Introduction [1]

Zia Faruqui was born in the United States to Pakistani immigrant parents on November 29, 1979. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University in 2001, and a JD from the Georgetown School of Law in 2004.

After completing his legal education, Faruqui took a job as a full-time associate with the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, where he was employed from August 2004 to August 2008.

Faruqui then spent the next 12 years — until September 2020 — serving as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia. Also during that time frame, he worked for a brief period (2010-2011) as an Adjunct Professor at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he taught theories of criminal rehabilitation to undergraduate students. In addition, he served for some time at Georgetown University as an adjunct lecturer on Constitutional Law.

In September 2020, the judges of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia elected Faruqui to an eight-year term as a magistrate judge for their Court, making him the first Muslim judge to serve on the Federal Court in Washington, D.C.  He was sworn in to this post by Judge Beryl Howell, a longtime adversary of President Donald Trump.

Champion of “Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion”

A 2023 letter that the Washington Council of Lawyers wrote in support of Faruqui’s campaign to become a D.C. District judge, said that he had “devoted much of his career to diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] efforts.”

The Heritage Foundation explains DEI as follows:

“DEI policies are often overtly racist and sexist in that they mandate that government or firms establish quotas or otherwise discriminate based on sex, skin color, ethnicity, or sexual orientation rather than making determinations based on individual achievement, talent, experience, or competence. DEI defines diversity entirely in terms of these immutable characteristics and assigns them to a hierarchy of privilege and deprivation, oppressor and oppressed. … Morally, DEI represents a marked step backwards. It is rejection of the principle that people should be judged on the content of their character and their individual achievement rather than their sex, race, national origin, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. It judges people as members of a racial or sexual group rather than as individuals. It is a rejection of the principle of equal protection under the law…. It is a rejection of the principle that all are created equal. Discrimination or quotas on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex should be a relic of the past—and most Americans agree.”

Soft on Crime, Hard on Trump’s Anti-Crime Efforts

In 2025, Judge Faruqui made headlines because of sympathetic remarks he issued regarding Edward Dana — described by news reports as a “person of color” who, after being arrested for destroying property at a Washington, D.C. restaurant on August 17, 2025, proceeded to make threatening comments about President Trump while seated in the back of a police car. As the vehicle transported him to a local police station, Dana, whose criminal record included 23 prior arrests and 9 prior convictions, said he was “not going to tolerate fascism” and would “protect the Constitution by any means necessary,” including outright violence: “And that means killing you, Officer, killing the President, killing anyone who stands in the way of our Constitution. You want to stand in the way of our Constitution, I will fucking kill you.”

During a courtroom hearing on September 4, 2025, Faruqui attributed Dana’s arrest to racism. “The government’s message to people who look like Mr. Dana is ‘be very afraid,'” said the judge, adding: “I’m afraid right now.”

Stating further that the U.S. was already “past the point of constitutional crisis,” Faruqui accused the Trump administration of “playing cops and robbers, like children” during its federal takeover of Washington, D.C.’s police department in the summer of 2025. “The rule of law is being flushed down the toilet,” the judge declared. He also voiced his “grave concern” that, in a “rush to get [D.C. crime] stats on Twitter or Truth Social” as a means of demonstrating the effectiveness of that federal takeover, the Trump Department of Justice (DoJ) had caused many innocent people in D.C. to be “illegally detained.”  The DoJ’s efforts to prosecute people in D.C., Faruqui added, had resulted in “too many misfires” — chiefly because the Trump administration’s attitude was “we’ll arrest people … then see what happens.”

In a September 4 social media post, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote:

“Let me tell you about this Judge Faruqui…. This is a judge who, by his own words, is trying to justify felons illegally carrying firearms in one of the most violent cities in America. He has repeatedly indicated his allegiance to those who violate the law and carry illegal guns, justifying the possession of these guns and constantly pushing for the release of these dangerous criminals back into our communities. In speaking about a defendant possessing an illegal gun, in his view if you are a felon just holding an illegal gun, ‘I don’t think that makes you a danger,’ and: ‘They said the worst thing a judge can have is (sic) they release somebody and they go out and they do something terrible. I don’t think that’s the worst thing. I think the worst thing is that I don’t give you a shot’ [at redemption]. This judge took an oath to follow the law, yet he has allowed his politics to consistently cloud his judgment and his requirement to follow the law. America voted for safe communities, law and order, and this judge is the antithesis of that.”

Apologizing to President Trump’s Would-Be Assassin

In early May 2026, Faruqui issued a number of remarks that were highly sympathetic to Cole Allen, a 31-year-old black man who — armed with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives — had attempted to assassinate President Trump and members of his Cabinet at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on the night of April 25. (Mr. Allen had also written a manifesto explaining why he wished to kill President Trump.) Following the attempted murder, Allen was jailed and placed under suicide watch in solitary confinement inside a permanently illuminated “safe cell” where he was under round-the-clock surveillance and had no access to personal items or jail visits — despite his lawyers’ contention that their client was not exhibiting any behaviors suggestive of suicidal ideation. The suicide precaution, said the defense team, was “unnecessary” and violated Allen’s due process rights, “depriving him of dignity” by mandating that he be: (a) personally escorted to the shower; (b) strip searched whenever he entered or left his cell; and (c) wear a padded vest whenever he was inside the cell. The defense team further complained that:

• “Such restrictions deprive Mr. Allen from accessing resources like a jail tablet, which would permit him to communicate with loved ones outside of the jail.”
• “Similarly, because Mr. Allen is not permitted to retain personal items while in the cell, it is counsel’s understanding that he cannot review documents that counsel leave with him, thus hindering his ability to assist in his own defense.”

