Daniel Haqiqatjou

Daniel Haqiqatjou is an American Muslim commentator, writer and debater, born in Houston, Texas, in 1985 or 1986 to Iranian parents. He was a writer for the online magazine MuslimMatters from 2014 to 2017, founded the website Muslim Skeptic and its YouTube channel in 2015, founded the Alasna Institute in 2019, and is the author of The Modernist Menace to Islam (2020). ¹

He was born Daniel Reza Haghighat Jou in Houston. The English article describes his family as a secular family of Shia background, and says he was raised in Houston, where he still lives. He graduated from Harvard University in 2008 with a degree in physics and a minor in philosophy, and completed a master's degree in philosophy at Tufts University. The Arabic article agrees on his Houston birth and on the Harvard and Tufts studies. ^{1 2}

From 2014 to 2017 he wrote for MuslimMatters. In 2015 he founded Muslim Skeptic, a website and YouTube channel devoted to interfaith criticism, critiques of modernism, current events and family issues. In 2019 he founded the Alasna Institute, an online Islamic seminary offering courses on traditional Islamic disciplines and critiques of ideologies it considers modernist. His book The Modernist Menace to Islam appeared in 2020. Academics Sahar Ghumkhor and Hizer Mir analysed him in a 2022 journal article as a figure of what they term the Muslim manosphere. ¹

His appearances have repeatedly drawn organised criticism. The Canadian Jewish News reported in 2020 that his invitation to speak at York University was criticised by Jewish organisations and professors who described his rhetoric as anti-Semitic and homophobic, and a talk in Mississauga was cancelled; Middle East Eye reported in 2023 that invitations from Muslim student associations at several New York colleges angered some Muslim students over his views on gender roles and women's education. These characterisations are his critics', reported here as such. ¹

Read this section as the report of the sources, not as a museum ruling.

The two Wikipedia articles conflict about his affiliation. The English article's infobox gives his denomination as Sunni, without a citation, and its text reports that he converted from Shia Islam to Sunni Islam during high school, citing a YouTube video. The Arabic article describes him as an American Shia Muslim debater, a supporter of unity across the schools and a critic of Wahhabism. Wikidata records no religion for him on either of his two items. Because the sources conflict and no second independent source names either affiliation, his faith is recorded as unknown. ^{1 2 3}

• The sources named by identifier above, recorded under data/source/.
• Later translations and amendments of this article to be reviewed periodically with explicit dates.