Though I do not personally identify as a libertarian, one of the things I admire about libertarians is their emphasis on protecting individual rights. Freedom of conscience and freedom of religion are among our most important rights. I’ve made no secret about not being a fan of religion, and I do think we need to be able to honestly criticize bad ideas. I could easily write this article to be a brutal condemnation of radical Islam and its danger to society; but to do so would be to tread on well-trodden territory. When it comes to how we treat our neighbors and fellow citizens, there are certain lines that civilized people do not cross. I’m sorry to say that throughout my experience working with the General Consulate of Israel to the Southwest United States, I was repeatedly asked to cross these lines in private, while putting on a completely different mask in public.
I told multiple Consul Generals that, since Muslims made up around 20% of Israel’s population, that as the person responsible for the Consulate’s interfaith outreach, I thought it was important for us to engage with the American Muslim community in the same manner we were with the American Jewish and Christian communities. I received zero traction with this approach from the Consulate’s leadership. It was not until I said to Consul General Gilad Katz “right now, if a journalist were to ask what events and outreach we had done with the Muslim community here, we wouldn’t be able to point to anything, and it would look bad,” that I was given the greenlight to actually reach out to Muslim Americans. Our first steps onto this path were taken in a cynical damage control mindset, and I foolishly believed that I could move this into something authentic and sincere. In over eight years working at the Consulate and meeting easily over one-hundred Israelis, I only met one Muslim Israeli. I met more Black Israelis than Muslim Israelis.
Shariq Ghani is a Muslim contact I made who leads the Houston-based Minaret Foundation, which seeks to build bridges between Muslims and other religious communities. He was one of the first Muslims I sought to connect with, which was a bold move considering he would later be the primary force behind a document stating that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the primary cause of friction between Houston’s Jewish and Muslim communities. (A document that many prominent Rabbis and Imams signed.) Shariq had previously earned street cred in Houston’s interfaith circles for criticizing a guest Imam at one of Houston’s mosques who referenced an antisemitic part of a Hadith.
I arranged a meeting between Consul General Katz, Shariq Ghani, and Imam Basyouni. A few days before the meeting the security chief and Gilad pulled me aside and said, “We need you to tell Shariq that we will need to meet at a Starbucks instead of at the Consulate. Tell them that we will already be over there in that meeting for a different meeting before.” I asked what meeting that was, because I wasn’t aware of any on his schedule. They replied that there was no other meeting and the reason they wanted to meet there was because the official policy of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs would require Shariq and Imam Basyouni to be strip searched upon entering the Consulate because they were Muslims.
My initial reaction was that this was not a funny attempt at a joke. Then I realized they were serious. I thought perhaps there was some sort of mix-up and that maybe different individuals with the same names were a security liability, so I explained they were Americans that I had vetted and trusted, but security would not budge. They again requested I say this lie to Shariq and Imam Basyouni. I consider myself a coward for not quitting on the spot and telling Shariq immediately. Still, this was one of the few instances during my time at the Consulate where I demonstrated any degree of backbone. I said that this was bigotry and that I would not say this lie and that they would have to find a different person to lie. They did. By coincidence, Imam Basyouni suffered a heart attack the morning of the meeting and it had to be canceled. We were not able to reschedule because in the following weeks the COVID lockdowns began.
In hindsight, I find it quite doubtful that this was the Ministry’s official policy but likely the bigoted views of these two men. I think this because it would shock me if, with all of Israel’s diplomatic installations across the world, this scandal never broke until I decided to write about it this week; I suppose that is a possibility. Years later when I met with Shariq he told me that he and Gilad did meet and that Gilad said some very prejudicial things. I was never informed of this meeting before or after by the diplomats, and I assume it is because of my refusal to say a bigoted lie.
