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Qanta Ahmed: Ilhan Omar is a disgrace to Islam and doesn’t represent my Muslim religion

  

Category:  Op/Ed

Via:  make-america-great-again  •  5 years ago  •  21 comments

Qanta Ahmed: Ilhan Omar is a disgrace to Islam and doesn’t represent my Muslim religion
First, Omar betrayed her ignorance, because CAIR was founded in 1994. Second, the congresswoman displayed an appalling and dismissive insensitivity to the worst foreign attack on America in our history, claiming almost 600 more lives than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Omar's grotesque trivialization of a national tragedy amounts to an explicit denial of 9/11 – a desecration of all the lives erased that awful day. This denial is inexplicable unless she has strong and covert...

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T




Rep. Ilhan Omar continues to be an embarrassment and a disgrace for me and other American Muslims with her outrageous, ignorant, anti-Semitic and now anti-American comments.

And while Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, holds herself out as a proud Muslim, she repeatedly projects a distorted and patently Islamist interpretation of Islam – a religion that in reality stands for the values of justice, peace and ethical conduct.

Sadly, Omar gives millions of Americans a false impression of what Islam is and what we Muslims believe and stand for. While she denounces prejudice against Muslims, her aberrant views on Islam fuel prejudice against me and my coreligionists by distorting who we are while defaming and dishonoring the great monotheism of Islam.

PELOSI MOVES TO ENSURE ILHAN OMAR'S SAFETY, CALLS FOR TRUMP TO TAKE DOWN VIDEO

Omar’s latest absurd and insulting comment came to light just a few days ago. Describing the horrific Islamist terrorist attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001 that killed almost 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000 others – including many Muslims – Omar told a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) fundraiser: “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

First, Omar betrayed her ignorance, because CAIR was founded in 1994. Second, the congresswoman displayed an appalling and dismissive insensitivity to the worst foreign attack on America in our history, claiming almost 600 more lives than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Omar's grotesque trivialization of a national tragedy amounts to an explicit denial of 9/11 – a desecration of all the lives erased that awful day. This denial is inexplicable unless she has strong and covert Islamist sympathies.

Tragically, the Sept. 11 attacks continue to take a toll almost 18 years later.

Some estimate more than 2,100 first responders who worked in Ground Zero in New York City in an effort to save lives and then find the deceased after the attacks have died of diseases they incurred. More than 10,000 people have been diagnosed with cancer related to the World Trade Center attacks and over 43,000 have been certified with World Trade Center-related illnesses.

Omar should be honest. There is no escaping the fact that the atrocities of 9/11 were not simply committed by “some people.” Islamist jihadists were responsible and they came from within the Muslim fold.

Most of the almost 490,000 Americans who either lived near Ground Zero or responded to the recovery and rebuilding efforts have never enrolled in the government’s health programs. So we don’t know how many more have suffered health problems from the terrorist attack on the twin towers.

I am a physician now working in New York and I’m affiliated with New York University Winthrop Hospital’s World Trade Center Health Program. I see the burden of Sept. 11 on a regular basis, treating brave and selfless first responders who still suffer from complex sleep disorders – including post-traumatic stress – that I specialize in treating.

President Trump responded to Omar’s comments by posting a video on Twitter mixing her words with terrible scenes of the Sept. 11 attacks. His action can be considered insensitive to many 9/11 survivors and family members – including some of my own patients – who can’t view these pictures without experiencing repeat trauma.

However, the president’s exposure of Omar’s hypocrisy and offensive diminishment of 9/11 was both legitimate and necessary.

In her dismissal of Sept. 11, Omar callously erased the deep suffering of every survivor and family I attend, and everyone else still impacted by the terrorist attacks.

Like each person old enough to remember Sept. 11, 2001, the day will be engraved in my mind for as long as I live.

I was working as a physician in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It was 4 p.m. when I turned on my TV and watched the world come to a standstill as I witnessed (along with people around the world) the jet planes go through the World Trade Center, and soon after saw the twin towers collapse.

Mass murder on live TV – an unbelievable nightmare, like a horror film come to life.

Living at the time in the Saudi Kingdom – the epicenter of Islam – as the world learned the identity of the 9/11 terrorists, I wondered how my religion had been hijacked by suicidal killers who claimed they had a religious duty to kill innocents.

And I knew from that moment that these murderers would now become the face of Islam for many non-Muslims who know little about a religion with more the 1.6 billion followers around the globe.

Of course, only the perpetrators of the 9/11attacks and their supporters are to blame for their evil and immoral massacre. But on that sad day it became the responsibility of every Muslim to understand the heinous perversion of Islam known as Islamist jihadism and to stand against it.

