Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) referred to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, as a day in which “some people did something” during her keynote address at a private fundraiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) of Greater Los Angeles last March.
In her remarks, Omar urged attendees to “raise hell” and “make people uncomfortable” in an effort to reverse the fortunes of Muslim Americans, who the freshman Congresswoman suggested were demoted to second-class citizens following 9/11.
“CAIR was founded after 9/11, because they recognize that some people did something, and then all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,” said Omar, without offering any evidence to back up her claim. “You can’t just say that today someone is looking at me strange, that I am going to try to make myself look pleasant. You have to say that person is looking at me strange, I am not comfortable with it. I am going to talk to them and ask them why.”
Later in her remarks, the Minnesota Democrat implied President Donald Trump was to blame for the deadly mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. The March 15th attack, which consisted of two consecutive shootings during Friday prayers, killed 50 people and would 50 others. “The reason I think that many of us knew that this was going to get worse is that we finally have a leader, a world leader in the White House, who publicly says Islam hates us; who fuels hate against Muslims; who thinks it is okay, that it’s okay to speak about a faith and a whole community in a way that is dehumanizing, vilifying, and doesn’t understand, or at least makes us want to think that he doesn’t understand, the consequences that his words might have,” she said, according to The Gateway Pundit.
As Breitbart News has extensively reported, CAIR has a dubious history in the U.S., which was formed in 1994 by the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Palestine Committee” members Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad.
In 2007-8, CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. That case, in turn, led the FBI to discontinue its work with the organization. In 2009, a federal judge ruled that the government “produced ample evidence to establish” the ties of CAIR with Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization. The United Arab Emirates labeled CAIR a terrorist organization in 2014 (a decision that the Obama administration opposed).
Omar has been at a lightning rod for controversy since coming to Washington, D.C. The 37-year-old has faced bipartisan blowback for repeated anti-semitic remarks and trafficking of anti-Jewish tropes. In February, Omar, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, suggested Republican lawmakers are bribed by the pro-Israel advocacy group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in exchange for supporting the Jewish state. The freshman Congresswoman has also described pro-Israel Americans as those who hold an “allegiance to a foreign country.” She previously apologized for accusing Israel of “evil doings” and “hypnotiz[ing] the world” in a 2012 tweet.