Who is Hiba Rahim?
Hiba Rahim is the Executive Director of CAIR Florida, the state’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation. CAIR Florida has operated for close to a quarter of a century, providing legal representation, constitutional advocacy, and community education to Muslims and non-Muslims across the state. Rahim oversees statewide operations, strategy, and departments, and has become one of the most prominent Muslim civil rights voices in the American South at a time when that voice is under direct political attack.
A Publicity Stunt With Real Consequences
The episode opens with a pointed question: do you work for a terrorist organisation? Rahim answers without hesitation. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order designating CAIR Florida a terrorist organisation, a move Rahim describes plainly as a publicity stunt because DeSantis holds no legal authority under federal law to make such a designation. The power to label a foreign terrorist organisation rests exclusively with the federal government, not a state governor.
But legally baseless does not mean consequence-free. Rahim explains the split in community response: one portion of donors paused financial support to wait and see how the situation resolved, a rational response given that terrorism designations, even illegal ones, carry serious social weight. The other portion responded by dramatically increasing their giving, with multiple individuals contributing tens of thousands of dollars specifically because of the attack.
“When Ron DeSantis tries to silence free speech, we raise our voices, we stand taller, we speak louder, we give more.” — Hiba Rahim · The Muslimi Experience
The operational cost is real regardless. Leadership time and strategic planning that would have gone toward community work has been redirected toward fighting what Rahim calls absolute nonsense through press releases, press conferences, and legal proceedings. The frontline team continues its work. But the organisation’s capacity has been deliberately diluted by a political actor who, as Rahim makes clear, has specific reasons for wanting CAIR Florida quiet.
Those reasons are not difficult to identify. CAIR Florida has been consistent in highlighting what Rahim describes as DeSantis’s Israel-first political positioning, pointing to the fact that his first cabinet meeting as governor was held in Jerusalem rather than in Tallahassee. His policy record on issues related to Gaza and Palestinian advocacy has been equally consistent. The designation, she argues, is not about terrorism. It is about political retaliation against an organisation willing to name what it sees.
Muhammad Ibrahim: Nine Months, a Coalition of 100, and a Mother’s Dua
The most affecting portion of the conversation concerns Muhammad Ibrahim, a 15-year-old American Palestinian from Florida who was detained by Israeli authorities and held for nine months in conditions that saw him lose close to 30 percent of his body weight, contract untreated scabies, and be denied all communication with his family for the duration of his detention. A child detained in the cell with him died in his arms.
His family reached out to CAIR Florida. Rahim’s assessment was immediate: this was bigger than one organisation. What followed was a coalition-building effort that eventually brought together over a hundred groups, spanning Muslim civil rights organisations, Black-led justice organisations, faith coalitions, police community groups, and national advocacy bodies including IMEU. Representative Mike Caradopoulos, Muhammad’s own elected official, provided what Rahim describes as radio silence throughout the campaign.
The coalition made noise. Lobbied in Washington. Escalated the case publicly and through back channels. And Muhammad was eventually released. But Rahim is careful about how she frames the credit, and it is one of the most important moments in the episode.
“None of this would have happened without, I say first, his mother’s daily dua for nine months. As I met his mother and she thanked us, she said, thank you for your advocacy. But it wasn’t just us.” — Hiba Rahim · The Muslimi Experience
She draws a direct parallel to the Quranic story of Yusuf, noting that even after asking his cellmate to mention him to the king, Yusuf remained in prison because the lesson being taught was that refuge is sought from Allah first. The advocacy, the coalition, the media strategy, all of it she frames as vessels through which Allah’s decree was executed. Not the cause. The instrument.
The question the host closes with is the one that stays with the listener: if a 15-year-old American with an entire organisation and a hundred allied groups and months of national media attention still took nine months to free, what is happening to the thousands of Palestinian children in Israeli detention who hold no American passport and have no coalition at all?
The Collective Good: What This Episode Demands
CAIR Florida describes itself as a Muslim NAACP: an institution that takes civil rights cases to court when every other avenue has failed, that defends first amendment rights for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and that builds the kind of organised community infrastructure that turns individual grievances into systemic change. One finger doesn’t do much, Rahim observes, borrowing from Malcolm X. A fist delivers a blow.
The lesson of this episode is not primarily about DeSantis or about the specific case of Muhammad Ibrahim. It is about the cost of the absence of organised Muslim civic infrastructure, and about what becomes possible when that infrastructure exists and functions as a coalition. Muhammad Ibrahim came home. The work continues