The headlines were familiar, The New York Times setting the tone: “In Attacking Ilhan Omar, Trump Revives His Familiar Refrain Against Muslims.” According to the media pack the President is seeking to rally his base by reviving allegedly “Islamophobic” themes of his 2016 campaign. His detractors notably ignore the question what exactly is the message of the first woman to wear a hijab on the House floor, and what is she obliged to believe as a Muslim believer.
The controversy started last February when Trump reacted to Ms. Omar’s attacks on Israel, calling for her to resign. It escalated ten days ago, when he tweeted a video which quotes a speech Ms. Omar gave at an event hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), describing how after the 9-11 attacks the group “recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”
The progressives’ response was predictably uniform. “Since Ilhan came to national attention and throughout her tenure in Congress she has been a target of these right-wing extremists; that’s why we’re standing up for her,” responded Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mis), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “This isn’t the first time that President Trump has targeted her and people like her.”
We can only speculate what would be the reaction of Thompson et al if Trump were to tell a rally that “some guy did something in Christchurch, New Zealand” last month.
The answer is clear from their unnervingly uniform reaction to the Jihadist terror attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. Former President Barack Obama, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, presidential contender Julián Castro and several other leading Democrats denounced attacks on what they called “Easter worshippers.” They were evidently loath to use the word “Christians.” The replacement term was found and used with Agitprop-like discipline.
These same people have been equally loath for years to allow any link between Islam and terror attacks, using the absurd euphemism “violent extremism.” In 2015, Obama even tried to draw a moral equivalence between the Islamic State (ISIS) and Christianity, urging Americans not to “get on our high horse” about radical Islam, since “people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ” centuries ago.
These same people also criticized Trump for not using the word “Muslims” to describe the victims of the Christchurch terror attack last month, although Trump did identify the targets as “mosques.”
A word about CAIR first. It claims to be a civil-rights group devoted to protecting the rights of Muslims and promoting a better understanding of Islam in America, but there is much more, than meets the eye. As I wrote back in 2006, Ihsan Bagby, its founding Board member, maintained that Muslims “can never be full citizens of this country [the U.S.] . . . because there is no way we [Muslims] can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.” Shortly after it was founded with foreign Arab money in 1994, CAIR called the guilty verdict in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case “a travesty of justice” and a proof of the all-pervasive “Islamophobia” in the American society. In 1995 it condemned the conviction of Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, for conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks, as a “hate crime.” CAIR advisory-board member Siraj Wahhaj was named in 1995 as one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the scheme to blow up New York City sites in 1993. In July 1998 CAIR’s chairman of the board, Omar Ahmad, declared that the Kuran should be America’s highest authority. In November 1999, at a Muslim youth rally in Chicago, Omar Ahmad praised suicide bombers: “Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam—that is not suicide.”
After 9-11 CAIR called for donations: under a picture of the flaming Towers the hyperlink took donors to the website of the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic charity whose assets were frozen soon thereafter by the Treasury Department. The HLF was eventually indicted for conspiracy, material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and money laundering. CAIR also called on people to donate to the Global Relief Foundation, another Islamic charity whose assets were frozen and which has provided assistance to Islamic terrorist groups. CAIR called the closure of the Holy Land Foundation “unjust” and claimed that the closure of the Global Relief Foundation was due to the racial profiling of a group with “a track record of effective relief work.” In 2003 CAIR complained about the FBI surveillance of mosques, but remained mute when it was revealed that the Al-Farooq mosque in New York was complicit in collecting funds for al-Qaeda. After the March 11, 2004, bombings in Madrid, Ibrahim Hooper said a Muslim convert in Florida who allegedly had her hijab pulled by Spanish tourists “is also victim of terrorism.” Adolf [sic] Ali, head of CAIR Florida, insisted that Florida should reinstate the electric chair for “kuffars [infidel] accused of causing offense to Muslims.” In April 2005, the founder of the Texas chapter of CAIR, Ghassan Elashi was found guilty of supporting terrorism. He was the third CAIR-connected figure to be convicted on federal terrorism charges since 9-11.
Also in April 2005, CAIR orchestrated a nation-wide campaign to have my book The Sword of the Prophet banned from the National Review Online bookstore. In April 2006 a federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of a $2 million defamation lawsuit by CAIR against former U.S. Rep. Cass Ballenger. The suit was filed in response to an October 2003 interview in which Ballenger said CAIR raised funds for terrorists and did so “with actual malice, wrongful and willful intent to injure and with reckless disregard for its truth or falsity.”
This is only a partial list, and it has been substantially enriched over the years. It is clear that Rep. Ilhan Omar’s ideological friends and host are not just community activists seeking to better the lot of their co-religionists, but political visionaries who want the U.S. to be ruled by Sharia.
As for Ms. Omar’s views on Israel and subsequent accusations anti-Semitism, Islam’s inherent religious animosity to Judaism is now fully coupled with anti-Jewish attitudes on ethnic and geopolitical grounds. Having been rejected by the Jewish tribes of Arabia which he subsequently exterminated, Muhammad set the tone which was reiterated in 1937 by the late King Ibn Saud to a British guest: “Verily, the word of God teaches us, and we implicitly believe it, that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew, ensures him immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty.”
Muhammad’s anti-Semitism is reflected in his suitably grim revelations in the Kuran, which is the basis of the social and legal order and obligation in Islam—the final and perfect revelation of Allah’s will that is to be obeyed by all creation. Time after time, the “prophet” says, “the Children of Israel rebelled and disobeyed the Command of Allah, and became extremely arrogant,” they have drawn on themselves wrath upon wrath, and their just reward will come in the form of “disgracing torment.” (2:88-90) Every time they make a covenant they throw it aside. (2:100) “And you will not cease to discover deceit in them.” (5:13) So Allah brought them down and cast terror into their hearts, had some killed and others made captives, “and He caused you [Muslims] to inherit their lands, and their houses, and their riches, and a land which you had not trodden before.” (33:26-27) The Jews are cowards: “If they fight against you, they will show you their backs, and they will not be helped.” (3:111) Until the Day of Resurrection they are afflicted with humiliating agony. (7:167) They are accursed for their obstinate rebellion and disbelief, so “we have put enmity and hatred amongst them till the Day of Resurrection. Every time they kindled the fire of war, Allah extinguished it; and they (ever) strive to make mischief on earth.” (5:64) But even the stone behind which a Jew hides will say, “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.” They have incurred the curse and wrath of Allah, who transformed them into monkeys and swine. (5:60) “Indignity is put over them wherever they may be;” “they have drawn on themselves the Wrath of Allah, and destruction is put over them” because they disobeyed Allah and used to transgress beyond bounds. (3:112) They cling greedily to this life even if it is humiliating and villainous, “and verily, you will find them the greediest of mankind for life.” (2:96)
Ilhan Omar is a Muslim. Therefore she believes every word of the Koran to be literally and eternally true. A Muslim is not free to believe what she wishes, or else she is an apostate—and apostasy is punished by death.
All of the above is true, literally so, regardless of how The New York Times tries to spin it, or how Obama, Clinton et al try to conceal and distort reality.
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