Zahra Billoo

Zahra Billoo is an American civil-rights attorney and the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area office (CAIR-SFBA), the oldest CAIR chapter office, which she joined in 2009 and has led since 2010. ^{1 2} She is a Muslim; no source used here names a school or madhhab for her, so her data record leaves her faith as unknown. ¹

Billoo studied political science and human resources management at California State University, Long Beach, where she was president of the Muslim Student Association, active in student government and a labour-rights intern, and she interned with CAIR on the treatment of Muslims at airports. ² She took her Juris Doctor at the University of California, Hastings (now UC Law San Francisco), graduating in 2009, and is licensed to practise law in California. ^{2 1}

She joined CAIR-SFBA as a programme director in 2009 and became executive director the following year. ² Under her leadership the office grew six-fold into one of the largest CAIR offices in the country, filing lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Justice, Abercrombie & Fitch and Southwest Airlines on behalf of American Muslims facing discriminatory treatment, running near-weekly know-your-rights sessions, and representing Bay Area residents facing FBI interviews, employment discrimination, airport harassment, school bullying and hate crimes. ¹ One early case sued Abercrombie & Fitch on behalf of a woman fired for wearing a headscarf. ² She was a plaintiff in Sarsour v. Trump, the challenge to the Trump travel ban, and spoke at the 2017 Women's March in Washington. ¹

Her awards include the 2017 Human Rights Award from the Society of American Law Teachers and the 2018 Community Builder Award from People Acting in Community Together (PACT); the San Jose Mercury News named her a Woman to Watch in March 2017, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy featured her in its January 2018 cover story on millennials who lead. ¹

This section sets out positions and responses as reported in the sources read for this record; it is not a verdict by the museum.

Billoo's public statements on Israel and Zionism have repeatedly drawn criticism. In September 2019, days after she joined the Women's March board, the board voted on 18 September to remove her after a backlash to earlier tweets of hers that equated Israel to the Nazis and ISIS, among others. ³ Billoo said she had been voted off as part of an Islamophobic smear campaign, defended the tweets as telling the truth as her community has lived it, and accused the Women's March of caving to pressure. ³ The Anti-Defamation League's chief executive welcomed the removal, saying her views had no place in an organisation with an inclusive mission. ³ Supporters in Jewish Voice for Peace, as reported at the time, called the decision a sign of Islamophobia inside progressive movements. ³

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
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