Zahra Billoo: Suing Presidents and Serving the People
Zahra Billoo is the daughter of immigrants, a San José resident, a proud American Muslim, a civil rights lawyer, and a community organizer. She is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SFBA.) Under her leadership, CAIR-SFBA has sued and challenged corporations and government agencies that have discriminated against Muslims — one of their most notable cases being against Southwest Airlines for removing a passenger from a flight for speaking Arabic. In conjunction with her role as Executive Director, she is a staunch advocate for Palestinian rights as well as for all oppressed peoples experiencing structural racism.
What was it like to be grow up as a Muslim woman in your community and how has your experience shaped the work you do now?
In much of my time growing up, I was the only visible Muslim. As a result of people’s curiosity and the bullying I experienced, I understood that I had an opportunity and a privilege to speak out and help people understand who I am, what my faith community believes in, and to also use that privilege to advocate for justice for my community and others.
There’s something to be said to be the only girl in 5th grade to wear a headscarf and to have that headscarf pulled off but to also know how I respond in the moment, though I should have the space to hurt and to heal, also shapes how people see me. If I am the first interaction they have had with a Muslim woman in twenty years, what I do matters even more.
That’s something that I carried with me as I went through high school and college when 9/11 happened.
I’ve always felt this weight of my privilege as an American. I was actually at the Faith in Action Bay Area rally at the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, and one of the religious leaders said that collectively we haven’t done enough. That’s something that I think keeps me going — this idea of I have so much and I don’t know if I have done enough.
What motivated you to become a civil rights lawyer and a community organizer?
As a kid, I talked a lot and was really argumentative. People steered me towards law as a career, and it fit. But I don’t know if I came around the issues of racial justice and social justice and immigrant rights immediately — that took time. One of my earliest moments of self-correction, or learning, was around a conversation I had with a student government leader while I was in college when tuition hikes were going up. I remember thinking, “Eh, what’s another $100? It’s fine. My parents will write the check.” I actually think I said those exact words. I recoil every time I tell that story but I recount it so people know that people can change. At the time, I was a teenager in my first year of college — to go from that to organizing mock graduations at the State Capitol steps of Sacramento took a lot of support from friends, learning, holding myself accountable, and being willing to be challenged. It was the work for college access and voter engagement as well as a post 9/11 reality for Muslims that ensured that I would take my privilege and my law degree and put it to use for the communities that are most impacted.
What have been some challenges and victories you have experienced throughout your social justice journey?
I came to CAIR first in college as an intern, and one of my earliest tasks was looking at the security watch list that people were just starting to experience and talk about in 2004. They were going to the airport and having trouble flying. I stayed in touch with the organization after my internship, and when I graduated law school, I was grateful for the opportunity to join this office as an Acting Director. A year later, I took on the role of Executive Director.
Over the years, the challenges have included the usual non-profit challenges which are: do we have enough money? Can we pay the bills? Are our computers running? Which office will we be in? Those kinds of things.
But I would say that the substantive challenges we’ve faced have been in some ways unique to doing what some would deem controversial civil rights work. Arguably, I wouldn’t call it controversial civil rights work, but many would, but controversial civil rights work for a targeted community at a very difficult time. We’ve had to think about informants not just in our community, but also in our staff. We’ve had to think about the physical safety of our team members, whether it is fear following the fake anthrax that was mailed to our office or protesters showing outside at other CAIR office events. Our team has been through self defense trainings.
There’s a concern that when people are doing this work they are both making the sacrifices that every person who works at a non-profit makes but also putting their lives on the line. Having to think about that, we worry a lot about whether or not we are staying true to our mandate. Are we working towards the best interests of our members of our community? One of the ways that we ensure that is that we spend a lot of time in the community. We spend a lot of time in the community talking to impacted people so we don’t get numb in our offices working to serve them.
I would say that our victories — victories are interesting because we are in this very long intergenerational fight against structural racism in this country. For us, we see Islamophobia as one part of the broader structure of white supremacy that is at the core of this country’s foundation. When I think of victories, I am clear that they are progress, but they should not come at the expense of another community.
We’re not at a place to say that the fight is done. When the Muslim Ban was first signed, it was incredible to work with partners and allies to mobilize thousands of people to go to the airports and protest and support those protesters and all the people that were stuck in detention and in airports. [It was amazing] to get elected officials to compete to see who could be more visible for their support for the Muslim community. I would say that’s been a really big [victory.]
