Muslim American Women’s Policy Forum (MAWPF) is a left-of-center activist organization ^[1] that engages in “intersectional organizing” to influence local and national policies impacting Muslims and Muslim women. ^[2]

History and Leadership

Muslim American Women’s Policy Forum was founded in Washington, D.C. ^[3] in 2015. ^[4]

Darakshan Raja is the co-founder of MAWPF. ^[5] She is a community organizer who supports left-of-center social movements in Washington, D.C. Raja is the director of the activist Washington Peace Center ^{[6] [7]} where she focuses her efforts on the critical race theory-influenced concept of racial justice. ^[8] She is also a co-director and founder of the of Justice for Muslims Collective in Washington, D.C. ^[9] and the executive director of Muslims for Just Futures. ^[10] Previously she worked at the left-of-center Urban Institute. ^[11]

In 2016, Raja said that the Trump 2016 presidential campaign represented “the resurgence of an explicit form of white nationalism, which is white supremacy” and claimed the Trump campaign used patriarchy, misogyny, xenophobia, and islamophobia as a part of an “all-encompassing intersectional hate” targeting multiple ethnicities. She also said that the United States is built upon “white supremacist heteropatriarchy, genocide, and settler-colonialism.” ^[12] She also supports “no wall” on the U.S. southern border with Mexico. ^[13]

 

Raja has also said that Republican candidates engaging in “xenophobic, patriarchal, and Islamophobic remarks” that dehumanize women, Muslims, and immigrants while Democrats “evade criticism of their brutal policies that also institutionalize xenophobia, patriarchy, and Islamophobia.” ^[14]

Raja has supported the #NoDAPL protests opposing pipeline construction, the far-left Black Lives Matter movement, and the left-of-center Movement for Black Lives. ^[15] She has also been a featured as a speaker by the left-of-center Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Civic Engagement Fund. ^[16]

Activities and Funding

Muslim American Women’s Policy Forum is a self-described “anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal,” and critical race theory-influenced “anti-racist” ^[17] activist organization that engages in what it identifies as “intersectional organizing” to influence local and national policies impacting Muslims and Muslim women. ^[18] MAWPF believes Muslim women are subjected to multiple forms of “institutionalized violence” ^[19] and seeks to contribute to Muslim women’s activism in the United States and build coalition with global left-of-center women’s activist organizations. ^[20] MAWPF also says that the United States is “built anti-blackness, settler colonial violence against indigenous communities, capitalism, and imperialism.” ^[21]

Led by Muslim women with a focus on critical race theory-influenced concepts of social justice and “collective liberation,” ^[22] MAWPF focuses its efforts on the Washington, D.C., to combat what it calls “legacies of colonialism” that it believes are at the root of government violence, anti-Muslim racism, and gender-based violence. ^[23]

MAWPF supports abortion and joined 40 organizations protesting a Trump administration decision to prohibit non-U.S. organizations that receive U.S. funding from providing, referring to, or discussing abortions on International Women’s Day in 2017. ^[24]

During the 2016 election cycle, MAWPF built a relationship with far-left Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)-DC. ^[25] MAWPF also partners with left-wing Jewish Voice for Peace in its Network Against Islamophobia, ^[26] supports the far-left Black Lives Matter movement, and is listed by the Washington Peace Center as an organization in solidarity with “Black Liberation in DC.” ^[27]

Also in 2016, MAWPF organized a march with 18MillionRising, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), left-of-center MoveOn.org Civic Action, Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), Bend the Arc Jewish Action, Color of Change, CREDO, DRUM, MomsRising, MPower Change, People for the American Way, and the Washington Peace Center demanding the Obama administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) end the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS). ^{[28] [29]}

In 2015, MAWPF organized an event regarding the surveillance of Black Lives Matter movement protests and other organizations that featured participants from Black Lives Matter DC, National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, Amnesty International USA, left-of-center Institute for Policy Studies, and Wayside Center for Popular Education. ^[30] MAWPF activists have also organized rallies with Collective Action for Safe Spaces ^[31] and in protest of the Trump administration’s order that would bar the entry of citizens from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, and Somalia to the United States. ^[32]