Just After a Man was Killed for Burning the Qur’an, Ilhan Omar Wants to Shelter Islam from Criticism

You gotta wonder about the timing. Could America’s winsome Somalia-First member of the House of Representatives, Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu) be any more tone-deaf? On Thursday, Salwan Momika, a courageous freedom fighter in Sweden was murdered for daring to burn the Qur’an. And on Friday, Omar reintroduced her International Islamophobia Act, which would mandate the establishment of a Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Islamophobia in the State Department. 

That’s right. It was only a matter of hours after Momika been killed for insulting Islam that Omar sagely surveyed our contentious land and decided that our real problem is that we all don’t love Islam enough. And so now she has revived her long-dormant prescription for the correction and improvement of the land that gave her refuge, and that she loves almost as much as she loves Somalia. 

“Islamophobia is not just a problem overseas—it is on the rise here at home,” Omar claimed. “We cannot turn a blind eye while Muslim communities face targeted violence and systemic discrimination worldwide.” Well, yeah. Targeted violence and systemic discrimination are bad indeed, but are they really happening in America today? 

The FBI Crime Data Explorer says that there were 265 hate crimes in the past year that were classified as “Anti-Jewish.” This just edged out hate crimes that were “Anti-Black or African American” for the top spot on the hate crimes list; there were 220 of those.

After that, there is a steep drop-off. There were 83 “Anti-Gay (Male)” hate crimes, 79 “Anti-White” hate crimes, and so on. Finishing ninth in the hate crimes standings were “Anti-Islamic (Muslim)” hate crimes, which numbered only 24.

This means that over the past year, when presumably Omar would contend that Muslims have been enduring “targeted violence and systemic discrimination,” antisemitic attacks were ten times more frequent than anti-Muslim hate crimes. Add in the twelve “Anti-Arab” hate crimes, and Muslims and Arabs still finish in seventh place, with anti-Jewish hate crimes over seven times more common. And remember, these numbers come from the corrupt and politicized FBI, which would love to show a spike in “Islamophobia” if it could. But it can’t. So why is Omar pretending that "Islamophobia" is a big problem in America today?

Cheerfully heedless of the facts, joining Omar in this ridiculous endeavor are Sen. Cory Booker (D-Spartacus) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Party Line). Booker explained: “By establishing a Special Envoy at the State Department, we can develop a comprehensive plan to counter Islamophobia and help combat hate wherever and whenever it occurs. Ensuring that people can practice their faith without fear of discrimination or violence is one of our nation’s core values, and we must continue our urgent work to safeguard religious freedoms at home and abroad.”

Well, great, Cory, but doesn’t the murder of Salwan Momika demonstrate with quite spectacular clarity that the “hate” is coming not from “Islamophobes,” but from the opposite direction altogether. It’s also important to bear in mind the fact that the term “Islamophobia” itself is an illegitimate conflation of two distinct phenomena: crimes against innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which is always necessary. Islamic advocacy groups and their leftist allies have been insisting for years that such analysis, too, constituted “Islamophobia,” and must accordingly be silenced.

If Omar’s Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Islamophobia is created, he or she will without any doubt crack down on honest discussion of how Islamic jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and oppression, supposedly in the interests of protecting innocent Muslims against vigilante attacks. The special envoy will be another agent in the Left’s escalating war against freedom of speech.

     Related: A Murder in Sweden Shows the Precarious State of Free Speech in Europe

Omar’s bill, which she first introduced in 2017 but which never got anywhere, is yet another leftist inversion of reality. It is a longshot to succeed in the present environment, but it could conceivably gain some traction if the deep state prevails over Trump’s efforts to dismantle it, or if his administration is too busy with more pressing matters to stop it. 

Should that happen, it would have a chilling effect upon any remaining honest discussion of the motivating ideology behind jihad terrorism, and ensure that others will follow Salwan Momika as victims of the jihadis’ quest to intimidate people into fearing to criticize Islam. Jihadists would have essentially a free hand, with law enforcement and intelligence officials too frightened of charges of “Islamophobia” to go after them. Is that what Ilhan Omar wants? Sure looks like it.