Dalia Mogahed

Dalia Mogahed (born in Cairo in 1974 by Wikidata and the Arabic article; the English article's lead gives 1975) is an American researcher of Egyptian origin specialising in the study of Muslim communities and their public opinion. ^{1 2} She immigrated to the United States at the age of four, chaired the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies from 2006 to 2012, and was selected by President Barack Obama as an advisor to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships — the Arabic article notes that she was the first veiled Muslim woman to hold such a post in the White House. ^{3 1}

She is director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), based in Washington, D.C. and Dearborn, Michigan, and president and CEO of her own consulting firm; Arabian Business magazine recognised her in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 as one of the most influential Arab women, and the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre included her in its 2009 and 2010 lists of the 500 most influential Muslims. ³

She is not the same person as Yasmin Mogahed, the author and speaker recorded separately in this museum; the two share only a surname. ³

Mogahed was born in Cairo — the Arabic article specifies the Sayyida Zaynab district — and grew up in the United States after her family immigrated when she was four. ^{1 3} She received her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering with a minor in Arabic from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, joined the marketing department of Procter & Gamble on graduation, and later received an MBA from the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. ³

She chaired the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies from 2006 to 2012, a non-partisan research centre that gathered data and analysis reflecting the views of Muslims around the world, and then moved to ISPU as director of research. ³ President Obama selected her as an advisor on the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships; she was invited to testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on U.S. engagement with Muslim communities, and contributed significantly to the Homeland Security Advisory Council's Countering Violent Extremism Working Group. ³

She worked with Madeleine Albright and Dennis Ross on the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project, which produced policy recommendations many of which the Obama administration adopted; she is a board member and leader in the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on the Arab World and a nonresident public policy analyst at the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut. ³

Her best-known work is the book Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think (2008, Gallup Press), co-authored with John Esposito and based on six years of research and more than 50,000 interviews representing Muslims in more than 35 predominantly Muslim countries — accounting for more than 90 per cent of the world's Muslim community, the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind. ^{3 1} She later appeared as a commentator in the PBS documentary Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think (2010), based on the book. ³

Her analysis has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, the Harvard International Review and the Middle East Policy Journal. ³ Her recognition includes being named the Arab World's Social Innovator of the Year by Ashoka in 2010, the University of Wisconsin Alumni Association's "Forward Under 40" award, and inclusion in 2019 in a list of 200 people who best embody the spirit and work of Frederick Douglass. ³

This section sets out positions and responses as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

Mogahed rejects as unjustified calls for Muslims to condemn Islamic terrorism, arguing that there have been many such condemnations and that the demand unfairly implies Muslims would support atrocities committed by other Muslims on account of their faith; she compares this with public attitudes to attacks committed by white Christians, where co-religionists are not suspected of condoning them. ³

In 2020, in the context of violent demonstrations in some Muslim countries against France's refusal to ban cartoons depicting the Prophet ﷺ Muhammad, she asserted that such caricatures were the equivalent of a racial slur targeting a vulnerable and demonised community, and that the French government's defence of free speech in this form amounted to imposing a "state religion" she called "French Republic nationalism". ³

In 2009, during a phone interview with a London-based television show whose host was a member of Hizb ut Tahrir, she answered a question about women's support for sharia by saying that many women associate sharia with gender justice, a different understanding from the common Western media perception; she later stated that she would not have agreed to the interview had she known of the programme's affiliation, and that her team had been misled to score propaganda points for an ideological movement. ³

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.