As Democrats line up to defend Rep. Ilhan Omar and come up with her excuses for her anti-Semitism, House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., tried to minimize her comments by arguing that she escaped violence in Somalia, so her experience was “more personal” than Jews who merely had parents survive the Holocaust.
If he had bothered to look for similar experience that did not result in anti-Semitism, he might have mentioned Ayaan Hirsi Ali; like Ilhan Omar a Somali refugee. And whose experience with discrimination, death threats, and, yes, even Twitter attacks, is at least as personal as Ms. Omar’s.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the Preaching of Islam and the Left’s Alliance with Islamists (2018, 22:59, the following starts 10 minutes in)
“Anti-semitism is back because of Islam.”
Hirsi Ali says she had never heard of the Holocaust until she arrived in the Netherlands in 1992. She was 24.
Ms. Omar arrived in the United States in 1995 at the age of 14. I wonder if someone will ask Ms. Omar when she first heard of the Holocaust. Even given the state of the American public school system, one would think she’s heard of it by now.
Ilhan Omar represents the district where over 60 Somalis have joined, or have been arrested for attempting to join, ISIS and al-Shabaab. Even NPR took notice of the phenomenon as long ago as 2009. The Somali-Minneapolis Terrorist Axis.
Ilhan Omar is an apologist for at least some of those Minnesota terrorist aspirants. One of whom said “I was not going there to pass out medical kits or food. I was going strictly to fight and kill on behalf of the Islamic State.” Of that man she wrote to the sentencing judge,
“A long-term prison sentence for one who chose violence to combat direct marginalization is a statement that our justice system misunderstands the guilty. A restorative approach to justice assesses the lure of criminality and addresses it.”
He got 30 years. Maybe as a result of that appalling appeal to forgive choosing violence, (mostly against other Muslims). Or maybe because of Omar’s contention that our justice system misunderstands guilt unless it supports her cause. You can’t doubt she is asking for different treatment for Somali terrorists who live in the US.
Go inside ‘Little Mogadishu,’ the Somali capital of America for a view of how well assimilation is working. See also, Somali Gangs Battle in Minneapolis; Somalis Demand That Cops Do Something
Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes the observation that the majority of the followers of Islam conflate politics and law with religion. Freedom of, or from, religion is problematic for those Muslims who insist on Sharia as State policy.
Here’s a thoughtful look at why Islamic politics/law and religion are congruent from Shadi Hamid, contributing editor at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution:
How events from 14 centuries ago still shape the religion’s relationship to politics, and what that means for the future of the Middle East
[W]here theologians like Martin Luther famously fashioned a dialectic between faith and good works, these two things are inextricably tied together in Islam. Faith is often expressed through the observance of the law. The failure to follow Islamic law is a reflection of the believer’s lack of faith and unwillingness to submit to God. Salvation is impossible without law. This has implications for the nature of the Islamic state. If following the sharia—for example, refraining from alcohol and adultery, observing the fast, and praying five times a day—is a precondition for salvation, then political leaders and clerics alike have a role in encouraging the good and forbidding evil, a role they played, to various degrees, for the entirety of the pre-modern period…
Muslims are, of course, not bound to Islam’s founding moment, but neither can they fully escape it. The prophet Muhammad was a theologian, a politician, a warrior, a preacher, and a merchant, all at once. Importantly, he was also the builder of a new state. It is difficult to know when he was acting in one role rather than the other (which has led to endless debates over whether some of the prophet’s actions in certain domains were, in fact, prophetic). Some religious thinkers—including Sudan’s Mahmoud Mohamed Taha and, later, his student Abdullahi an-Na’im—have tried to separate these different prophetic legacies, arguing that the Quran contains two messages. The first message, based on the verses revealed while the prophet was establishing a new political community in Medina, includes particulars of Islamic law that may have been appropriate for seventh-century Arabia but are not applicable outside that context. The second message of Islam, revealed in Mecca before the prophet’s emigration to Medina, encompasses the eternal principles of Islam, which are meant to be updated according to the demands of time and place…
One could go further and advocate not only for a progressive interpretation of Islamic law but also for its basic irrelevance to public life—that the separation of religion from politics forms the foundation of any pluralistic post-Enlightenment liberal society.
Here’s some discussion of sharia. This video is not in focus, but it is still worth listening to.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Responds to Questions at Ohio University (2011, 13:43)
The response to the guy with a head full of intersectional cultural relativism at 9:22 is priceless.
Democrats should listen to that.
2020 Democrats normalize anti-Semitism by defending Ilhan Omar
Democrats seeking the party’s 2020 presidential nomination are starting to come out in defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar, and in the process, they are normalizing anti-Semitism.
Leading Democratic candidates Sens. Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren have all come out defending Omar and pointing fingers at her critics, despite a series of statements she has made targeting American Jews…
[Bernie Sanders] “We must develop an evenhanded Middle East policy which brings Israelis and Palestinians together for a lasting peace. What I fear is going on in the House now is an effort to target Congresswoman Omar as a way of stifling that debate.”
[Kamala] Harris… “There is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders, and anti-Semitism” and also arguing, “I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk.”
[Elizabeth] Warren… “Branding criticism of Israel as automatically anti-Semitic has a chilling effect on our public discourse and makes it harder to achieve a peaceful solution between Israelis and Palestinians.”
The debate has not been stifled, it has been shifted in order to redefine long standing anti-Semitic tropes as political criticisms. Which are considered religious tenents.
More worth reading:
Victor Davis Hanson
The New, New Anti-Semitism
2020 Democrats normalize anti-Semitism by defending Ilhan Omar