In her grotesque trivialization of the Sept. 11 attacks, Omar betrays the Islam she claims to follow. She also denigrates every victim and survivor of the attacks and does me and every other Muslim a grave dishonor.

And while Omar relishes in flaunting her Muslim identity, she categorically fails in her Islamic duty. Islam is very clear in assigning responsibility for wrongdoing. Each Muslim has a clear-cut duty to himself or herself, to God and to society.

In fact, the holy texts of Islam emphasize that one's greatest allegiance should be to justice – even if doing so demands superseding family and coreligionist ties.

"Be strict in observing justice, and be witness for Allah, even though it be against yourselves or against your parents or kindred," the Koran says in Chapter 4, Verse 36. Omar fails on every count when her remarks trivializing the Sept. 11 attacks are seen in the light of this verse.

There is no question that the Sept. 11 attacks were an act of war launched through evolutionary Islamist jihadism, which has since become the hallmark of radical Islam.

Radical Islam – also known as Islamism – is a deviant, fictional and extreme distortion of true Islam, perpetrated by Islamist Muslims who use it to justify hatred and lethal violence that in reality have nothing to do with Islam.

Omar should be honest. There is no escaping the fact that the atrocities of 9/11 were not simply committed by “some people.” Islamist jihadists were responsible and they came from within the Muslim fold.

The vast majority of the world’s Muslims reject the cult or murder and death embraced by the hijackers of our beautiful religion, and in fact, many Muslims continue to die at the hands of Islamist jihadism. We each bear a responsibility to expose it.

Finally, let me set the record straight on Omar’s frequent complaints about how she and other Muslims are being persecuted and discriminated against in the United States today.

As a Muslim woman of color and immigrant – just like Omar – it’s logical to assume that if there was pervasive anti-Muslim discrimination in the United States I would be aware of it.

But in fact, Muslims have not experienced a contraction of civil rights in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 attacks. We continue to have the same rights as all other Americans.

Rather than being second-class citizens, Muslims born in America and immigrating here legally have full citizenship open to us. We are all allowed to both be and feel fully American and recognized as such, unlike the way many Muslims tell me they feel in European nations.

The greatest obscenity in the lie that Omar pedals is that she – along with millions of other Muslims in America – is somehow victimized. Do not believe this.

Muslims in America are mainstream and most are middle-class. Some of us are even wealthy. Many of us are highly educated, upwardly mobile and among the fastest immigrants to climb the economic ladder and earn six-figure incomes. This is in stark contrast to Muslims in Europe, where Muslims are much less affluent than the general population.

The myth of Muslim victimhood is an Islamist one. It is completely false in the setting of Islam in America and in comparison to Islam in the wider Muslim-majority world.

For me, condemning Omar’s trivialization of the Sept. 11 mass murders is an act of being fully American, being a physician advocate for my 9/11 survivor patients and their families, and at the same time – keeping in line with Islam’s clear teachings – being fully Muslim.

Omar’s words are a grotesque injustice against people who have already experienced diabolic injustice.

I thank God every day that I was able to immigrate to the United States of America, where I am now a proud citizen in a country I love and where I enjoy the blessings of  American liberty and protection of my rights under the U.S. Constitution. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear Rep. Ilhan Omar express these same sentiments?  Don’t expect it anytime soon.

Qanta A. Ahmed, M.D., is  a councilor at the USC Shoah Foundation and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is also an associate professor of medicine at the State University of New York.


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XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
1  seeder  XXJefferson51    5 years ago

“President Trump responded to Omar’s comments by posting a video on Twitter mixing her words with terrible scenes of the Sept. 11 attacks. His action can be considered insensitive to many 9/11 survivors and family members – including some of my own patients – who can’t view these pictures without experiencing repeat trauma.

However, the president’s exposure of Omar’s hypocrisy and offensive diminishment of 9/11 was both legitimate and necessary.

In her dismissal of Sept. 11, Omar callously erased the deep suffering of every survivor and family I attend, and everyone else still impacted by the terrorist attacks.

Like each person old enough to remember Sept. 11, 2001, the day will be engraved in my mind for as long as I live.

I was working as a physician in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It was 4 p.m. when I turned on my TV and watched the world come to a standstill as I witnessed (along with people around the world) the jet planes go through the World Trade Center, and soon after saw the twin towers collapse.

Mass murder on live TV – an unbelievable nightmare, like a horror film come to life.

Living at the time in the Saudi Kingdom – the epicenter of Islam – as the world learned the identity of the 9/11 terrorists, I wondered how my religion had been hijacked by suicidal killers who claimed they had a religious duty to kill innocents.

And I knew from that moment that these murderers would now become the face of Islam for many non-Muslims who know little about a religion with more the 1.6 billion followers around the globe.

