Linda Sarsour

Linda Sarsour
Sarsour in May 2016
Born	1980 (age 43–44) Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Residence	Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Nationality	Muslim-American
Alma mater	Kingsborough Community College Brooklyn College
Occupation	Activist, media commentator
Known for	Co-chair of the 2017 Women's March

Linda Sarsour is a far-left Islamist political activist and a proponent of the imposition of Sharia in the Western world, though not of the most extreme kind. She has worked to forge stronger bonds between the political left, including feminist groups, and pro-Muslim organizations, including proponents of increased Muslim immigration into the West. Her message is that the most feminist action a woman could take would be to submit herself to Islam. Sarsour always wears a hijab in public.

She worked as the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York until 2016.

Sarsour has been praised by many mainstream media organs and political figures, and was called a "champion of change" by the Obama administration.

In 2016, Sarsour endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for President of the United States. A noted opponent of President Trump, she was a co-chair of the 2017 Women's March.

Personal life

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Sarsour is the oldest of seven children of Palestinian immigrants. She was raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and went to John Jay High School in Park Slope. Sarsour was married in an arranged marriage at the age of 17 to a Muslim immigrant who was allegedly brought into the USA for this purpose in an example of male surplus immigration. She had three children by her mid-20s. Both Sarsour's family and her husband are from the Palestinian city of Al-Bireh—in the West Bank, and about 9 miles (14 km) north of Jerusalem.

After high school, she took courses at Kingsborough Community College and Brooklyn College with the goal of becoming an English teacher. As of 2011 Sarsour lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Political activism career

Arab American Association of New York

Sarsour's early activism included defending American Muslims following the September 11 attacks of 2001. Shortly before the attacks, she was asked by Basemah Atweh, a relative and founder of the Arab American Association of New York, to volunteer for the organization. Atweh, who held a prominent political role uncommon for a Muslim woman, became Sarsour's mentor there.

When Sarsour and Atweh were returning from the 2005 gala opening of the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, their car was struck by a tractor-trailer. Atweh died of her injuries, and two other passengers had broken bones. Sarsour, who was driving, was not seriously injured. She returned to work immediately, saying of Atweh, "This is where she wanted me to be". She was named to succeed Atweh as executive director of the association at age 25. Over the next several years she expanded the scope of the organization, building its budget from $50,000 to $700,000 annually.

Sarsour has organized protests against police surveillance of Muslim Americans. As director of the Arab American Association of New York, she advocated for passage of the "Community Safety Act" in New York, which created a political office to review police policy, and expanded the definition of bias-based profiling in New York. The law passed over the objections of the city's mayor and police chief at the time.

Sarsour became a regular attendee at Black Lives Matter demonstrations as well as a frequent television commentator on feminism. According to the New York Times, Sarsour has worked to liberalize immigration policy, mass incarceration, stop-and-frisk and the New York City Police Department’s spying operations on Muslims.

She worked to build a more powerful progressive movement in the United States, and her activism has drawn praise from many liberal politicians and activists. In 2012, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the White House recognized Sarsour as a "champion of change". After President Donald Trump took office, the White House removed the mention of Sarsour from its website.

Sarsour successfully worked to have Muslim holidays recognized in New York City's public schools, which started observing Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr in 2015.

Black Lives Matter

Following the shooting of Michael Brown, Sarsour helped to organize the American Muslim community's support of the Black Lives Matter protests. Sarsour helped form "Muslims for Ferguson", and she traveled to Ferguson with other activists in 2014. She has continued to work extensively with BLM ever since.

In August 2017 Sarsour spoke at the "United we Stand" rally in front of NFL headquarters in New York in support of Colin Kaepernick.

Democratic Party work

In 2016 Sarsour ran for a position as a County Committee member with the Democratic Party of Kings County, New York. She placed third in that election.

Sarsour spoke as a surrogate for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential campaign.

2017 Women's March and later activism

Teresa Shook and Bob Bland, organizers of the 2017 Women's March, recruited Sarsour as co-chair of the event, to be held the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as president. Politico praised Sarsour as "the face of the resistance" to Trump:

For Sarsour, Trump’s election came after years of standing up for people he had maligned—not just women, but Muslims, immigrants and black Americans, too. Her ties with activists from around the country helped her galvanize different groups during the disorienting period following the election [...] But the unyielding positions Sarsour took, and the friction they engendered, were also emblematic of a movement that has struggled to strike a balance between big-tent politics and the purity of its platform.

