Censoring Judge Jeanine

At the beginning of every episode of her popular Saturday evening program on Fox News, Justice with Judge Jeanine, Judge Jeanine Pirro reads what she calls her “opening statement” — an editorial, as it were, about an issue of current interest. This past Saturday, March 9, Pirro’s “opening statement” was about first-term Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism, which has been an issue before but which last week led to an unprecedented amount of criticism and to calls for a House resolution explicitly condemning the Minnesota Democrat.

Instead of passing such a resolution, however, the House passed one that not only didn’t mention Omar by name but that shifted focus entirely from Omar’s obviously Koran-based Jew-hatred to other matters. For example, the resolution cited a long list of prejudices (against “African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other people of color, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and others”) that it attributed to “white supremacists.” It also devoted several paragraphs to “Islamophobia,” excoriating “the irrational belief that Muslims are inherently violent, disloyal, and foreign” and reprehending “unfair allegations that [Muslims] sympathize with individuals who engage in violence or terror or support the oppression of women, Jews, and other vulnerable communities.”

In short, the resolution was a statement of current PC orthodoxy, which, while pretending that “white supremacists” make up a sizable percentage of the current American population and represent a major threat to American society, denies absolutely everything negative about Islam. Pirro, in her “opening statement,” was rightfully tough on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, in a feeble attempt to defend Omar, absurdly claimed that the young Muslim congresswoman is not hateful but simply naïve — unaware, somehow, that in her frequent efforts to reprove Israel she just happened to keep employing familiar anti-Semitic tropes. Pelosi, charged Pirro, was appeasing “the rise of anti-Semitism in the Democrat Party,” and all too many of Pelosi’s fellow House Democrats were manifestly eager to “forgive, rationalize, and give a pass to” that ancient hatred.

Pirro then reminded Pelosi and her colleagues of their party’s purported principles — one of them being a firm intolerance of anti-Semitism. “She’s not getting this anti-Israel sentiment doctrine from the Democrat Party,” Pirro said of Rep. Omar. What, then, Pirro asked, was the source of Omar’s Jew-hatred?

“Think about it,” Pirro went on. “Omar wears a hijab, which according to the Koran 33:59 tells women to cover so that they don’t get molested. Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”

This question was a perfectly legitimate one. In fact it would have been entirely reasonable for Pirro to phrase the whole thing not as a question but as a statement: for to wear a hijab is, by definition, to be acting in accordance with sharia law. The garment is, quite simply, a Muslim woman’s way of communicating to the world her acceptance of her subordination to men in accordance with the dictates of Allah.

Pirro went on to note the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, and expressed concern that this phenomenon was now spreading to the United States. She didn’t point out that if Jew-hatred is growing in Europe, it’s because Islam is growing in Europe. Islam teaches contempt for Jews. It’s right there in the Koran. The book reeks with it. Jew-hatred is one of the central tenets of the religion. It’s the reason why European Jews on their way to or from synagogue don’t wear yarmulkes or Stars of David anymore — if they did so, they might be taking their lives into their hands. It’s the reason why it’s increasingly unpleasant, and downright dangerous, for Jewish kids in many European countries to go to school — they routinely get harassed and beat up by their Muslim classmates, and all too often their teachers and principals are, like Pelosi and her fellow House Democrats, too cowardly to do anything about it.

I’m a regular viewer — and admirer — of Pirro’s show, and this weekend her “opening statement” impressed me even more than usual, because even on Fox News it’s rare indeed to see anybody being quite that frank about the reality of Islam and sharia law — even if Pirro did frame her main point as a question. Fox News may be better about these matters than CNN or MSNBC or the broadcast network news divisions, but even Fox seems to avoid Islam-related stories that it should be covering. (Has Tommy Robinson ever been mentioned on The Five? I watch it regularly, and I don’t remember ever hearing his name. They should be talking about him constantly.) Fox people also seem to be under orders, when they do discuss Islamic terrorism and other objectionable aspects of the faith, to use terms like “radical Islam” or “Islamic fundamentalism” that falsely distance the religion from its own orthodox doctrines.

Anyway, as I say, I was impressed by Pirro’s apparent departure from the standard Fox News lexicon. I shouldn’t have been surprised, then, to learn that the honchos at Fox News have officially chastised her for her remarks about Omar. “We strongly condemn Jeanine Pirro’s comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar,” read the statement issued by Fox News. “They do not reflect those of the network and we have addressed the matter with her directly.” In short, Nancy Pelosi couldn’t engineer a proper House reprimand of Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism, but Fox News managed to give Pirro a public slap in the face for pointing to the obvious truth about the roots of Omar’s hate.

The New York Times, in reporting on the reprimand, also quoted a Fox News producer, Hufsa Kamal, as having tweeted to Pirro: “[C]an you stop spreading this false narrative that somehow Muslims hate America or women who wear a hijab aren’t American enough? You have Muslims working at the same network you do, including myself.” There’s the problem. There are Muslims working all over the Western world today, and all too many of them see it as their duty to pretend that the plain facts of their faith are part of some “false narrative.” The Koran says what it says. The hijab symbolizes what it symbolizes. The monstrous events of 9/11, and the other deadly jihadist attacks that have taken place across the Western world (and elsewhere) in the years since, were not betrayals of Islam but acts of obedience to core Islamic scriptures. It’s vitally important for free people in the West to understand these plain facts. But simply to hint at them, apparently, is as verboten at Fox News as it is at CNN.