Of course, only the perpetrators of the 9/11attacks and their supporters are to blame for their evil and immoral massacre. But on that sad day it became the responsibility of every Muslim to understand the heinous perversion of Islam known as Islamist jihadism and to stand against it.

In her grotesque trivialization of the Sept. 11 attacks, Omar betrays the Islam she claims to follow. She also denigrates every victim and survivor of the attacks and does me and every other Muslim a grave dishonor.

And while Omar relishes in flaunting her Muslim identity, she categorically fails in her Islamic duty. Islam is very clear in assigning responsibility for wrongdoing. Each Muslim has a clear-cut duty to himself or herself, to God and to society.

In fact, the holy texts of Islam emphasize that one's greatest allegiance should be to justice – even if doing so demands superseding family and coreligionist ties.

"Be strict in observing justice, and be witness for Allah, even though it be against yourselves or against your parents or kindred," the Koran says in Chapter 4, Verse 36. Omar fails on every count when her remarks trivializing the Sept. 11 attacks are seen in the light of this verse.

There is no question that the Sept. 11 attacks were an act of war launched through evolutionary Islamist jihadism, which has since become the hallmark of radical Islam.

Radical Islam – also known as Islamism – is a deviant, fictional and extreme distortion of true Islam, perpetrated by Islamist Muslims who use it to justify hatred and lethal violence that in reality have nothing to do with Islam.

Omar should be honest. There is no escaping the fact that the atrocities of 9/11 were not simply committed by “some people.” Islamist jihadists were responsible and they came from within the Muslim fold.

The vast majority of the world’s Muslims reject the cult or murder and death embraced by the hijackers of our beautiful religion, and in fact, many Muslims continue to die at the hands of Islamist jihadism. We each bear a responsibility to expose it.

Finally, let me set the record straight on Omar’s frequent complaints about how she and other Muslims are being persecuted and discriminated against in the United States today.

As a Muslim woman of color and immigrant – just like Omar – it’s logical to assume that if there was pervasive anti-Muslim discrimination in the United States I would be aware of it.

But in fact, Muslims have not experienced a contraction of civil rights in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 attacks. We continue to have the same rights as all other Americans.

Rather than being second-class citizens, Muslims born in America and immigrating here legally have full citizenship open to us. We are all allowed to both be and feel fully American and recognized as such, unlike the way many Muslims tell me they feel in European nations.

The greatest obscenity in the lie that Omar pedals is that she – along with millions of other Muslims in America – is somehow victimized. Do not believe this.

Muslims in America are mainstream and most are middle-class. Some of us are even wealthy. Many of us are highly educated, upwardly mobile and among the fastest immigrants to climb the economic ladder and earn six-figure incomes. This is in stark contrast to Muslims in Europe, where Muslims are much less affluent than the general population.

The myth of Muslim victimhood is an Islamist one. It is completely false in the setting of Islam in America and in comparison to Islam in the wider Muslim-majority world.

For me, condemning Omar’s trivialization of the Sept. 11 mass murders is an act of being fully American, being a physician advocate for my 9/11 survivor patients and their families, and at the same time – keeping in line with Islam’s clear teachings – being fully Muslim.”

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
1.1  seeder  XXJefferson51  replied to  XXJefferson51 @1    5 years ago

It’s nice to see this Islamist extremist Omar taken down point by point by an American Muslim Doctor who represents the vast majority of American Muslims. Her article is full of awesome points well made.  

 
 
 
Tessylo
Professor Principal
1.1.1  Tessylo  replied to  XXJefferson51 @1.1    5 years ago

This American Muslim doctor speaks for themself, no one else.  

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
1.1.3  seeder  XXJefferson51  replied to  Tessylo @1.1.1    5 years ago

I think that she speaks for most Americans and American Muslims in her wise comments in the article that she wrote.  

 
 
 
Greg Jones
Professor Participates
1.1.4  Greg Jones  replied to  Tessylo @1.1.1    5 years ago
This American Muslim doctor speaks for themself, no one else.  

So are you saying she is wrong. I think she speaks for many peaceful Muslim Americans. I'd trust her views more than anything you have to say.

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
1.1.5  seeder  XXJefferson51  replied to  Greg Jones @1.1.4    5 years ago

She speaks for most American Muslims fortunately for America.  Unfortunately the SPLC and the democrat party prefer the Tlaib and Omar version of that religion.  

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
1.1.6  Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  XXJefferson51 @1.1.5    5 years ago

How many Muslims do you know?

 
 
 
Jasper2529
Professor Quiet
1.1.7  Jasper2529  replied to  Perrie Halpern R.A. @1.1.6    5 years ago
How many Muslims do you know?