Sarsour, along with her three co-chairs, was named as one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" following the January march. She strongly opposed the Trump Administration's ban on travelers from several Muslim-majority countries, and she was named lead plaintiff in a legal challenge brought by the Council on American–Islamic Relations. In Sarsour v. Trump, the plaintiffs argued that the travel ban existed only to keep Muslims out of the United States.

After a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri was vandalized in an apparent anti-Semitic incident in February 2017, Sarsour worked with other Muslim activists to launch a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to repair the damage and restore the gravesites. More than $125,000 was raised, and Sarsour pledged to donate any funds not needed at the cemetery to other Jewish community centers or sites targeted by vandalism. She said the fundraising effort would "send a united message from the Jewish and Muslim communities that there is no place for this type of hate, desecration, and violence in America". The project generated some controversy because the funds were not distributed as quickly as some had expected.

Critics accused her of sympathizing with terrorists for her comments on Middle Eastern politics, including her stated support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. She stated that while the Women's March was a high point in her career, the media attacks that followed caused concern for her safety. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, "Detractors often focus in on Sarsour's frequent criticism of Israel's policies in the occupied territories [...] Ironically, Sarsour’s acknowledgment that Israel has a right to exist, her support of a Jew, Bernie Sanders, for president and her relationships with politicians like Mayor Bill de Blasio have earned her criticism by Islamists as a self-aggrandizing 'house Arab'".

Sarsour was a co-chairwoman of the 2017 Day Without a Woman strike and protest, organized to mark International Women's Day. During a demonstration outside Trump International Hotel and Tower in Manhattan, she was arrested along with other leaders of the January Women's March, including Bland, Tamika Mallory, and Carmen Perez.

Public speaking controversies

Sarsour was scheduled to deliver a graduation address at the City University of New York (CUNY) in June 2017. Controversy about her appearance began with Dov Hikind, a state assemblyman in New York, who sent Governor Andrew Cuomo a letter objecting to the choice of Sarsour as commencement speaker, signed by 100 Holocaust survivors. Hikind objected to Sarsour's role based on her previously having spoken alongside Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted by an Israeli court for taking part in a bombing that killed two civilians in 1969.

Sarsour said that she had nothing to apologize for, saying that questions existed about the integrity of Odeh's conviction, that her beliefs had been misrepresented, and that criticism of Israeli policies was being conflated with anti-Semitism. The university chancellor, the dean of the college, and a group of professors defended her right to speak, as did some Jewish groups, including Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. A rally in support of Sarsour took place in front of New York's City Hall.

An exchange between Sarsour and a Dartmouth College activist was widely circulated on social media. The student questioned Sarsour about a controversial, deleted tweet referring to Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brigitte Gabriel, leader of the lobbying group ACT! for America. Sarsour objected to a "white man" raising such a question at the event, which was held to honor Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

The tweet, in which Sarsour wrote of Ali and Gabriel, "I wish I could take their vaginas away", was circulated by Sarsour's critics as proof of her intolerant views. In response, Ali called Sarsour a "defender of sharia law", and the New York Times columnist Bari Weiss accused Sarsour of making "common cause with anti-feminists", a charge she strongly denied.

At an address to a convention of the Islamic Society of North America in May 2017, Sarsour recounted a story from Islamic scripture in which a person asks "What is the best form of jihad or struggle?" The answer, according to Sarsour, was "a word of truth in front of a tyrant ruler or leader", who was widely understood to be Donald Trump. Speaking of the need for Muslim Americans to defend themselves against anti-Muslim policies from the Trump administration, Sarsour said:

I hope that when we stand up to those who oppress our communities that Allah accepts from us that as a form of jihad, that we are struggling against tyrants and rulers not only abroad in the Middle East or on the other side of the world, but here in these United States of America where you have fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reigning in the White House.

Sarsour's use of the word jihad was interpreted as a call for violence against the president. Some of her defenders commented that the controversy showed the need for a greater understanding of Islam in the United States.

Views on Israel–Palestine conflict

Sarsour has voiced support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, which has led to criticism by leaders of the Anti-Defamation League, who accuse her of antisemitism. Sarsour has stated that she wishes to see Israelis and Palestinians coexist as part of a one-state solution.

Sarsour has admitted that members of her extended family were arrested on accusations of supporting Hamas, but said that their situation was "just the reality of Palestinians living under military occupation".

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, "Soon after the Women’s March, [Sarsour] drew fire from Jewish leaders for telling The Nation that unabashed supporters of Israel cannot be feminists."}}

External links

• Arab American Association of New York
• The Linda Sarsour Show