Ilhan Omar accuses critics of Islamophobia as a diversion

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Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) speaks to media and community organizers during a press conference at the Daunte Wright watch site in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, April 20, 2021 (Nicholas Pfosi / Reuters)

On the diversionary tactics of members of Congress against its detractors.

It was bad enough when Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the UN to investigate racism in the United States, but now Representative Ilhan Omar and 24 of his fellow Democrats want him to create a special envoy to investigate and fight Islamophobia, which they call a real problem the United States should tackle on a global scale.

This move was unfortunately not surprising, as it followed the administration’s announcement of the creation of a special envoy to investigate anti-Semitism. It was also not, frankly, new to Omar, who routinely accuses anyone of Islamophobia after criticizing her for saying something ignorant or blatantly anti-Semitic. It is a diversionary tactic used to silence any criticism of Islam and a prophylactic device to isolate Islamists from responsibility for their words. So far, it has worked for her.

The story of Omar’s anti-Semitic statements is now well known. What is less explored, however, is how it defends itself after the inevitable criticism.

Running for Congress in 2018, Omar was forced to explain a tweet from 2012 in which she wrote: Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah wake up the people and help them see Israel’s misdeeds. As the national reviews David Harsanyi noted at the time, Omar had the opportunity to retract, or at least refine, his statement. Instead, she doubled down. . . blame Jewish Islamophobia for the backlash. She has been doing it ever since.

In 2019, she convinced her friends to join us. Representative Andre Carson (D., Ind.), Also a Muslim, helped her deflect censorship after the All About the Baby Benjamins controversy. Carson said: I think we are all incredibly inspired by the bravery of Ilhans as she continues to face this hatred and Islamophobia.

Last month, Omar again intervened comparing the United States and Israel to the Taliban and Hamas. When some of her House colleagues criticized her inept comparison which you notice were the reflexes of the Omar Democrats and she lambasted them with a counter-charge: The Islamophobic tropes in this statement are offensive. The constant harassment and silence of the signatories of this letter is unbearable.

Taking the ball back, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) also went on the offensive, issuing a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi complaining about Omars’ criticism. The short letter Stand with Rep. Omar contains six references to Islamophobia.

Omar has learned to counter all criticism with the accusation of Islamophobia, even against his colleagues. And why not? She has a whole industry supporting her and which has evolved to uncover and, in many cases, fabricate offenses against Muslims and Islam. It is mainly made up of lawyers specializing in cases of alleged anti-Muslim discrimination and academics who write books and train programs and initiatives to raise awareness of Islamophobia.

In a book titled The Islamophobia Industry (2012), Nathan Lean claimed that there is a massive global anti-Islamic movement. In upcoming books, John Esposito, founder of Georgetown Universities’ Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, describes it as a multi-million dollar cottage industry of fear-mongers and the network of donors and donors. organizations that support and perpetuate bigotry, xenophobia, and racism, and produce a climate of fear that sustains a looming social cancer.

Of course, Esposito downgraded it entirely. The real industry is the network of academics, lawyers, activists, and funders who slander and slander critics of Islamism, even those who carefully strike between Islam and Islamism. It’s filled with the same people who have warned since 9/11 about an ever-looming anti-Muslim backlash that never comes.

The legal component is led by the venerable Southern Poverty Law Center, and academics draw inspiration from Georgetown Universitys Bridge Initiative (where Nathan Lean was once principal and John Esposito reigns). The real industry of Islamophobia is not a cottage industry but a massive industry made up of thousands of people who make a living by promulgating the fear of Islamophobia and defending its alleged victims. While stifling discussions about Islamism, they refrain from receiving grants, donations from wealthy Muslim patrons and permanent jobs for life.

The SPLC has spent most of the 21st century treating critics of Islamism as marginal and right-wing enemies of Muslims. His self-righteous blinders have led him to reflexively defame even accomplished scholars. After calling Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation anti-Muslim extremists, he was forced to apologize and pay Nawaz millions of dollars in damages.

Likewise, Bridge Initiative staff defame conservatives, journalists, academics and even Muslim analysts (like Zudi Jasser and Tarek Fatah) and former Muslims (like Ayan Hirsi Ali) whom they deem Islamophobic. Both groups demonstrate deep hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness in condemning alleged Islamophobic groups for maintaining lists of Islamists that they publish in their own lists of academics, conservatives and politicians. organizations guilty of spreading Islamophobia. The Bridge Initiative calls its lists fact sheets, and for years the SPLC has published a now-suppressed Anti-Muslim Extremist Field Guide.

Other influential members of the industry include the Center for American Progress, which produced a report titled Fear, Inc., analyzing the alleged Islampohobes, and the Al Jazeera Network, which produced a documentary titled Islamophobia Inc.

Wokeism was exactly what the Islamophobia industry needed to reinvigorate itself and appear as relevant as it was after 9/11. He clung to the anti-racist zeitgeist through another academic invention called intersectionality. This is where Ilhan Omar comes in, playing his role with aplomb. Being a black Muslim woman who came to the United States as a refugee causes her intersectionality score to be quite high. The newest member of the radical Houses squad, Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.), knows this, because his recent defense of Omar ended with Stop with the anti-Blackness and Islamophobia.

For now, the industry’s European version of Islamophobia lags far ahead of the US. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that speaking disrespectfully about Islam is not protected speech. In England, people who placed bacon in mosques were sentenced to prison terms and a prison official was fired in 2001 after making fun of Osama bin Laden. In 2017, a party in Cambridge was raided by police after a song mocking bin Laden was heard by a police officer who viewed it as an incident of racial hatred. The Scottish Hate Crimes and Public Order Bill was introduced in April 2020 by Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf, who sought to punish Islamophobia because, as he said, freedom of expression is not an absolute right.

If the Islamophobia industry is successful and Blinken appoints someone like Yousaf as the new special envoy, we will see similar attempts to limit free speech in the United States and abroad. In the meantime, the cry of Islamophobia remains a practical offensive defense whenever someone like Ilhan Omar lets down his guard and shows his true beliefs.

AJ Caschetta is a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a member of Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, where he is also a member of Ginsburg-Milstein.

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