Why should that matter?

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
1.1.9  Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  Jasper2529 @1.1.7    5 years ago

I apologize. I misread the comment. 

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
1.1.10  seeder  XXJefferson51  replied to    5 years ago

That question has yet to be answered.  It will be interesting to see if it will be or if it will only be crickets chirping...

 
 
 
luther28
Sophomore Silent
1.2  luther28  replied to  XXJefferson51 @1    5 years ago

You have to come up with a better bogeyman than Rep. Omar, [deleted]

 
 
 
Tessylo
Professor Principal
1.2.1  Tessylo  replied to  luther28 @1.2    5 years ago

[Removed]

 
 
 
Buzz of the Orient
Professor Expert
2  Buzz of the Orient    5 years ago

Another Muslim to add to my list of heroes.  There are members on NT who will probably call her an Islamophobe.  In fact, SPLC may add her to their hate list.

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
2.1  seeder  XXJefferson51  replied to  Buzz of the Orient @2    5 years ago

I thought the same thing regarding the SPLC.  It will be hard for them to do that to her though.  She is a great American.  

 
 
 
Jasper2529
Professor Quiet
2.2  Jasper2529  replied to  Buzz of the Orient @2    5 years ago
Another Muslim to add to my list of heroes.

Indeed. I've admired her eloquence and knowledge for several years. 

If you don't already know who he is, please read about Dr. Zhudi Jasser. He, too, speaks out against radical Islamism and has been vocal about Ilhan Omar. I know that you can't see You Tube videos, but maybe you'll be able to see the videos of Dr. Jasser in these articles:

Both Dr. Ahmed and Dr. Jasser have been outspoken critics of radical Islamism and radical Ilhan Omar. 

 
 
 
Buzz of the Orient
Professor Expert
2.2.1  Buzz of the Orient  replied to  Jasper2529 @2.2    5 years ago

Dr. Jasser was the first Muslim on my list of Muslim heroes - I posted an article about him a while back.  He is a devout Muslim reformer who is critical of radical Islamism, and he has earned the ire of CAIR.  I said in a comment to the article I posted that I would put my life in Dr. Jasser's hands.

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
2.2.2  seeder  XXJefferson51  replied to  Buzz of the Orient @2.2.1    5 years ago

I like the Islamic reformers. I hope that they gain more influence.  Christianity had its reformation and then the target of it belatedly had their own version.  Islam from its founding to now time wise is roughly near the point when our reformation/counter reformation / renaissance were beginning in our history.   

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
2.2.3  seeder  XXJefferson51  replied to  Buzz of the Orient @2.2.1    5 years ago

Another would be Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation.

Quilliam is the world’s first counter-extremism organisation. We have a full spectrum and values-based approach to counter-extremism which means promoting pluralism and inspiring change.

“Over the last decade we have grown to have operations all over the world and aim to tackle extremism of all kinds. To pursue our work more effectively and ensure that we are localising our efforts, we currently have a UK team, a North America team, and a Global team.

Challenging extremism is the duty of all responsible members of society. Not least because cultural insularity and extremism are products of the failures of wider society to foster a shared sense of belonging and to advance liberal democratic values.

Quilliam seeks to challenge what we think, and the way we think. We aim to generate creative, informed and inclusive discussions to counter the ideological underpinnings of terrorism, while simultaneously providing evidence-based policy recommendations to governments, and building civil society networks and programmes to lead the change towards a more positive future.

ABOUT QUILLIAM

Quilliam is the world’s first counter-extremism organisation. We have a full spectrum approach to promote pluralism and inspire change.” https://www.quilliaminternational.com/about/

 

 
 
 
Jasper2529
Professor Quiet
2.2.4  Jasper2529  replied to  XXJefferson51 @2.2.3    5 years ago

Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation were also targeted by the hate group SPLC. From June 2018:

The Southern Poverty Law Center has reached a settlement with liberal Islamic reformer Maajid Nawaz and his organization, the Quilliam Foundation, for wrongly including them on its now-defunct list of “anti-Muslim extremists.” The SPLC announced Monday that it has agreed to pay Nawaz and Quilliam $3.375 million “to fund their work to fight anti-Muslim bigotry and extremism.” The settlement was the result of a lawsuit Nawaz filed in April over his inclusion on the SPLC’s “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.”

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
2.2.5  seeder  XXJefferson51  replied to  Jasper2529 @2.2.4    5 years ago

The SPLC seems to have an open preference for Islamist Muslims over reformers.  I guess the SPLC fears that the moderate Muslims would work too closely with their conservative Jewish and Christian counterparts who the SPLC views as enemies.  

 
 

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