Kamal Ghorui
Sameerah Munshi, the sole Muslim woman serving on US President Donald Trump’s religious freedom committee, has announced her resignation, saying she is stepping down “in protest.”Munshi shared the announcement on X, where the post quickly gained traction. In the message, she explained that she had been serving as a Presidential appointee and advisor to the White House Religious Liberty Commission.She stated that her resignation was driven by what she described as the “injustice and atrocities of this administration at home and abroad.” The post also included a Substack essay where she elaborated on the reasons behind her resignation.In her essay, Munshi said she was stepping down “in protest” of two developments she described as deeply troubling.The first was the removal of commissioner Carrie Prejean-Boller, which she said was due to the latter’s beliefs about Palestine.The second was what she called the government’s illegal war against Iran, which she argued had been “undertaken without clear constitutional or congressional authorisation.”Munshi also alleged that some members of the commission “mocked my faith and treated my community with hostility.”Despite this, she said she had initially accepted the appointment in 2025 in hopes of remaining a “voice of reason.”Munshi claimed that the rights of the American Muslims were being ‘sidelined’ and their existence was met with a hateful rhetoric intended to ‘advancing particular political agendas’. She also revealed that her family, both Christian and Muslim, came to America ‘fleeing religious discrimination and persecution’ which shaped her commitment to religious liberty, and her belief in America as a safe haven for ‘people of all religions’. However, she found the commission to be driven by ulterior motives. She claimed people of faith were having their free expression stripped away and lives put at risk, due to their deeply held beliefs about Palestine, all for the ‘sake’ of a Zionist political agenda. Here, she cited the example of the removal of Prejean Boller, saying the commissioner’s faith-based stance had been treated as an affront to free expression and religious liberty. She also condemned the Trump administration’s unlawful killing of children and civilians in Iran, at the ‘urging of a genocidal state’. “Not only is the American public against this aggression, but our tax dollars are funding the very violence that we oppose, both against innocent Palestinians and now Iranians,” she added. Lastly, she boldly added that she was not resigning out of ‘fear or intimidation’ from anyone affiliated with the Commission, the government or any interest group. However, she blamed what she saw as injustice of the members of the commission as the cause. “I support America over Israel, and unfortunately that means I cannot support Trump or this government.”Munshi supported Prejean-Boller, who revealed on X on Thursday that the president, who appoints all the commissioners, had fired her for what she believes is her stand against the genocide committed by Israel in Gaza and her pushback against those who call her antisemitic for her anti-Zionist views. Her firing followed a viral clip of her heated exchange at a February meeting of the commission where she insisted that Catholicism and Zionism are not compatible. Moreover, Munshi, who was the director of the Religious Freedom Institute, shared with the Middle East Eye that she started feeling isolated from the programme ever since September 2025, when she provided testimony to the commission on what she said was a constitutionally-protected right in schools to protect Israel’s killing of Palestinians. “After I testified about Palestine, I stopped receiving the witness lists before each hearing, so I don’t know if that was a coincidence, if it was organisational, just a miscommunication on their end, or if they literally held it against me about what I testified on,” she described. Israel’s war on Gaza killed 72,136 Palestinians. As per Reuters, by March 9, the Iranian state media reported the death toll of the Iran vs US-Israel war to be 1,270 people. While Americans have been protesting against the Israel-Hamas war since 2023, they are absolutely against the war with Iran. As per a CNN poll conducted by SRSS, nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of the US decision to take military action in Iran.
