Ilhan Omar recently took a question from a reporter asking her to condemn a form of terrorism. In response, Omar went off on a tangent about why she and other Muslim politicians are asked to condemn terrorism when non-Muslims in the same field are not. But Omar did not specifically condemn terrorism in her answer.
Omar has repeatedly refused to condemn forms of terrorism and even laughed at Americans for speaking of Al-Qaeda in a menacing tone.
In a 2013 interview Omar describes her experience as a Somali community activist:
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. . . The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up. But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity. . . But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.”
Yet again, in a 2018 interview, Omar was asked to condemn “Jihadist terrorism.” Instead of simply condemning the terrorism, Ilhan claimed “white men” are a bigger threat to America.
“I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country, and so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe—Americans safe inside of this country—we should be profiling, monitoring, and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.”
After the attempted ICE facility attack, organized by a member of the terrorist group Antifa, Ilhan was asked repeatedly to condemn the terrorist attack. Watch her response at 0:56 mark.
After Ilhan Omar’s comment on the 9/11 terrorist attack, she refused to condemn Al-Qaeda.
“I will not dignify it with an answer because I know that every single Islamophobe, every single person who is hateful, who is driven by an ideology of ‘othering’ as this president is, rejoices in us responding to that and us defending ourselves,” Omar said.
These are just a few examples of Omar refusing to easily condemn terrorism and instead making anyone who asks feel as if they’re a part of “American patriarchy.”
