When Sameerah Munshi joined the White House Advisory Board on Religious Freedom in May 2025, it seemed like a natural fit for both the board and the Trump administration that appointed her. A young and devout Muslim, educated at an Ivy League school and fighting against the “woke indoctrination” of young children in schools, Munshi gave the impression of someone who could promote peaceful coexistence between the many religious groups in America while appealing to Trump’s conservative supporters.
Since her resignation, Munshi seems intent on establishing ties with the “woke right.”
Then she resigned on March 14, 2026. In her public statement, Munshi condemned the Trump administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East and specifically spoke out against the joint operation launched by the U.S. and Israel against the Islamic regime in Teheran. Moreover, she warned of the “Zionist political agenda” of the administration, referring to the alleged control Jewish Americans have over the federal government. Ultimately, her resignation letter functioned as an Islamist document, stating that she would ultimately “stand before God and answer to Him” for her role in the commission. As it turns out, Munshi was not defender of religious freedom or a promoter of interfaith tolerance, but an Islamist all along.
Her resignation, which followed soon after Carrie Prejean Boller’s firing from the commission in early February in response to a dispute over antisemitism, was not an isolated act and should not have come as a surprise. Rather, Munshi offered hints of her Islamist leanings through her writings in college and the institutional affiliations she made after graduation.
Munshi’s Background
Munshi was born and raised in southwest Missouri, where she graduated from high school in 2019. Afterward, she enrolled at Brown University, where she earned a double degree in mathematics and political theory in 2023.
While at Brown, she published an op-ed for the school’s newspaper that laid an early foundation of her Islamo-centric worldview. Titled “In Pursuit of Knowledge and God at Brown,” she described the impossibility of following Islam while attaining a secular western education, claiming that “Muslims, along with other people of faith, may only have a place in the academy if they too cleanse themselves of their religion.” Additionally, she criticized Brown for prioritizing “a secular worldview when given a choice between a secular and an Islamic worldview.” While Munshi was writing as a Muslim, this argument resembles complaints leveled by Catholic intellectual William F. Buckley in his 1951 book, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of ‘Academic Freedom’ in which he famously argued that the school he attended as an undergraduate worked to undermine the Christian faith of its students in favor of a collectivist ideology.
In retrospect, Munshi portrayed Islam as a comprehensive system that should govern everything from education to ethics and public life—even for non-Muslims. This did not stop her from becoming a darling at Brown, receiving the President James Manning Medal for excellence in religious study, an award that reinforced her credibility as a religiously committed intellectual.
Ultimately, Munshi’s agenda was not merely a defense of her faith against the forces of secularization at her alma (a la Buckley) but part of a campaign to promote the “Islamization of knowledge” in the West, an agenda she likely picked up while studying Islamic sciences at Qalam Seminary. Qalam is a Texas-based Sunni religious institution offering Islamic studies which was founded by Abdul Nasir Jangda.
Its curriculum presents Islam as an integrated legal-moral system governing both public and private life. Its radicalism becomes evident upon close examination of Jangda’s career. Apart from justifying the use of female sex slaves and the killing of apostates, he has also appeared to shamelessly justify marital rape. In fact, he stated that “The thing to understand is that the husband has his set of divinely given rights one of which is the right to have his physical desires satisfied” in that context. By taking classes at Qalam, Munshi aligned herself with a community well known for promoting Islamic supremacism and misogyny.
In the years following her graduation from Brown, Munshi became increasingly active in Islamist civic institutions. She served as senior research fellow and later as Executive Director of the Coalition of Virtue (COV). COV’s stated mission is “to promote virtue in society, grounded in divine guidance as embodied in the Islamic tradition, in cooperation with those who share our moral vision” and to pursue legislative change according to that moral vision. This again shows how Munshi views Islam not as a personal devotion but as a system that should guide policymaking for all Americans.
Yaqeen Appearance
In recent years, Sameerah Munshi appeared on Islamist platforms such as the Yaqeen Institute. Specifically, she appeared on the Dogma Disrupted podcast in August 2023, where she talked about her advocacy against LGBT curriculum in schools.
Yaqeen has long been known for its Islamist views. Its founder, Omar Suleiman, has a long and documented history of making reprehensible comments. For instance, he warned that “If as Muslims we don’t take a clear stance on [homosexuality], we will be forced to conform and watch this disease destroy our children.” Munshi’s presence within that ecosystem reinforces her conviction that Islam should be more relevant in public life across the country.
