultimately marginalized because of her misogyny toward women who support Israel. (Prior to October 7, there were limits to how far enlistees could go in their polemics.) In Massachusetts, Tania Fernandes Anderson served in the brigade on the Boston City Council before she was sent to federal prison on corruption charges.
Another member of the Hijabi Brigade is Sameerah Munshi, who, as reported previously in Focus on Western Islamism, resigned from the White House Advisory Board on Religious Freedom earlier this year to protest America’s foreign policy in the Middle East, warning that the Trump administration had fallen under the sway of a “Zionist agenda.”
Interestingly enough, Munshi’s now hidden LinkedIn profile, which listed her as a political advocate based in Carrollton, Texas, indicated that she studied Islamic sciences at Qalam Seminary, a Texas-based Sunni religious school led by Abdul Nasir Jangda who, according to detailed notes published by one of his students, has legitimized the killing of apostates. Another professor at the school, Hussain Kamani, has declared that a Muslim man may fulfill his sexual desires with “with a female slave that belongs to him.”
Wayland Event
Newton sped up their interviewing process by three months and gave me a job offer in 24 hours.
The first time I came across the Hijabi Brigade was at an “Islamophobia” awareness forum that took place at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland, Massachusetts, in late September 2024. The event was organized by Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MA)—herself a member of the Hijabi Brigade—and by State Senator Jamie Eldridge (D-Acton). The event featured speakers who, despite their desire to talk about “Islamophobia,” couldn’t help acknowledging that their non-Muslim neighbors in the commonwealth have gone out of their way to bring Muslims into the center of American public life.
For example, Subheen Razzaqi, a social studies teacher at Newton North High School (with a graduate degree from Harvard), described how administrators in Newton, Massachusetts, accelerated their hiring process once she told them she had taken a job in nearby Lexington. “Newton sped up their interviewing process by three months and gave me a job offer in 24 hours,” she told the audience.
One example of “Islamophobia” Razzaqi offered to her listeners involved non-Muslim teen-aged boys eating huge sandwiches in front of their Muslim classmates during Ramadan, a time of fasting for Muslims. Razzaqi reported that the targets of this hazing declared, “That really sucks, but oh my God! Isn’t that funny?” Razzaqi seemed more put out by these antics than the boys themselves, describing what they endured as a “microaggression.”
Leena Muntasser, then a student at Lincoln-Sudbury High School in Massachusetts, complained that others “reduced” her to her hijab. “I can’t begin to tell you the countless times where students and teachers have confused me with other hijabi students,” she said, adding that she was often confused with another hijabi student in particular who “has a darker skin complexion than me.” In some instances, she explained, teachers have engaged in lengthy conversations with Muntasser thinking she was her darker-skinned counterpart. It’s a regrettable mistake, likely rooted in the similarity of appearance imposed by the hijab itself, but it’s not an act of oppression or bigotry.
Muntasser also expressed anger that one of her teachers taught the 2007 novel, A Thousand Splendid Sons by Khaled Hosseini, which addresses the status of woman in Afghan society. To make matters worse, the teacher broke the class into groups in which students read articles from sheikhs and imams about the hijab, which Muntasser seemed to accept.
“But then she’s also pointing out articles from western media and explaining their opinions on the hijab and what they think about it,” Muntasser complained, suggesting that non-Muslims are not entitled to express an opinion about Islamic religious practices. “This is not a political debate,” she said. “Hijab is a religious belief.” Again, pretty thin gruel for folks looking for real evidence of bigotry against Muslims.
And yet another speaker, Mariam Ibrahimi from Northborough, Massachusetts, spoke of the fear she had of becoming a public figure while campaigning for a seat on the school committee that governs the Lincoln-Northborough Regional High School in 2021, at the age of 19. During the campaign, Ibrahimi suffered the indignity of being asked for her opinions about world events that had nothing to do with the school committee seat for which she was running.
To demonstrate that she was a victim of abuse at the hands of a hateful public, Ibrahimi read a comment posted beneath an article about her candidacy on the internet. It read, “If you want your schools to be even bigger, indoctrination/social justice, BLM havens, this is your candidate. These liberals destroy everything they come into contact with.”
Not a very nice thing to post on the internet, but evidence of anti-Muslim bigotry? Not really, just an expression of frustration over the impact of liberal ideology on public life in America.
In any event, angry comments like this on the internet didn’t stop the entire Select Board for the town of Northborough from endorsing Ibrahimi’s candidacy. “This had never happened before,” she said, expressing gratitude for the people who carried signs for her on Election Day. “People were supporting a young person … a hijab-wearing Muslim girl and that was incredibly exciting to see and I think really inspiring for other Muslim people in the town as well.”
ArabCon in Dearborn
More recently, the Hijabi Brigade showed up in force at ArabCon, the convention organized by the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Dearborn, Michigan, in late 2025. At this conference, two veiled Muslim women, Karen Suyemoto, a professor at UMass Boston and Sawssan Ahmed, a professor at California State University, assailed the legitimacy of both Israel and the United States.
Ahmed, a clinical psychologist, offered a “land acknowledgement” that legitimized hostility and contempt toward the descendants of white settlers in North America—just as chants of “From the River to the Sea” legitimize violence against Israelis and Jews on U.S. college campuses in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre. After acknowledging that the Muslim-majority city of Dearborn and its environs were “built on the ancestral and contemporary land of indigenous people”—the tribal names of which she had a tough time pronouncing—Ahmed declared, “As we center Palestine in our conversation today and throughout this conference, we must acknowledge the settler colonial state that we live in and that we exist in today and right now.”
If you want to talk about settler colonialism, let’s talk about jihadism and Islamism!
Present in Europe
The Hijabi Brigade has detachments outside the U.S. One garrison of the brigade is a European organization that calls itself MAGIC—a torturous acronym for “Muslim women and communities Against Gender Islamophobia in soCiety.”
This group seeks to sensitize people to “anti-Muslim women hate speech and its consequences and impact in Spain and Belgium.” By reporting extensively on the negative coverage directed at Muslim women by right-wing or “Islamophobic” sources in these two countries, MAGIC distracts attention away from the violence of October 7, the honor killings in Muslim families, and the harassment endured by non-Muslim women during New Year’s celebrations throughout Europe—all acts perpetrated largely by Muslim men.
The irony is palpable. The vulnerability of Muslim women is deployed to silence discussion about the abuse of women—Muslim and non-Muslim—largely at the hands of Muslim men throughout the world. Now, that’s a real magic trick if there ever was one.
Powerful Buffer
Whether or not the women in the Hijabi Brigade are Islamists—some are not—they serve as valuable assets for the Islamist movement. Their activism makes those who oppose Islamism, Islamist violence against women, and Islamic hostility toward Israel—people who are already vulnerable to the “Islamophobia” accusation—targets for the yet another accusation—misogyny.
In sum, the Hijabi Brigade serves as a powerful buffer for Muslim men who seek to dominate public spaces in Europe and North America by harassing women and praying in the streets and city parks. Westerners intent on avoiding confrontations with these men can salve their consciences—and avoid having to confront their own cowardice—by viewing themselves as protecting the dignity and honor of Muslim women in the name of diversity, compassion, feminism and human rights. In fact, they are abandoning the very principles they claim to represent.
