Sometimes. Individuals and groups give the world a clue to their probity, world view and agenda by whom they choose to admire, congratulate and elevate as heroes. We know for example that a person with a picture of Stalin on their wall is not exactly going to be a friend of free markets, freedom of belief or freedom of speech. Admiration of Stalin or Stalin’s works, shows the observer just what a person’s true core beliefs and agenda are. The choice of particular heroes and those whom are lavished with praise by an individual or a group often much more illustrative of what they are really thinking. It would certainly be more reliable a piece of evidence of a person or group’s probity than would be the often honeyed words they use in argument to convince others about the nature of their own belief system whether that be religious or political.
You can see from the ‘Stalin’ analogy above how and individual or a group can reveal what they truly believe by whom and what they revere or praise. In a similar manner we can by see the sort of ‘heroes’ that Islamic groups raise up and whom they praise, the sort of ideologies and sometimes horrors, that these groups are willing to either approve of or overlook.
The Tell Mama group is a case in point here. They have praised someone who is at best shady and at worst is an Israel and West hating nutcase.
Following the US Mid Term elections, the lavishly taxpayer funded ‘Islamophobia’ (this group have grabbed at least £1.9M from the public purse this year) monitors Tell Mama heaped praise on their Twitter feed for the newly elected Somali American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. In a Tweet published by Tell Mama on the 7th November 2018 they said: “Congratulations to Ilhan Omar, the first hijab wearing woman and refugee elected to Congress’.
Of course Tell Mama did not mention the numerous scandals that have followed Ilhan Omar since way before the election. These scandals have been in the public eye for months now which would have been plenty of time for Tell Mama to research this character to find out if she was the sort of person that a publicly funded organisation should be giving praise to. Unsurprisingly this organisation, which has a reputation for putting a lot of spin on stories and occasionally indulging in dishonesty to promote the idea that Islam is a victimised faith, rather than, as others perceive Islam, which is that it is instead a victimising ideology.
Here’s what Tell Mama left out when heaping a worrying level of praise onto Ilhan Omar. First there is good example from Robert Spencer writing at Front Page Magazine about Omar’s documented Israel and Jew hatred. He was writing about both of the Muslim women who were recently elected to the US House of Representatives and noted that both Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Omar of Minnesota had both made past statements about the desirability of Israel’s destruction.
Robert Spencer said:
The hijabed (and therefore pro-Sharia) Ilhan Omar, meanwhile, is even more hateful than Tlaib. According to the Daily Wire, in 2012 Omar tweeted: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel.” Challenged about this tweet much more recently, she doubled down and attacked the man who called attention to the tweet: “Drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime is far from hating Jews. You are a hateful sad man, I pray to Allah you get the help you need and find happiness.”
There is much, much worse about Omar. David Steinberg of PJ Media has done extraordinary work in shedding light on aspects of Omar’s record that the establishment media has steadfastly ignored. Steinberg reports that Omar has “faced allegations — soon backed by a remarkable amount of evidence — that she had married her own brother in 2009, and was still legally his wife. They officially divorced in December 2017. The motivation for the marriage remains unclear. However, the totality of the evidence points to possible immigration fraud and student loan fraud.” What’s more, she swore to apparent falsehoods in court.
One of the links to background information is to the City Journal, the house organ of the respected and influential conservative organisation focussing on urban affairs, the Manhattan Institute. This organisation is one that has been said by Wikipedia to have worked closely with former New York Mayor Rudi Guilliani and advised former New York State governor George Pataki on increasing school choice rights for parents by the means of Charter Schools.
This is not by any stretch of the imagination, not even Tell Mama’s fevered and vivid one, an extremist, racist, or ‘Islamophobic’ group, it is one that the economist Thomas Sowell is alleged to have praised as “arguably America’s best magazine”. City Journal has done a considerable amount of investigative legwork on the subject of Omar, and what their writer Scott W Johnson has uncovered appears to be extremely murky indeed. He dug into the stories that were circulating around on American Somali message boards and uncovered the story of Omar’s convoluted life, including allegations that she married her brother. In 2016 well before the election, Mr Johnson published an article on the Powerline blog detailing his researches into the worrying allegations and stories of Omar’s illegal marriage to a relative that Mr Johnson said were ‘something of an open secret in the Somali community’.
In a later article on the City Journal site Mr Johnson gave an account of his investigation into Ilhan Omar and how when he raised questions to Omar’s campaign runners about the issues of alleged incest and bigamy that surround Omar, he got stonewalled. It appears that the Omar campaign just screamed ‘racist’ and ‘Islamophobe’ at those who asked awkward questions about Omar’s background and personal conduct.
Mr Johnson said in his City Journal piece:
I originally checked out the SomaliSpot story online through the Minnesota Official Marriage System. Inputting Omar’s name, I found that the two marriages cited in the discussion board post checked out as indicated. The site reflected Omar’s 2002 marriage to her advertised husband, Ahmed Aden (later Ahmed Hirsi), and her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi (identified in the SomaliSpot post as Omar’s brother). A few days after the primary, I submitted written questions to representatives of the Omar campaign, citing the SomaliSpot post, and asking whether Omar’s second marriage had been entered into with her brother for dishonest purposes. That same afternoon, I received a message from Omar’s press contact indicating that the campaign would get back to me later that day. I didn’t hear back from campaign officials directly, but I did receive a response from Minneapolis criminal defense attorney Jean Brandl. It provided no answer to my question, and implied that the question itself evidenced bigotry against Omar and her candidacy for public office.
