Ilhan Omar: The Truth About a Media Darling
The Mainstream media totally ignored Omar’s links to Islamists.
Ilhan Omar has an uncommon story. In 1995, the Democratic Representative’s family chose the United States to start a new life after leaving behind a failed state, Somalia, besieged by terrorist factions. In 2016, Omar was convinced she could change the world in her own way and took her first steps in politics in the Minnesota House of Representatives, before making the jump to the federal level two years later.
Since then, she has been a regular source of controversy, as if she was seeking to taunt her opponents and even the American citizens. Her attitude fueled the suspicions not only of Republicans but even of members of her own party. Despite all this turbulence, Omar still and always gets, against all odds, the support of the mainstream media.
Omar the Anti-Semite
Omar has often expressed her hatred for Israel on social media. Her anti-Semitic tweets are legion, the first one dating back to at least 2012. “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel”, she wrote at the time. After being elected to Congress in 2018, she was asked to clarify her position on issues regarding the Jewish state, but her explanations did not satisfy everyone.
In February 2019, she was invited to speak at a fundraising dinner for Yemen organized by Islamic Relief USA in Tampa, Florida. One of the speakers who had shared the stage with her that day was Yousef Abdallah, an Islamist who has long advocated for violence against Jews. Omar had to explain her presence at that fundraiser, but again, she had failed to convert skeptics.
Especially since Westerners have every reason to voice their grievances against Islamic Relief, an organization that will be discussed again a little later. What makes Omar’s intervention even more questionable is that before showing up at the Islamic Relief’s event, she had pointed an accusatory finger at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), claiming that the Jewish organization was bribing American politicians to take a stand in favor of Israel. This time, a strong majority of her fellow Democrats had condemned her remarks.
The Democratic Representative also sat down for an interview with Marc Lamont Hill, an activist who was let go from CNN for calling for the destruction of Israel, which once more shows Omar’s lack of judgment. When a media network that flirts with the far left kicks you out because of your radical views, it is likely that you’re something like a toxic character. Hill, despite his history of antisemitism, was recently hired by The City University of New York as a “presidential professor” for urban education.
Omar the Islamist
When one looks closely at Ilhan Omar’s activities, one wonders if she doesn’t deliberately sow doubts about her allegiances.
Like that time in 2016 when she wrote a letter to a judge requesting a more lenient sentence for Abdirahman Yasin Daud, from Minnesota, who had been arrested for attempting to join ISIS. This was a futile effort because the man had finally received a 30-year prison sentence. Or like that time when she called for the release of Hoda Abdelmonem, a radical female member of the Muslim Brotherhood who is locked up in Egypt. This was another abortive attempt.
But it is above all Omar’s connections with the U.S. fundamentalist circle that has sparked fury among Americans. To better understand this issue, we have to get back to Islamic Relief, a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2016, HSBC Bank closed Islamic Relief’s accounts over concerns about links to terrorism. In this sense, HSBC had followed in the footsteps of Swiss bank UBS, which had closed Islamic Relief’s accounts in 2012. The United Arab Emirates has also placed Islamic Relief Worldwide and Islamic Relief UK on its list of terrorism-related entities.
Another organization Omar is associated with is the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), based in New York City and founded in 1971 as the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood of Pakistan, that is, the Jamaat-e-Islami. The Jamaat-e-Islami’s armed wing is considered a terrorist entity, at least within the European Union.
Omar is also a staunch supporter of Turkey’s Islamic President-dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whom she met in September 2017 while she was a Minnesota state legislator. Omar was the only Democrat to vote against a bill threatening to impose further sanctions on Turkey for its military action in northern Syria. She also abstained from voting on a resolution to condemn the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Turks between 1915 and 1923.
A recent report by The Star Tribune revealed that Omar’s trip to the World Cup last year was funded by the Qatari government. The Democratic representative also took a trip to Pakistan last year that was funded by the local government.
This was a bad choice since Qatar and Pakistan are two sponsors of terrorism. Especially Qatar, which aided and abetted al-Qaeda, harbored 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, funded Islamist organizations in Syria, and partnered with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Omar the “Ungrateful”
“Ungrateful” is the adjective that best describes the personality of Ilhan Omar, whose family fled to the United States to escape the perpetual war raging in her home country, Somalia.
After settling in New York and Arlington, Virginia, the Omars moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, which harbors one of the largest Somali communities outside Somalia itself. Omar’s political district, Cedar-Riverside, is even nicknamed “Little Mogadishu” in reference to the capital of Somalia.
Cedar-Riverside has recently seen a dramatic increase in violent crime triggered by Somali gang warfare. A problem that Ilhan Omar may not have noticed as she lives in a luxury apartment in an upscale Minneapolis neighborhood.
Despite these facts, Omar keeps accusing Americans of being racist and Islamophobic, but remains silent on the fact that Minnesota used to lead among U.S. states in the number of foreign fighters who have joined or attempted to join the Islamic State, according to a September 2015 report from the House Homeland Security Committee. Reviewing the cases of 58 of these fighters, the House Homeland Security Committee found that 26% of them came from Minnesota. These data did not seem to make Omar wince.
Sources
Black List, City Journal, Jihad Watch, Le Journal de Montréal, Middle East Forum #1, #2, MPR News, Star Tribune, The Daily Caller, The Jerusalem Post #1, #2, The New York Post, The Times of Israel, Vigile, Wikipedia