Within these institutions, Munshi worked and continues to work alongside individuals known for their Islamist advocacy. One of these individuals is Kareem Monib. Monib is the co-founder of COV and is known for his Islamist views. In the “Dogma Disrupted” podcast he contributed to which he contributed with Munshi, he explained in August 2023 that “We’re mandated to command good, promote good, and prohibit evil wherever we see it” and later said that “Allah says you’re the best ummah that was brought out for mankind.” This reveals two important ideas: first, that Muslims must prohibit acts that are considered un-Islamic; and second, that the Muslim people are superior to the rest of humanity by divine decree. Monib’s beliefs are not only conflict with Western values such as equality of all human beings but also reveal his Islamist worldview.
Worked with Ismail Royer
Munshi has also worked with Ismail Royer as an intern at the Religious Freedom Institute. Royer is a former convicted jihadist who distanced himself from Islamism in a lengthy interview with Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) in January 2023.
Royer, who has little influence over Muslims in the U.S, but works to promote a positive view of the faith in the part of Evangelical Protestants in the U.S., remained relatively quiet on X in his criticism of Hamas in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre and was quick to accuse pro-Israel activists for anti-Muslim bigotry. He has however, garnered support from conservatives for his willingness to advocate for religious freedom in the United States. On this score, he behaves much like an American Evangelical, urging Muslim parents to “take your kids out of public school and put them in Islamic school.” Today he leads the Religious Freedom institute’s Islam and religious freedom initiatives and serves as a senior policy adviser to COV. COV, Royer explains, is not an Islamist organization.
“Since its founding, COV’s activities have remained limited but have included supporting anti-abortion legislation in Texas, helping to lead the parents’ rights movement in Montgomery County, Maryland, and supporting Christians and Orthodox Jews in litigation with amicus briefs based on commonly held beliefs,” Royer told Focus on Western Islamism. “If this is ‘Islamist,’ then you mean to say that no believing Muslim can participate in public life while believing Christians and Jews can.”
Munshi’s work on these issues became nationally visible during the 2023 Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) controversy. Munshi testified against the removal of parental opt-out provisions for elementary materials involving LGBTQ+ themes and gender identity. She framed the dispute as one of religious liberty and resistance to forced assimilation. The conflict escalated into broader litigation before the Supreme Court, after which her testimony went viral. Apart from expressing her views on the MCPS controversy, she also used that platform to raise awareness about the “genocide” unfolding in the Gaza strip, saying that “Whether a student says, ‘I believe there are only two genders,’ or ‘I believe Palestinians are undergoing a genocide,’ they should not be silenced or punished for expressing their beliefs.” Here, Munshi exhibited a shrewdness by connecting her opposition to LGBTQ activism to her opposition to Israel in a manner that would generate sympathy with American conservatives who might otherwise be supportive of Israel.
Along these lines, Munshi’s work with Royer indicates that a key pillar of Munshi’s activism has been cross-faith coalition politics. RFI documented joint Muslim and Christian rallies in support of parental rights, including collaboration with organizations such as Alliance Defending Freedom and the Maryland Family Institute. Even though the alliance centers on specific issues such as education, sexuality and religious liberty, it reveals the strategic adaptability of Islamist activism within broader conservative politics. Furthermore, it demonstrates an ideological division within conservative politics, one where Islamists have gone from major threat to ally in a common cause.
The appointment of Munshi to the White House advisory board on religious liberty marked the culmination of her institutional ascent. From articulating tension between Islam and secular academia to leading Islamist advocacy institutions, her path reflects a coherent evolution. It exemplifies a form of Islamist activism that operates through lawful democratic mechanisms while seeking to shape public norms according to Islamic principles.
Predictably, Munshi’s resignation was met with praise by Islamist institutions like the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In a statement, it applauded Munshi for courageously resigning from her role, stressing that Munshi “fulfilled the commission’s stated purpose by opposing all forms of anti-religious bigotry and standing up for every person’s right to express their religious beliefs, including opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” The statement then continued to direct hostility toward Israel, stating that “The commission is now clearly meant to protect Israel from criticism, not to protect religious freedom for the American people.”
Since her resignation, Munshi seems intent on establishing ties with the “woke right” with the Jerusalem Post reporting that, “Like Prejean Boller, Munshi is also a follower of Candace Owens, the right-wing pundit who has embraced a number of antisemitic conspiracy theories. She praised Owens’ conversation with Jewish pro-Palestinian academic Norman Finkelstein last fall, writing on Instagram that Owens had a ‘rare willingness to confront uncomfortable truths head-on,’ and suggested future guests for Owens to interview.”
Sameerah Munshi’s ascent from a small town in Missouri to the corridors of the White House represents a novel form of Islamism. Her path illustrates how Islamist activism can move from organized advocacy to directly advising the federal government, and if that fails, to promoting a divisive political agenda. All this can be done while remaining within the boundaries of the democratic structures of America.