'I'm a Muslim feminist' Asra Nomani blasts 'toxic exportation of extremist ideology' from Iran and Saudi

Muslim-American activist Asra Nomani has blasted the "toxic exportation of extremist ideology" from Iran and Saudi that she claimed was a "dichotomy for me as a girl growing up in the West."

Nomani also brought up her friend, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and executed in Pakistan in 2002 for being Jewish.

Since then, Noman said that she has been investigating the links between liberal activists and radical Islamists.

In 2023, she released a book titled Woke Army which is a phrase that she uses to describe the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, \u200bAsra Nomani

Speaking to Jacob Rees-Mogg about her life on GBN America Noman said: "You are looking at a Muslim feminist. I am a girl born in India to conservative Muslim parents.

"My parents were socially conservative. We immigrated to the United States like so many families immigrated to the United Kingdom and I was four years old.

"It was the summer of 1969 and I grew up with the feminist revolution. And I also grew up with something else. And that was the toxic exportation of an extremist ideology of Islam from Iran and the government of Saudi Arabia, starting with their revolutions in 1979.

"It was a dichotomy for me as a girl growing up in the West. I grew up on this girl detective named Nancy Drew and learned to be an empowered young woman.

\u200bAsra Nomani

"In my community, I was told that I had to take the back door when I went to the mosque. I had to pray in the basement, the dungeon, the upstairs that looked at me was turned to stone.

"I lived this bifurcated life for most of my life. But it was the 9/11 attacks and then the tragic murder of my dear friend from the Wall Street Journal, Danny Pearl, that made me the Muslim reformer that you see today, challenging the extremist interpretations that governments and millionaires are trying to infuse in our communities.

Rees-Mogg then asked her: "And you faced a lot of resistance from this, from the Council for American Islamic Relations, which you say has launched a character assassination on you and wants to silence you.

"How does this influence you? Does this make you more determined or is it quite intimidating?

Asra Nomani

"No matter what community you're in, it is daunting to stand up to power and control. But what I learned from my friend Danny's murder is that so many innocents will lose their lives if we do not challenge extremism in our communities.

"And you know too well that the man who kidnapped Danny was a British Pakistani by the name of Omar Sheikh, indoctrinated in the mosques of London.

"There are kids amongst us who are indoctrinated, who try to intimidate us into silence. And then there are the elders too, who try to pressure us to silence.

"This organization that you spoke of, the Council on American Islamic Relations, they are part of this network that I call the Woke Army that is trying to silence anybody who stands up to Islamic extremism.

"I know that a lot of viewers would be among those people.

"I want to just encourage everyone to stand up with moral courage because silence is how they get complicity and we cannot be complicity in complicit in their extremism."