Trump tweet condemning Somali terrorists blasted as 'racist'

A Washington, D.C.-based group named Muslim Advocates criticized President Trump on Tuesday for a tweet drawing attention to two Somalia refugees arrested in Arizona for allegedly trying to join ISIS, citing the tweet as one of of many "racist" and "bigoted" attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and immigrants by Republicans and Fox News.

"President Trump, Fox News and congressional Republicans are recklessly wielding anti-Muslim bigotry and racism as political tools and are encouraging hate and violence in the process," said Madihha Ahussain, whose title is special counsel for anti-Muslim bigotry for Muslim Advocates.

Ahussain noted that on Tuesday morning the Fox News Channel show "Fox & Friends" "aired a story about Somalis arrested for wanting to join ISIS, prompting the president to tweet about Somali refugees wishing for 'another 911.'"

However, Trump simply recounted the basic details of the story, concluding with "Get smart people!"

"Somali refugees arresed in Tucson on way to Egypt. They were in touch with an agent posing as a terrorist," Trump wrote. "One of them stated, “The best wake up call is Islamic State to get victory or another 9/11.” Get smart people! #MAGA #KAG
@foxandfriends"

Nevertheless, Ahussain said the tweet "follows weeks of Republican attacks on immigrants and Ilhan Omar that include Rand Paul saying that he is 'dumbfounded how unappreciative she is of our country' and Marco Rubio tweeting a deceptively edited video intended to make Omar look like an anti-white bigot."

"This formula also led to a bigoted anti-Black tirade from Trump directed at civil rights leaders and the people of Baltimore," he said.

Ahussain was referring to Trump's tweets on Saturday criticizing Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., for browbeating the acting Department of Homeland Secretary regarding conditions in migrant detention centers. Trump urged the congressman to focus on fixing a "disgusting, rat and rodent-infested" part of his district.

The video tweeted by Rubio was of Omar in an Al Jazeera interview making the common claim by defenders of Islam that there are more white terrorists than Muslims terrorists, so Americans "should be more fearful of white men."

Al Jazeera asked Omar in the February 2018 interview: "A lot of conservatives in particular would say that the rise of Islamophobia is the result not of hate but of fear — a legitimate fear they say of ‘jihadist terrorism’ whether it’s Fort Hood or San Bernandino or the recent truck attack in New York. What do you say to them?"

Omar replied: "I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country, because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country. And so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe, Americans safe inside of this country, we should be profiling, monitoring and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men."

In his statement Tuesday, Ahussain said, "This is how the Infrastructure of Hate works."

He said Fox News and social media companies "profit off of bigotry, Trump is making this hate the core message of his 2020 campaign and Senators like Paul and Rubio are excusing and amplifying it — all while racial and religious minorities are targeted for threats and hate crimes."

"Remember, President Trump already caused Rep. Omar to receive death threats by tweeting a video that outrageously tied her to 9/11," Ahussain said.

He was referring to a video posted by the Trump War Room Twitter account that spotlighted Omar saying at a fundraiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations that the Muslim advocacy group 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."

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Omar clarified her remarks.

"What is important is the larger point that I was speaking to, which is about making sure that blame isn't placed on a whole faith -- that we as Muslims are not collectively blamed for the actions of terrorists," she said.

"I do not blame every single white person when we have a white man who massacres children at a school or moviegoers in a movie theater," said Omar.

Ahussain charged that Trump and Republicans are engaged not merely in political attacks, but in "vicious, intentional racism that threatens the safety of immigrants and people of color as well as the very soul of our nation. Republicans, Democrats, the media and all Americans need to forcefully and consistently denounce this hatred as well as everyone who excuses and encourages it."

Omar herself has responded to criticism by claiming the messengers are motivated by bigotry.

In June, for example, her spokesman Jeremy Slevin issued a statement to the Minneapolis Star Tribune in response to the paper's inquiries about the well-founded claim that she married her brother in an immigration fraud scheme.

Slevin said Omar was "the subject of conspiracy theories and false accusations about her personal life."

"Emboldened by a president who openly treats immigrants, refugees and Muslims as invaders, these attacks often stem from the presumption that Ilhan — like others who share those identities — is somehow illegitimate or not fully American," Slevin said.

"Ilhan has shared more than most public officials ever do about the details of her personal life — even when it is personally painful," he continued. "Whether by colluding with right-wing outlets to go after Muslim elected officials or hounding family members, legitimate media outlets have a responsibility not to fan the flames of hate. Continuing to do so is not only demeaning to Ilhan, but to her entire family."

'Willful blindness'

The executive director of Muslim Advocates is Farhana Khera, who as counsel to a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee, according to her bio, "focused substantially on the Patriot Act, racial and religious profiling, and other civil liberties issues raised by the government’s anti-terrorism policies after September 11, 2001."

Her group's website says she "wrote the first drafts of the End Racial Profiling Act and organized the first ever congressional hearing on racial profiling."

Farhana Khera testifies at Senate hearing June 28, 2016 (Screenshot Senate Judiciary Committee video).

As WND reported in 2016, Khera was confronted by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in June 2016 about her role in the "purge" of government and military materials and training regarding Islam and terrorism that took place under Obama.

As the leader of Muslim Advocates, she was the author of a 2011 letter calling on the Justice Department to open an "immediate investigation" into the FBI's "use of grossly inaccurate, inflammatory, and highly offensive counterterrorism training materials about Muslims and Islam used to train its agents and other law enforcement."

In the hearing, titled "Willful Blindness: Consequences of Agency Efforts to De-emphasize Radical Islam in Combating Terrorism," Cruz cited the testimony of a former DHS Islam subject-matter expert, Philip Haney, who "described a systematic policy, indeed of scrubbing, sanitizing, erasing references to radical Islam" during his more than a decade of service with the department.

Cruz displayed a chart showing the scrubbing of Islamic words from the government's lexicon that were deemed "offensive" or "bigoted," noting there were 126 references to "jihad" in the 9/11 commission report but none to that word in four related documents issued under Obama.

Haney testified that the administration eliminated more than 800 of his records related to the Muslim Brotherhood network in the U.S. because they somehow were an offense to Muslims.

Among the "woefully misinformed statements about Islam and bigoted stereotypes about Muslims" in FBI training, according to Khera, was the assertion that there "may not be a 'radical' threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox theology … [t]he strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are main stream."

The Washington, D.C., watchdog Judicial Watch, which obtained documentation of the "purge," said it also tried to find out if CAIR got the CIA to overhaul its anti-terrorism training. The spy agency replied that it could "neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records" involving meetings or communications with CAIR.