Junaid Afeef

I am an advocate for peace and justice and I believe that religion is a force for good in this world.

I am a devout Muslim, a patriotic American and a lawyer/organizer working in "the world as it is" in order to help create the "world as it should be."

I earned my undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Iowa and my law degree from The American University in Washington, DC.

For about 13+ years I actively practiced law. I spent some time in the public sector working for the public defender and for a local transit authority legal department.

After 9/11/01 I opened a solo law practice in order to work directly in civil rights and civil liberties where I knew there would be a great need within the Muslim community.

I spent 6 years in private practice and did some interesting work, lots of run-of-the-mill work and I soon came to realize that I was severely allergic to the business of law.

By this point I decided I wanted to find a way to leverage my legal training and law experience in a career that was more interesting and more rewarding to me personally.

I've gone into communications, advocacy and management in the not-for-profit sector. I now do full time what I had been doing in bits, pieces and spurts as a volunteer since 1994 which is convincing good people to get involved, creating opportunities to get involved and then getting involved myself.

I am driven by the knowledge that we live in a dangerous world where there are radical, deluded and sometimes downright evil people who are driving us towards conflict.

These people claim Christianity, Islam, Judiasm and Hinduism as sources of truth and inspiration for their divisive and sometimes murderous work.

My goal is to resist the urge to muddle through life, to resist the temptation to simply keep my head down and subsist, and instead, to do my part to combat religious extremism, nihilism and hedonism.

I believe that people are inherently good, that mistakes happen, that God is the Most Merciful and Most Gracious and that mistakes can be forgiven and that on the Day of Judgment we will be called to account for the good and the bad in our lives.