Meet Maha Hilal, ‘Islamophobia’ Expert

Maha Hilal is a self-described “Islamophobia” expert who took part in a symposium at American University this past Friday, September 11, 2026, where she discussed the meaning of the attack against America carried out a quarter-century before. More on Maha Hilal can be found here: “American University To Host Al Qaeda Sympathizer for 9/11 Anniversary Who Laments Bin Laden’s ‘Extrajudicial Assassination,’ Hailed ‘Palestinian Liberation’ on Oct. 7,” by Chuck Ross, Washington Free Beacon, September 10, 2026:

American University in Washington, D.C., will host a symposium on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 that features an “Islamophobia” expert who has lamented the “extrajudicial assassinations” of 9/11 masterminds Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

(That symposium did take place.) Apparently, according to Maha Hilal, the two men responsible for the mass murders of Americans should not have been killed, but instead should have been captured, provided with lawyers, and spent years managing to put off their trials, while turning themselves into victims for the international far-left and its Muslim collaborators. Other terror attacks might have been launched, too, to pressure the American government to free them. Fortunately, the government did not take them alive, but dispatched them quickly to their promised paradise of 72 dark-eyed houris.

Maha Hilal, the cofounder of the Justice for Muslims Collective, has also defended Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, which many Israelis consider their version of 9/11, as a laudable act of “resistance” against the Jewish state.

Hilal will appear on a panel Friday evening entitled “Tracing the Impact of 9/11 Forever Wars: From 2001 to the Present,” hosted by American University’s School of International Service, whose alumni include Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, “antiracism” scholar Ibram X. Kendi, and Ayman Mohyeldin, the recently demoted Israel-bashing MS NOW contributor.

Hilal is a staunch critic of the United States and the “War on Terror.” She often promotes her book, Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11, while donning a T-shirt that reads, “Stay Trashy America.”

What little condemnation Hilal makes of the 9/11 attacks, in which al Qaeda operatives killed 2,977 Americans, including 184 near Washington, D.C., is overshadowed by her outrage over the deaths of Muslim militants, including notorious al Qaeda leaders.

Hilal doesn’t think Osama bin Laden deserved death. For her, he remains a hero of the Muslim “resistance,” a “martyr” who died while fighting Infidels.

In an Aug. 4, 2022, article for Middle East Eye, a U.K.-based outlet that is allegedly funded by the Qatari government, Hilal bemoaned the “extrajudicial assassinations” carried out against bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

“But extrajudicial assassinations contradict any meaningful semblance of justice, especially for a country that constantly parades the superiority of its values, legal system and adherence to the rule of law,” she wrote.

When dealing with terrorists, it is not always possible, or desirable, to take them alive. It may be too dangerous to do so, as it would have been to try to capture Al-Zawahiri on the ground in Afghanistan, surrounded by his guards. Bin Laden offered resistance, though he was not armed; the Navy Seals knew there were guards all around the compound, which itself was only a mile from Pakistan’s military academy in Abbottabad. It made sense in such circumstances to kill him on the spot, rather than try to take him alive, as he would violently resist, and might alert others to try to rescue him.

Hilal asserted that in the case of al-Zawahiri, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan on July 31, 2022, “the US’s victimhood was used to justify a targeted assassination—absent any stated legal process—nearly 21 years after the 9/11 attacks.”

“Even though Zawahiri was central to the 9/11 attacks, this narrative promotes the problematic assumption that these killings are the only form of ‘justice’ that the US has pursued in more than two decades of the ‘war on terror,'” wrote Hilal.

What is she talking about? Has she forgotten all the terrorists who received another form of justice, by being taken alive, imprisoned at Guantanamo, and are still awaiting trial? Among them is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, who is now due to be put on trial with four co-defendants in 2028. Very few of the terrorists have been subject to the “extrajudicial assassination” that so exercises Maha Hilal.

Hilal is the woman who described the October 7 attack as an act of “Palestinian liberation,” and declared that “no power in the world can stop the liberation.” Yet it seemed fitting to someone at American University that she should be invited to take part in a symposium on 9/11, and about 9/11. Did no one in the administration think there was something wrong with this choice? Does anyone at American University now want to apologize for her appearance?