When Consul General Livia Link-Raviv began her tenure in Houston following Gilad’s departure, we had our initial one-on-one meeting. She asked me why we had not done any outreach with the Muslim community, and I recounted this story to her. She never said that this was not the Ministry’s policy, but she assured me that things would be different now, and she urged me to move forward with this outreach effort. I pursued this work diligently, reaching out to as many Islamic leaders as I could. We would eventually hold two Sukkot Interfaith Dinners, each featuring around fifty leaders representing ten faiths (not denominations, faiths). At the 2023 Interfaith Sukkot Dinner, it took inviting twenty-seven Islamic leaders to secure eleven RSVP. The outreach had been so successful that the Consulate was able to achieve an official proclamation, which I wrote, from the city government.
Just a few days before the event, one of the Consulate’s security officials approached me and asked if in future events we could use a different valet company than the one we had booked for this event. I explained that this valet company was very affordable, that we had used them for many events, and had never had any issues. He said it was a security issue with the valet drivers and asked if I could find any companies that were “American or Hispanic owned.” For whatever reason, many of the valet companies in Houston are owned and staffed by people of Middle Eastern descent. Apparently, it was very important to be seen building bridges with this community, but they were also deemed too dangerous to park cars.
Consider the absurdity of a closet atheist writing an official city interfaith proclamation for a cynical and performative charade. I’m calling on the Houston City Council to withdraw that proclamation, because it is a lie. I know it is, because I wrote it.
This interfaith Sukkot Dinner was October 4, 2023, just three days before the horrific October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Despite eleven Muslim leaders attending the event and twenty-seven being invited, only three individuals sent any sort of condolence message to me. I have the utmost respect for those individuals, but it would appear the lack of trust runs both ways. I had my annual performance review with Link-Raviv not long after this. I laid Shariq’s statement and the city council resolution on her desk and said, “You and I took the Consulate from this to this in two years,” and expressed how disillusioned I felt that everything had gone up in smoke in one day.
We did have one of these Muslim leaders attend one of the select screenings of raw October 7 footage that we organized, and he actually stood with Livia after and in a touching moment explained how horrified he was by what he witnessed.
At one point during the siege of Gaza, Shariq called me. He explained that one of his American contacts had family in Gaza and that they had run out of medicine and were eager to leave. He asked if we could get their names on the “departure list.” I immediately went to the Deputy Consul General and explained the situation. I hoped that I would be able to use what little power and influence I had to rescue just two innocent people from the hell that Gaza had become. He responded that there was no departure list and seemed visibly irritated that I was even asking. Heartbroken, I told Shariq that there was nothing we could do and suggested he reach out to the Egyptian Consulate, but figured this was going to be a dead end as well. I assume these two individuals did not survive.
One of the things I love the most about America is we really are the first and most powerful country to be able to say our people come from everywhere, because we are a nation of ideas, not blood. I truly believe this is a very beautiful concept, but the other side of the coin is that when your people come from everywhere, you inevitably import drama and trauma from all over the world. It has been a tragedy that has plagued this country from day one, and the way we so often dehumanize each other along these lines is grotesque.
There were Americans killed and taken hostage on October 7. There have been Americans killed and imprisoned in the West Bank during the war. There have been Muslim and Jewish Americans killed in this country in sickening acts of political violence because of this war. The Consulate I worked for was not interested in issuing a blanket statement condemning all of these attacks, only some of them. Take a wild guess which ones.
The level of distrust and tension between our religious communities is tearing at the seems of our oldest motto “Out of Many, One.” Here is my deal I want to offer to Muslim America. If the worst should come to pass and our own government seeks to create a database to register American Muslims (a severe, though not unthinkable violation of individual rights that should shock all of us), I promise to register and suffer alongside you, and I encourage all freedom-loving Americans to do the same. Additionally, should our government ever seek to impose de facto blasphemy laws in the name of social justice like we are seeing in Keir Starmer’s United Kingdom, essentially criminalizing depictions of Muhammad, I promise you I will be drawing stick figures all over town. I encourage all freedom-loving Americans to do the same.
