American University in Washington, D.C., will host a symposium on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 that features an "Islamophobia" expert who has lamented the "extrajudicial assassinations" of 9/11 masterminds Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Maha Hilal, the cofounder of the Justice for Muslims Collective, has also defended Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack, which many Israelis consider their version of 9/11, as a laudable act of "resistance" against the Jewish state.
Hilal will appear on a panel Friday evening entitled "Tracing the Impact of 9/11 Forever Wars: From 2001 to the Present," hosted by American University's School of International Service, whose alumni include Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, "antiracism" scholar Ibram X. Kendi, and Ayman Mohyeldin, the recently demoted Israel-bashing MS NOW contributor.
Hilal is a staunch critic of the United States and the "War on Terror." She often promotes her book, Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11, while donning a T-shirt that reads, "Stay Trashy America."
What little condemnation Hilal makes of the 9/11 attacks, in which al Qaeda operatives killed 2,977 Americans, including 184 near Washington, D.C., is overshadowed by her outrage over the deaths of Muslim militants, including notorious al Qaeda leaders.
In an Aug. 4, 2022, article for Middle East Eye, a U.K.-based outlet that is allegedly funded by the Qatari government, Hilal bemoaned the "extrajudicial assassinations" carried out against bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
"But extrajudicial assassinations contradict any meaningful semblance of justice, especially for a country that constantly parades the superiority of its values, legal system and adherence to the rule of law," she wrote.
Hilal asserted that in the case of al-Zawahiri, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan on July 31, 2022, "the US's victimhood was used to justify a targeted assassination—absent any stated legal process—nearly 21 years after the 9/11 attacks."
"Even though Zawahiri was central to the 9/11 attacks, this narrative promotes the problematic assumption that these killings are the only form of 'justice' that the US has pursued in more than two decades of the 'war on terror,'" wrote Hilal.
Hilal, who has stated that she stayed home from work the day after 9/11 for "fear of being subjected to a hate crime," also complained in the article about former president Joe Biden's executive order to send $3.5 billion in frozen Taliban funds to the families of 9/11 victims. She said Biden's decision was an example of the ongoing "war on Afghanistan" and lamented that Biden had blocked money "from going to the Afghan people, and instead directing them to 9/11 families." Biden's executive order provided $3.5 billion in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.
American University, a pricey private college in a tony Washington neighborhood that recently launched an ad campaign to recruit Jewish students, did not respond to a request for comment about Hilal's appearance on the 9/11 panel, which will be moderated by American University professor Mariam Durrani. Durrani stoked campuswide outrage at Arizona State University in January 2002 over an op-ed in which she declared, "I do not feel how a patriotic American should feel in a time of war. The self-righteous spirit that has swept the country was inspiring to many Americans in the wake of Sept. 11 but not me."
Hilal has used similar rhetoric to condemn Israel over its response to Hamas's October 7 attack, in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered. Hilal called for "#Palestinian liberation" in a social media post on the day of the attack and said that "no power in the world can stop the #resistance."
Hilal has promoted other extreme methods of "resistance," asking in a social media post in 2019 for "articles on suicide as political resistance." Hilal, in an article in 2024, praised Aaron Bushnell, the Air Force serviceman who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., while chanting "Free Palestine." Hilal said Bushnell's self-immolation was a "call to action." And she further complained that media outlets provided suicide hotline information in their stories about Bushnell, calling it "a deliberate attempt to pathologise Bushnell."
Hilal did not respond to a request for comment.
