Linda Sarsour

Linda Sarsour (born 1980 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American political activist of Palestinian descent, former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York and a co-chair of the 2017 Women's March. ^{1 2} She is a Muslim; no source used here names a school or madhhab for her, so her data record leaves her faith as unknown. ¹

Sarsour was born in Brooklyn, the eldest of seven children of Palestinian immigrants; her father owned a small market in Crown Heights called Linda's. ^{1 2} She was raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, attended John Jay High School in Park Slope, and took courses at Kingsborough Community College and Brooklyn College intending to become an English teacher. ¹ She entered an arranged marriage at 17 and had three children by her mid-20s; both her family and her husband are from al-Bireh in the West Bank. ^{1 2}

Her activism began with advocacy for the civil rights of American Muslims after the September 11 attacks. ¹ Basemah Atweh, a relative who founded the Arab American Association of New York, recruited her as a volunteer and became her mentor; when Atweh died in a car crash in 2005, Sarsour, who was driving and was not seriously injured, succeeded her as executive director at the age of 25 and grew the organisation's budget from $50,000 to $700,000 a year. ¹ She first gained attention protesting police surveillance of American Muslims, campaigned for New York's Community Safety Act, and took part in the successful campaign to have Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr recognised in New York City public schools from 2015. ¹

After the killing of Michael Brown in 2014, Sarsour helped organise Black Lives Matter protests and co-founded Muslims for Ferguson. ^{1 2} She co-founded MPOWER Change, described by the Kennedy Center as the first Muslim online organising platform, was recognised by the White House in 2012 as a Champion of Change, and served as a surrogate for Bernie Sanders in 2016. ^{1 2} She co-chaired the 2015 March2Justice, a 250-mile march from New York City to Washington, D.C. ²

Recruited as a co-chair of the 2017 Women's March, Sarsour actively opposed the Trump administration's travel ban and was lead plaintiff, in a case brought by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in a legal challenge arguing the ban existed to keep Muslims out of the United States. ¹ She and her co-chairs were named to the Time 100 in 2017, and she co-chaired the 2017 Day Without a Woman and the 2019 Women's March before stepping down from the organisation in September 2019. ¹

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

Sarsour advocates for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories, supports a one-state solution while stating that Israel has a right to exist and that she supports neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority, and fully supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. ¹ Some liberals and progressives praise her activism; some conservatives and Jewish leaders and organisations criticise her stance and remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Anti-Defamation League's director said her support for BDS increases antisemitism. ¹ Sarsour has disputed accusations of antisemitism, saying her criticism of the state of Israel has been wrongly conflated with antisemitism, and she has worked with left-wing Jewish groups including Jewish Voice for Peace. ¹

In 2018-2019 she and Tamika Mallory were criticised over their perceived refusal to clearly condemn Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan; the Women's March founder called on the co-chairs to step down, Sarsour suggested the criticism of her was due to her support for BDS, and she later apologised to supporters, to Jewish members and to LGBTQ members for not making the leadership's commitment to combating antisemitism clear. ¹ Her 2017 use of the word jihad in a speech to the Islamic Society of North America — quoting a saying that a word of truth before a tyrant is the best jihad — was accused by conservative outlets of calling for violence; she and other commentators rejected that reading, citing her nonviolent activism, and she wrote that the term had been misused by right-wing and Muslim extremists alike. ¹ A deleted 2011 tweet about Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brigitte Gabriel, in which she wrote that she wished she could take their vaginas away, was criticised by Ali, who called her a fake feminist; in 2017 Sarsour told the Washington Post the tweet was stupid and that she did not remember writing it. ¹ She also led crowdfunding to repair a vandalised Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, an effort supporters cite in her defence and which an assemblyman accused her of withholding funds from — an accusation she attributed to alt-right Zionists. ¹

• 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.