Muslims for Just Futures (MFJ)
Muslims for Just Futures (MFJ) is an anti-Israel activist group. It endorsed the January 2024 March on Washington for Gaza, in which sponsors placed blame on Israel for the entirety of the war and humanitarian issues stemming from Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israeli civilians. 1 In November 2024, MFJ sent a letter to the Biden administration urging the closure of all detention facilities and a halt to immigrant detention. 2
Contents
In response to the right-of-center Project 2025 presidential transition coalition effort, MJF developed a guide called “Defending our Future,” to assist constituents in resisting “white Christian nationalism” in September 2024. 3
Background
Muslims for Just Futures is a program at Defending Rights and Dissent.4 MFJ focuses on promoting leadership by Muslim women and working-class people. 5 The group also runs Muslim Women’s Organizing Institutes, a Muslim Workers Network, and “healing justice circles,” as well as a mutual aid fund. MJF also pushes the Muslim Abolitionist Futures policy agenda which calls for “divestment from criminalization and investment into communities of care.” 5
Leadership
Darakshan Raja is the founding executive director of Muslims for Just Futures. Before becoming founding executive director of MJF, Raja was founding co-director of Justice for Muslims Collective, which was the “precursor” to MJF. Prior to that, Darakshan worked at the Washington Peace Center and the Urban Institute Justice Policy Center. 6
Khudai Tanveer is the director of operations. 7 Prior to this job, Tanveer was Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging program manager for the Johns Hopkins University development and alumni relations team from June 2022 to March 2024. 8 She has been interviewed about “living on the intersection of Queerness & Islam.” 9
Mariam Aydoun is the senior economic justice fellow, in addition to working as a “Lived Expertise consultant” for CSH, a housing nonprofit. 10
Sana Siddiq is the regional director of the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia (DMV) region. She previously led policy and congressional advocacy initiatives for the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. 11
Funding
Asian Americans Advancing Justice donated $100,000 to Muslims for Just Futures in December 2022, which was earmarked for combatting anti-Asian violence. 12
Pillars, a grant-making organization, provided Muslims for Just Futures with a general operating grant spanning the entire of 2024. 13 Although the amount was not disclosed on Pillars’ website, tax records show a $25,000 grant to Defending Rights and Dissent, as well as gifts to several other Muslim nonprofits. 14
Chicago Community Trust gave Defending Rights and Dissent $8,000 earmarked for “support for Muslims For Just Futures” for the fiscal year ending in September 2023. 15
Advocacy
March on Washington for Gaza
Muslims for Just Futures was one of several dozen organizations to endorse the March on Washington for Gaza which took place on January 13, 2024. 16 17 In light of the war in Gaza resulting from Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israeli civilians, the March for Gaza demanded an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza; the “unconditional US funding” of what it calls “Israel’s genocide against Gaza and the occupation of Palestine;” and to hold “Israel accountable for “war crimes committed against the Palestinian people and their continuous violations of international law.” 18
Immigration
Muslims for Just Futures was one of 193 left-of-center organizations that sent a letter to President Joe Biden on November 15, 2024 requesting that during his last couple months in office, his administration “close detention facilities,” cease all “detention expansion efforts,” and release detained migrants. 19