Wajahat Ali ’07 makes CNN’s list of ‘25 influential American Muslims,’ writes for Atlantic

Wajahat Ali ’07 made CNN’s recent list of “25 Influential American Muslims.” To compile the list, CNN interviewed more than 100 American Muslims, asking them to name the most influential people in their fields.

Ali, a writer, commentator and former co-host of Al Jazeera America’s “The Stream,” told CNN he celebrates his family’s “multi-hyphenated, messy identity.”

Seeing his “brown-skinned, cute kids … speak English gibberish while eating South Asian food in my home in Virginia – these are moments which are very subtle, and small, and to other people seem meaningless,” Ali said. “But to me they are daily victories. They make me realize that, look, I can be Muslim, and American, and Pakistani, all in one, and this is how it should be, and this is how it can be.”

Comedian and UC Davis graduate Hasan Minhaj (B.A., Political Science ’07) also made the list.

Ali also wrote his first reported piece for The Atlantic, “A Muslim Among Israeli Settlers.” For the story, Ali spoke to Israeli settlers who live in the West Bank despite U.N. resolutions that maintain such settlements violate international law.

“It always seems like white writers get to talk about Muslim extremists and radicals, but Muslims are never allowed to go and talk about any other radicals, because we are seen as ‘too sensitive, too emotional,’” Ali said in a video about the Atlantic piece.

“Growing up, I can say as the son of Pakistani immigrants, Israel was (viewed as) a colonizing force, a force of oppression and injustice,” Ali said.

Ali traveled to the West Bank to gain a better understanding of “Jewish fundamentalists,” he said. “If we can get some people to think about Israel and Palestine through a new lens, new perspectives, why not?”