Over the years, it’s been really important that we, out of this office, sued Abercrombie and Fitch for religious discrimination and won that case and forced them to change their policy so that they were then required to provide accommodations for people wearing religious head coverings. Last year, when anti-Muslim activists said that they would come to a number of cities across the country, we were really surprised that they were coming to Santa Clara. When they did, we worked with our partners at People Acting in Community Together and Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice and organized a rally that had people mobilize at, I believe, a 100:1 ratio. The anti-Muslim activists mobilized 20 people, and we had over 1000. There are days like that where we know when we work hard and we work with the right people and we have the right values in place, we can accomplish progress, but we want to be thoughtful about seeing that progress as steps forward in a larger effort.
What was the process like in filing a lawsuit against Trump’s Executive Orders, and how did you build people power from that process?
CAIR National filed one of the first lawsuits against the Trump administration. The litigation was called Sarsour v. Trump. It brought together a number of American Muslim activists and leaders to challenge the Trump administration’s targeting of the Muslim community through the Muslim Ban. It was one of two of the organization’s lawsuits and part of our broader campaign around the Muslim Ban. Our attorneys have been on notice since December 2015 that come January 2017, if this person was in office, he would try to target our community in this way. We knew and we had committed more than a year in advance. We would fight them with every tool in our tool box.
With that said, people have asked if it’s scary or controversial to sue the president. I remember wondering if this is the right lawsuit, is this the right timing, how do we do this really well, but I wasn’t worried about how scared I was or that he could do anything to me. I knew, as a US citizen, I had a privilege by virtue of where I was born, which was not something that I did or earn, but just literally where my parents were that made it possible for me to challenge this president in a way that my siblings, who are siblings in the broader sense, who are undocumented, couldn’t, or who aren’t US citizens couldn’t. I had a moral obligation to do so.
We used that litigation and our friend, Linda Sarsour, was the named lead plaintiff on that because we knew she had incredible name prominence. It wouldn’t be a stranger suing the government — it was someone that many of us knew, and the same was true for many of us plaintiffs. We were leaders in our communities and so it made it accessible for people to understand. Our partners at Mpower Change put together an amicus brief that had signers from across the country. They used it as a petition gathering opportunity — it’s not a way that I’ve seen petitions used before but that’s what made it impactful. Random people could sign the petition to support the lawsuit against the Trump administration.
For us, we also wanted to be really clear that the fight against the Muslim Ban was not a fight that was restricted to the courts. In my capacity as a director here and for CAIR SFBA, I co-chaired the national No Muslim Ban Ever campaign in partnership with the National Immigration Law Center, an incredible legal group that focuses primarily on serving low-income immigrants of color and does a lot of great litigation including Supreme Court litigation; Asian Americans Advancing Justice, which has a legacy of serving the Asian and Pacific Islander community and connecting the dots between what happened during World War II and what happened post 9/11; and Mpower Change which is a Muslim racial justice digital organizing group to connect litigators to communicators to organizers to ordinary people. Whenever we’ve had major wins in social justice history, it’s never been just about the courts. It’s always been about the protests, the courts, the media, and the people power that’s built. When I say we see this fight as part of a bigger fight, why we don’t want to fight it in just the courts, we want to make sure that we are building the right conversations in the community.
What trends do you see in the San José Muslim community and how do want to see the movement grow in this area?
It’s been really powerful to see Muslims step into their voice and step into their privilege in many cases. It’s been really powerful and incredible to see San José Muslims step into their voices and power and demand that they be treated with dignity and respect and demand that they not be censored or disavowed when they have unpopular things to say particularly on controversial issues. It is through their ownership of their voice that they will build power rather than on a reliance on others to save them or on allies to do their work. I also think that where I have a lot of hope is in all of the post November 2016 election mobilization in particular. I’m excited to see more Muslims who are asking for housing rights and advocating for police accountability, who are challenging us to do more on immigration, and not just Muslim Ban immigration issues but rather asylum and border issues as well. For me, a silver lining of the last year and a half has been saying enough is enough, we’re gonna fight for ourselves and for our neighbors.
What dreams do you have for your community, either regionally or internationally?
Regionally, I am hopeful that the Muslim community will grow as a voice for justice — not just for us, but for everyone. Internationally, it’s almost hard to distinguish the two in some ways because so many of the problems internationally are connected to US foreign policy. Internationally, I pray for the day that Palestine is free and that there is democracy unfettered by US military influence in Muslim majority countries across the world.
What words of wisdom do you have for people interested in your work?
There’s a few different ideas that come to mind — one of them is check on your strong friends. The other is, for me, this isn’t work, this is worship. I see the opportunity to worship in everything that we do, and I invite others to join in purpose driven, social justice efforts. [Lastly], sometimes I have to remind myself that my job isn’t to save people, it’s to serve them.