Faruqui was persuaded by the foregoing complaints from the defense. Consider, as evidence, the following:

• On May 4, Faruqui articulated the “grave concerns” he had regarding the the purportedly harsh manner in which the now-incarcerated Allen was being treated while in jail — treatment that, by Faruqui’s telling, was “seemingly unprompted” by the facts of the case.
• On May 5, Faruqui said: “To me, it’s extremely disturbing that he was put in five-point restraints,[2] a person with no criminal history. It’s troubling. I never heard of one Jan. 6 defendant who was put in five-point restraints or in a safe cell” — a reference to the incarcerated individuals accused of having unlawfully entered the U.S. Capitol building during the infamous pro-Trump protest of January 6, 2021. “If the only way to keep him safe is the most punitive thing, that’s a problem.” “What am I to say to Allen?” Faruqui added. “That this is going to be a fair process if we’re putting him in a safe cell when he’s not supposed to be in there? At a minimum, I should be apologizing to him. We are obligated to make sure he’s taken care of.  Mr. Allen, I’m sorry that things have not been the way they are supposed to.”
• “Whatever you’ve been through, I apologize for the prior week,” Faruqui told Allen during the same May 5 hearing.  “It could drive a person crazy to be in that situation.”
• Also on May 5, Faruqui again said he was “fascinated and concerned” that Allen was being treated more harshly in prison than the January 6 defendants. “A lot of people seem to have forgotten January 6,” the judge complained. “[Presidential] pardons may erase convictions, but they do not erase history.”

Reacting to Faruqui’s remarks, Republican U.S. Senator Ashley Moody of Florida wrote on the social media platform X: “As a former judge for over a decade, I am appalled by this judge’s [Faruqui’s] condemnation of law enforcement and prosecutors who were simply doing their jobs to address the safety of this would be Trump assassin. Apologizing and coddling the man who attempted to kill the President of the United States and his cabinet is embarrassing to the entire judiciary. This judge has no business being on the bench let alone on this case.”

Member of the Muslim Bar Association of New York

Faruqui is a member of the Muslim Bar Association of New York (MuBANY). Some notable facts about this organization’s radicalism:

• MuBANY has claimed that Muslim Americans suffered enormous levels of persecution and discrimination in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
• In January 2012, MuBANY — following revelations about the NYPD’s involvement in the production of The Third Jihad, a film designed to train police officers in counter-terrorism work — demanded that New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly resign from his post. MuBANY characterized the film as a mouthpiece for “anti-Muslim propaganda.” Joining MuBANY in the campaign to topple Commissioner Kelly was the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as well as other organizations tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of numerous Islamic terrorist groups including Al Qaeda and Hamas.
• MuBANY is affiliated with the National Association of Muslim Lawyers, which it praises for having “convened experts from CAIR, Muslim Advocates, and the ACLU to host a [2019] webinar” aimed at discrediting the notion that the Muslim Brotherhood should be designated as a terrorist entity.

Sympathy for Jiihadists

Conservative author and political analyst Daniel Greenfield has further explored Faruqui’s sympathy for radical Islamist agendas:

“Faruqui had previously pursued Islamist agendas by aiding the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s case against Myanmar. Gambia, an unstable Muslim regime where Christians are persecuted, had sued Facebook on behalf of the OIC, demanding information on Buddhists in Myanmar to justify its false claim that the ‘Rohingya’, an invasive Muslim group of illegal colonists responsible for violence against Buddhists, were actually victims of ‘genocide’.

“Some Rohingya Jihadists had developed ties to ISIS and Al Qaeda [and] issued a statement warning that ‘the government of Myanmar shall be made to taste what our Muslim brothers have tasted [persecution and violence] in Arakan, with the permission of Allah.’

“Rather than considering the actual merits of the case, Judge Zia Faruqui went on another rant, mocking Facebook for trying to protect the privacy of Buddhist users worried about Muslim persecution; [he] repeated Islamic and leftist propaganda in his ruling, and complained that Facebook posts had depicted ‘the Rohingya and other Muslims as an existential threat to Myanmar and to Buddhism. In the case of the Rohingya, it [went] a step further. It [was] accompanied by dehumanising language and the branding of the entire community as illegal … immigrants.’

“Which is of course entirely accurate, but understandably objectionable to the Pakistani judge.

“Much of the Rohingya operate out of Pakistan. And much like Al Qaeda, Rohingya Jihadist groups like the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army operate out of Judge Faruqui’s homeland.

“In his ruling, Judge Zia Faruqui mischaracterized a call by a spokesman for the president of Myanmar (formerly Burma) to kill ‘Rohingya terrorists’ as a call for ‘the destruction of the Rohingya.’”

Footnotes:

1. https://ballotpedia.org/Zia_Faruqui
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/zia-faruqui/
2. BizPacReview.com explains: “Inmates are typically put in five-point restraints when they act out in belligerent ways (yelling, spitting, etc.) and refuse to listen to the orders of corrections officers. Whether or not an inmate is placed in constraints is never related to the alleged crime they committed, but rather their behavior inside jail.”