Daniel Haqiqatjou

Daniel Reza Haghighat Jou (born 1985 or 1986) , known professionally as Daniel Haqiqatjou, is an American Muslim religious and political commentator and debater associated with the "Muslim manosphere".

Early life Haqiqatjou was born in Houston, Texas, to Iranian parents in a secular family of Shia background. He was raised in Houston, where he currently resides.

During high school, Haqiqatjou converted from Shia Islam to Sunni Islam. In 2008, he graduated from Harvard University with a degree in physics and a minor in philosophy, before completing a master's degree in philosophy at Tufts University.

Career From 2014 to 2017, he was a writer for the online magazine MuslimMatters. In 2015, he founded the website Muslim Skeptic and created a YouTube channel of the same name, focusing primarily on interfaith criticism, modernism, current events, family issues, and reports on figures whom Haqiqatjou has accused of attempting to change Islam from within. The Middle East Forum characterized Haqiqatjou as a Texas-based Islamist and Muslim Skeptic as an Islamist website. In 2016, Haqiqatjou published an article on Muslim Skeptic questioning whether democratic forms of government produce just governance, criticizing majority rule as an unreliable basis for determining moral questions.

In 2019, Haqiqatjou founded the Alasna Institute, an online Islamic seminary offering courses on traditional Islamic disciplines and critiques of ideologies it considers modernist or un-Islamic. The following year, Haqiqatjou authored The Modernist Menace to Islam.

His company Global Ummah Retreats promises to teach men how to “defend your home against feminism”.

Controversies Haqiqatjou has been accused of misogyny and antisemitism many times. He has said that women getting college educations leads them into sex work. His “Interfaith Critiques” discuss Jewish texts and seek to show that they justify racial hatred, homophobia and criminal conspiracy.

In 2017 Haqiqatjou compared Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. In 2019 and 2020, a public dispute took place between Haqiqatjou and Omar Suleiman's Yaqeen Institute over the institute's approach to contemporary social issues, particularly LGBT-related topics. A talk at a Mississauga community centre was cancelled as a result of these criticisms.

In 2023, Haqiqatjou's invitation from MSA branches to several New York colleges sparked controversy among some of its Muslim students due to his controversial and allegedly misogynistic opinions, namely his views on gender roles and women's education.

In March 2024, the Jerusalem Post described Haqiqatjou as promoting conspiracy theories, including about 911, and the Anti-Defamation League said he has engaged in antsemitism and has pushed conspiracy theories, extremist, prejudiced, misogynistic, and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.

In Spring 2024, a speech by Haqiqatjou at the MSA branch at Queens College, City University of New York was condemned by the college president, alleging antisemitism.

Following the September 2025 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the Middle East Forum reported that Haqiqatjou suggested on X that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered the killing and portrayed Kirk as a likely victim of a "Zionist conspiracy", despite Kirk's support for Israel.

Personal life Haqiqatjou has been married to Egyptian-born Umm Khalid since 2008; the two met at Harvard University. They have five children.

On June 23, 2007, Haqiqatjou's sister, Donna Jou, a 19-year-old student at San Diego State University, disappeared after attending a party in Los Angeles at the home of convicted sex offender John Steven Burgess, who invited her through Craigslist using an alias. Burgess was charged with involuntary manslaughter after he told police that she had died of an overdose resulting from drugs he had given her and that he had subsequently disposed of her body in the ocean. Jou's body was never recovered.