Anila Ali — founder and president of the American Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council (AMMWEC) — has spent decades challenging Islamist extremism and antisemitism. In December, Ali led a delegation of 12 Muslim American leaders to Israel on a solidarity and education mission, a joint initiative with the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM).

In an interview with CAM, Ali explains why antisemitism violates Islamic principles, how theology is distorted to justify hatred, and what she planned to bring back from Israel to her work in the United States.

You describe yourself as a “proud Zionist.” What does Zionism mean to you, and what do you wish its loudest critics understood?

“I am a very proud Zionist — and I’ve always been one,” Ali says.

For her, Zionism is a religious and historical truth grounded in Islam. “My grandmother told me the stories of the prophets. They all came from the Land of Israel,” she explains. “And when I read the Quran, I read that God tells Moses: ‘Go unto thy land and reside therein forever.'”

Ali points out that the Quran repeatedly affirms the Jewish people’s connection to the Land of Israel. “God calls Abraham His best friend — Khalil Allah — and tells us that the children of Abraham were chosen,” she says. “So how can I go against a commandment from my Lord?”

To Muslims who deny Jewish indigeneity, her response is direct. “Open the Quran. Engage with it. Read what you are actually saying in your prayers,” she says. Ali explains that Muslims invoke the children of Abraham in their daily prayers — an invocation that makes denying Jewish connection to the land incompatible with Islam.

You lead an organization dedicated to women’s empowerment and interfaith engagement. What led you to found AMMWEC, and has it been easy to find like-minded partners?

AMMWEC was founded in the aftermath of September 11, during a moment of deep reckoning within Muslim communities in the United States. “When I came to America soon after 9/11, I believed it was my duty as a responsible Muslim to fight extremism — both from within our own community and wherever it appeared,” Ali says.

“There was real introspection,” she recalls. “Mothers were saying: we love America. We reject extremism. We want to be part of the solution.”

Thousands of Muslim women — and men — joined the effort, driven by a strong sense of patriotism and purpose. The organization focused on confronting extremism, challenging patriarchy, and raising a generation of responsible Muslim leaders.

For more than a decade, the organization found broad support — both within Muslim communities and beyond. “But that changed when antisemitism started being excused — even normalized — in public life,” Ali recalls.

She points to October 7th as the defining rupture. “That was the moment Muslim leadership should have stepped forward and said clearly: what is being done in the name of our religion is wrong,” Ali says. “That’s when everything changed. We lost much of the support we once had — but staying silent was no longer an option.”

The backlash intensified when AMMWEC openly supported normalization with Israel and began taking Muslim leaders to visit the country. “We are People of the Book,” Ali explains. “If Israel was being used as a wedge issue, then we needed to remind Muslims — through faith — that this is the land of the prophets.”

That stance came at a cost. Muslim women affiliated with the organization faced harassment and intimidation, and longtime partners pulled away. “But silence was never an option,” Ali says. “Standing up was part of our responsibility.”

You’ve said antisemitism is fundamentally incompatible with Islam. Where do you most often see religious texts distorted to justify hatred — and how do you challenge that inside Muslim spaces?

Ali traces much of today’s antisemitic incitement to the deliberate misuse of religious texts by extremist movements. “What we found is that specific Quranic verses are taken completely out of context and weaponized,” she explains. “There are passages revealed during wartime that extremists present as universal commands to kill.”

She points to a verse frequently cited by jihadist groups, in which God instructs the Prophet Muhammad to fight those who were trying to kill him. “It was a moment of war,” Ali says. “But they ignore what comes immediately after — where God says it is better to make peace, to form covenants, and not to kill.”

This distortion, she stresses, is not limited to Jews. The same verses are used to incite hatred against Christians and other minorities in Muslim-majority countries.

You were recently on a CAM delegation to Israel. What moments stayed with you most — and what could genuinely challenge hardened anti-Israel views?

Ali says the experience that stayed with her most was meeting Israel’s religious minority leaders and seeing religious freedom practiced in ways she had not expected. “I’ve spent years working on religious freedom,” she explains. “Seeing it lived here was deeply meaningful.”

One encounter stood out above all others: visiting Israel’s Muslim Sharia courts. In Israel, Muslim citizens can adjudicate personal-status matters — including marriage, divorce, and inheritance — through officially recognized Sharia courts. “I was completely shocked,” Ali says. “So many of us spent our lives fighting Sharia systems that brutalized women. We fled from them.”

What she encountered in Israel, she says, was fundamentally different. “Here, Muslims can practice their faith freely — including through their own courts — within a democratic state,” Ali noted.

You’ve taken public positions that carry real personal and professional risk. What has it cost you — and what has kept you committed?

Ali describes her work not as a sacrifice, but as a calling rooted in family legacy. Her grandmother, a Muslim leader in pre-partition India, taught herself to read, wrote more than fourteen books on Islam — many focused on women’s rights — and helped build schools and colleges for women in what became Pakistan.

“She taught me the stories of the prophets,” Ali says. “And she taught me the direct connection we have to Bani Israel” — the Quranic term for the Children of Israel.

From an early age, Ali remembers, Israel was not a political idea but a sacred one. “Because of what I was taught, Israel was always holy to us,” she says. “She always said that God gave the Land of Israel to the Children of Israel. That was unquestionable.”

Where can intervention make the greatest real-world difference right now in confronting antisemitism?

Education, Ali says, must be the starting point — but only if it is honest and disciplined.

“Young people have to challenge the media they’re consuming,” she says. “TikTok should not be your source of truth. You have to listen to all sides, read deeply, and think beyond slogans.”

She urges a return to dialogue rather than ideological retreat. “Be ready to listen to the other,” Ali says. “That is not weakness. That is responsibility.”

Her call is grounded in Islamic teaching. Citing a Quranic verse, she explains: “God says, I made you into different tribes and nations so that you may know one another. That is a direct commandment.”

Ali argues that confronting antisemitism requires reclaiming Islamic faith from those who distort it to justify hate. “Young people are being taught to hate Jews using false hadith and manipulated religious texts,” she says. “We have to use the Quran and authentic faith to bring them back to the path of the people God loves.”

If there is one message you want young people to hear right now about truth and moral courage, what would it be?

“Everyone has a choice,” Ali says. “You can choose violence, or you can choose peace. God gave us the will to choose the right path.”

She warns that too many students are no longer being taught how to think, but what to think. “There was a time when students debated, listened to one another, and worked through difficult questions,” she says. “Today, many campuses offer only one narrative.”

Peace, Ali emphasizes, is impossible without dialogue. “If you want peace, you have to talk about how to get there,” she explains. “You have to be willing to listen, to question, and to sit across from people you disagree with.”

She describes the breakdown of campus engagement as a moral warning sign. “When Jewish students no longer feel safe walking into a Hillel on Shabbat,” she says, “something has gone terribly wrong.”