“Islamists Killed My Jewish Colleague — I’m a Muslim, and I Stand With Israel”

In this gripping address, Muslim journalist Asra Nomani — former Wall Street Journal reporter and co-founder of the Pearl Project — delivers a deeply personal and unflinching account of how the same Islamist extremism that murdered her friend and colleague Daniel Pearl is the force behind Hamas’s atrocities in Israel today. Nomani, a founding member of the Muslim Reform Movement, connects the brutal 2002 execution of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan to the October 7, 2023 massacre, in which Hamas terrorists slaughtered over 1,200 Israeli civilians and used rape as a weapon of terror. She exposes the ideological underpinnings behind these crimes — including distorted Quranic justifications for sexual slavery, the spread of Saudi-exported Wahhabism, and the global failure to confront these radical beliefs. Wearing an IDF hoodie at a pro-Hamas rally, Nomani stood against the tide of antisemitism and fear. Her message is bold and clear: this is not the Islam she knows, and it is time for Muslims to reclaim their faith — and for the world to recognize the ideological nature of the threat. This panel, hosted by the Council of Muslims Against Antisemitism, provides one of the clearest framewor