Dear Mr. Johnson:
I have been contacted by the Ilhan Omar campaign. Their response to your email from this morning is as follows:
“There are people who do not want an East African, Muslim woman elected to office and who will follow Donald Trump’s playbook to prevent it. Ilhan Omar’s campaign sees your superfluous contentions as one more in a series of attempts to discredit her candidacy.
Ilhan Omar’s campaign will not be distracted by negative forces and will continue to focus its energy on creating positive engagement with community members to make the district and state more prosperous and equitable for everyone.”
If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please direct them to me in writing so we have a record of any further communications.
Sincerely,
Jean Brandl
Mr Johnson then went on to say that the matter had been followed up by the Star Tribune news outlet following the Powerline blog article and the Star Tribune was told by Democratic party staff that the allegations of incest were ‘ridiculous’ and Omar issued a statement accusing everyone looking into this issue as being motivated by ‘Trump-style’ racism and ‘Islamophobia’. He added that a Star Tribune had asked questions of the Omar campaign about whether a man called Ahmed |Nur Said Elmi, Omar’s husband, was in fact her brother. However when he did this reporter was also stonewalled. Mr Johnson said: “When Star Tribune reporter Patrick Coolican requested a comment from me for his story that day, I asked him who Elmi is. “They won’t tell me,” he said.”
It seems to me that the Omar campaign was being less than necessarily open about Omar’s marital status and doing so not just to the writer from Powerline and City Journal, but also to the journalist from the Star Tribune. It should be pretty obvious to the intelligent observer that Omar fails to understand that asking questions and asking for clarifications about allegations that have been made about her conduct are plainly not ‘Islamophobic’. In a constitutional republic, of which the USA is an example, those seeking public office, no matter who they are or what race they belong to, are subjected to intense scrutiny. Omar’s attempts to evade such scrutiny raise a lot of questions about her political and personal probity. If there is not anything dodgy about Omar’s background and if there are no truth in the allegations that she married her brother, committed bigamy and played fast and loose with the truth on her immigration papers, then where is there the secrecy from the Omar campaign about ‘Elmi’?
There is much about Ilhan Omar that those concerned about Islamic politics should have to be worried about. There’s the obvious Jew hatred and Israel hatred (calling for a ‘one state’ solution that would inevitably end up with the genocide of Israeli Jews is Jew hatred) that can be laid at the feet of Omar along with the shonky ‘marital questions’. I believe that Ilhan Omar may well have been less than honest with those who have asked her and her campaign reasonable questions about her background and her policies. She is the sort of politician that sensible organisations and organisations worried about how they are perceived by the public, should steer clear of endorsing.
Unfortunately the Tell Mama group has not given this troubling and shady character the wide berth that they could and should have given her. Instead Tell Mama have chosen to praise her for her achievements and for her background. This is a monstrous error of judgement by Tell Mama. This group, Tell Mama, is one with a considerable amount of influence, unearned and unworthy influence I should add, on Britain’s public life and even over how we are policed. Tell Mama for example even has the ability to influence police forces into apologising to an alleged ‘hate speech’ ‘victim’ (h/t Ambush Predator blog) for a police force giving a caution to a person who made statements criticising Islam and Muslims. Tell Mama should not be in the business of praising those like Ilhan Omar who are so obviously and plainly dodgy.
A group like this, especially one in receipt of so much of our money, should not be treating as heroes those like Omar who are plainly subject to a considerable degree of legitimate criticism. I cannot help but wonder how this ill-judged action will play with some of Tell Mama’s supporters? I think specifically of the Jewish groups and individuals that Tell Mama have over recent years hoodwinked into working with them and supporting them. It should give groups such as the Community Security Trust, along with the man who is seemingly becoming Tell Mama’s pet Rabbi, Jonathan Wittenberg, a good deal to worry about. This because by Tell Mama choosing to praise Omar, these Jewish groups and individuals now find themselves supporting an organisation that has praised a Jew-hater and a person with an incredibly murky past.
By their heroes and those whom they praise shall we judge groups like Tell Mama. That they have chosen to elevate and praise such an appalling, dangerous and shifty person as Ilhan Omar, should tell us just as much about Tell Mama’s true nature, as a picture of Stalin would tell us about the person who displayed such an item.
I believe that there are many Britons, of various racial and religious types and political paths, who would be justifiably angry if their money, money extorted from them by Government, was spent on some Hitler-praising lunatic for example. Spending money on such nutcases should be something that never should occur and if it did then the matter should be swiftly resolved by removing money from said lunatic. However, I also believe that Britons should be equally angry that at least £1.9M of our money has been spent on Tell Mama as they should be if some Hitler praising lunatic was in receipt of public money. Britons have a right to be angry that so much money has been expended on Tell Mama, merely in order for them to heap unjustified praise on a woman who has called for a policy that would result in genocide, and a person who cannot keep her story straight when asked about her family background. I would strongly counsel readers to bring up the issue of Tell Mama praising the odious Ilhan Omar with their elected representatives in the House of Commons and voice their criticisms of this increasingly dangerous group with them. We should not be spending taxpayers money on groups like Tell Mama that hail the achievements of those like Ilhan Omar who have a very distinct whiff of wrongdoing and one that has accompanied her for at least two years. There was no need for Tell Mama to give praise to this person, there was plenty of information out there that could have told them to back off and be careful, that they did not bother to do any research into this person before praising them shows that they are unfit custodians for so much of our money.
