By: Lubna Hassan Heikal, MPAC Policy Intern
Two decades after the tragic events of 9/11, the Biden Administration made good on its promise to withdraw all U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, ending the longest war in American history. Before the withdrawal was complete, the Taliban began taking control of city after city and one province after another. Sadly, the withdrawal left the American citizens and Afghan allies behind. Critically, women and girls along with religious minorities including the Hazaras are vulnerable to human rights violations and abuse. To address this issue, Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified in front of…
By: Prema Rahman, MPAC Policy Analyst
“I just read the meeting minutes of the Taliban’s latest meeting, and I can’t tell you how professional their meeting minutes were and how focused their agenda was on banking, liquidity, on economy — this is a much more sophisticated Taliban than 20 years ago.”
Maryam Qudrad, the Director of the Writer and Communication Resource Center at California State University, Long Beach and former Adviser to the Ministry of Higher Education of Afghanistan, shared this in our August 24th MPAC Forum “Repercussions of Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan: What the U.S. Should Do”. We held…
By: MPAC Policy Bureau
Zaki was a member of the Afghan youth soccer team with his entire life ahead of him. On Monday of this week, he decided the best way to ensure his future was to cling to a United States’ military plane. Sadly, he fell and never had a chance to see adulthood nor realize his potential.
Just think about that for a moment. …
By: Leela Cullity, Hesham Jarmankani, Ezgi Koc, Eshita Rahman, MPAC Policy Interns
No individual, regardless of their ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs, should ever be made to feel less than their peers. Sadly, this happens too often in countries that are strong and long-standing allies of the United States, and their blatant abuse of human rights, civil rights, and civil liberties goes unchecked, with no impact on the bilateral relationship.
These same social issues and human rights have ironically become weaponized to attack, militarily or financially, countries that are not in line with the United States. Most notably, religious freedom for Christians was one of the reasons why Sudan…
By: MPAC Policy Bureau
This week, the Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC) held a two-part hearing, titled “Domestic Terrorism and Violent Extremism: Examining the Threat of Racially, Ethnically, Religiously, and Politically Motivated Attacks”, examining the threat of domestic terrorism and racially motivated attacks. The hearings explored how the federal government, including Congress, can protect Americans from and prevent domestic terrorism through effective counterterrorism policies. We thank Chairman Gary Peters (D-MI) and the Committee for prioritizing this issue and for taking the time to investigate how best to mitigate this threat.
The witness list for the first hearing included Wade Henderson, Eric…
By: MPAC DC Bureau
The Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have all specified that the single greatest threat to the safety and security of Americans all over the country is that of white supremacist violence and racially motivated violent extremists (RMVEs).
To this end, last week on Eid al-Adha, we presented our joint report with Emgage Action, The Double Standards of U.S. FTO vs. DTO Prosecution, in the United States Capitol. The report details the double standards of terrorism prosecution that have long existed in U.S. …
Washington D.C. — On Friday, July 30th, the White House announced a series of nominations for critical religious affairs roles. The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) congratulates Rashad Hussain and Khizr Khan on their nominations. Rashad Hussain is the first Muslim to be nominated for Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Khizr Khan, Gold Star Father of Captain Humayun Khan, has been appointed as a Commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Mr. Khan first made history in 2016 in his speech to the Democratic National Convention. …
By: Leela Cullity, MPAC Policy Intern
On the 10-year anniversary of the Oslo attack, the Forums at MPAC hosted a special conversation, titled “Oslo: The Tipping Point of Global White Nationalism”, with three leading experts, each working to combat the rising threat of global white supremacy: Dr. Torkel Brekke, Dr. Sindre Bangstad, and Daryl Johnson. The July 22nd, 2011 terrorist attack in Oslo carried out by white nationalist Anders Breivik led to a decade of widespread global white supremacist violence. The forum focused on the implications of Brievik’s violence on the global nature of white supremacy, the history of counterterrorism policy in the United States and…
By: Leela Cullity, MPAC Policy Intern
Ten years ago, on July 22, 2011, two violent attacks in Oslo, Norway transformed white nationalism into a global extremist phenomenon. These attacks led to a growing pattern of white supremacist violence, yet by and large transnational governments have failed to recognize this and protect vulnerable and marginalized communities. With the resurgence of “strong-man” populism in the United States, Russia, China, Hungary, Brazil, and Turkey, white supremacy, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and Islamophobia have grown strong followings while more liberal governments across the globe continue to grapple with appropriately addressing the issue, consequently emboldening extremists to…
By: Rafael Sanga, Ezgi Koc, Aaliyah Khwaja, MPAC Policy Interns
The Child Tax Credit, a long-standing tax benefit given to parents, was temporarily expanded by the Biden Administration as a part of the American Rescue Plan, a facet of the larger $1.9 trillion COVID Relief Package passed by Congress in March. The Child Tax Credit is unique in its ability to ease the burden on working-class families with a high cost of living due to having children. The expansion of the credit is by no means an all-encompassing solution to child poverty, however, it takes meaningful steps towards mitigating some…
