Predictions were that the New Zealand shooting would be used as a pretext to further stifle critics of Islam. So perhaps it’s no coincidence that Judge Jeanine Pirro, under fire recently for criticizing Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), just had the Saturday edition of her show unceremoniously pulled off the air by Fox News.
While Fox hasn’t explained the move, the timing is uncanny. It was Saturday, 3/9 that Pirro made her remark, “Think about it — Omar wears a hijab. Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?” Yet it wasn’t till this past Saturday, 3/16 — the very day her show was set to air again — that we heard about the cancellation.
This also happened to be just two days after China-loving, anti-capitalist, self-described “eco-fascist” Brenton Tarrant perpetrated the horrible Christchurch, New Zealand, massacres, killing 50.
But this was predictable — and predicted. Chronicles magazine wrote Friday that Muslim activists and their Thought Police enablers would use the shooting as a pretext to stifle “‘Islamophobia,’ effectively defined as any form of meaningful debate of Islam, its scriptural message, historical practice, and current ambitions.”
And, sure enough, writes American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson, “New Zealand has changed the momentum of American politics, putting concerns about Jew-hatred in the back seat (or maybe the trunk), while ‘Islamophobia’ activists sit in the driver’s seat, turning us left.”
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It doesn’t matter that, as I wrote Saturday, Muslim-on-Christian massacres are the norm in places such as Nigeria, that many thousands of Christians were thus killed in just the past year, and that a Christian is 143 times as likely to be killed for being Christian in a Muslim country as a Muslim is to be killed for being Muslim in a Western one. Perception isn’t reality, but it shapes policy — and is shaped by the media.
The mainstream media’s selective reporting means people don’t hear about massacred Christians, but it also gives us other double standards. For example, while it’s verboten for even a pundit to question Omar’s faith, senators Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) have in recent times suggested that certain judges may be too Catholic to sit on the bench, coming “close to imposing an unconstitutional ‘religious test’ upon [them],” as the Washington Examiner wrote last year. The Thought Police didn’t seem to mind, either.
Then there’s the headwear hustle. Pirro is a zero, supposedly, for questioning Omar’s hijab. But consider that Americans wearing MAGA hats have been attacked, and refused service in restaurants and elsewhere; also note that the poor Covington Catholic High School boys were targeted by activists and media for scorn, ostracism, and character assassination for wearing the caps.
Critics may say that MAGA hats represent something: ideas. But so does the hijab. These are symbols, which by definition are symbolic of something.
So the question is: What is it in the hijab’s case — and what, in particular, in Omar’s case?
American Thinker’s E. Jeffrey Ludwig weighed in on this yesterday, writing that Omar “poses an interesting case study in American cultural or civilizational consciousness. She is the first congressional representative to wear a scarf around her head, and that scarf is for some a symbol of the breadth and depth of our acceptance of others. For others, it is a symbol of alienation and rejection of the America she claims — simply by holding office — to represent. To those who see her this way, the hijab or head covering is seen as a hostile schmata (rag) whereby she is not merely carrying on one of her subculture’s customs, but, in essence, giving the finger to the country she now would participate in governing.”
If this seems a stretch, consider: The New York Times reported last year that Omar “became a citizen in 2000, when she was 17. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she decided to wear the hijab, as an open declaration of her identity.”
Striking. So Omar “put on the hijab after 9/11?” asks American Thinker editor Monica Showalter incredulously. “Back [when] most Americans were draping themselves in the American flag, flags flying like crazy, flag pins, flag boxes, flag everything, and back when Palestinians were dancing in the streets about it? Yes, that happened, there were horrible people in hijabs dancing with glee when that terrible event happened. How strange she chose that moment to put on the hijab. For her, it wasn’t even a religious motivation, it was, as she said, all about her identity, who[m] she identified with.”
“It goes against the response normally seen at such times,” Showalter continues. “Normally, people tend to want to assimilate with the injured party or with the nation itself when it’s had war declared upon it.”
A case in point, Showalter points out, is when “Japanese-descent Americans responded to their nationality under fire after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by volunteering in vast numbers to join the U.S. military to fight the Axis.” But that was a different time — and Omar is a different kind of immigrant.
It’s not just that, according to some sources, she has been implicated in multiple felonies, including fraud relating to immigration, healthcare, taxes, and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid program. It’s that she exudes bigotry and ingratitude.
Omar has accused the United States of being complicit in “genocide” in “Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.” Moreover, reports the New York Times, from “‘the first day we arrived in America,’” Omar said, “she concluded that it was not the golden land that she had heard about.” (We really need to stop holding that gun to her head and keeping her here.)
Omar also tweeted in 2012 that “Israel has hypnotized the world, [sic] may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” In a 2018 tweet she called Israel an “apartheid regime,” and she has demanded an end to the “occupation” of East Jerusalem. These are typical jihadist passions.
To the point of Pirro’s statement, however, the “hijab is in many cases, if not most, indicative of adherence to Sharia,” explains Jihad Watch proprietor Robert Spencer, one of America’s foremost authorities on Islam. “Sharia does contradict Constitutional principles in numerous ways, including the denial of the freedom of speech and the denial of the equality of rights of women,” he continues.
Note, too, that “the Center for Security Policy released a 2015 poll of Muslims in the US showing that ‘a majority (51 percent) agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah,”’” as I reported in 2017 (related video below concerning the part of Omar’s district dubbed “Little Mogadishu”). Given these facts, was Pirro’s question unjustified — or logical and necessary?
The deeper issue is that we always should — and should be able to — question our leaders’ motivations. If someone is a Marxist, is it wrong to wonder if his worldview contradicts his constitutional duties? If you think this isn’t analogous, consider that what differentiates ideologies from each other is that they involve different values.
Yet so do different religions.
Thus, not all religions can be morally equal unless all values are. This value-equivalency error, known as “moral relativism,” not only has as a corollary that all faiths are morally equal, but that all ideologies (and everything else) are, too. Do we really believe that Marxism, Nazism, conservatism, liberalism, and every other ism are equivalent?
Since our Constitution also expresses specific values, it follows that the values of certain other “belief systems” — whether called “religion,” “ideology,” “philosophy,” or something else — may conflict with it. It therefore is not just wise to wonder if a leader’s beliefs are compatible with the Constitution. It’s also an imperative of good citizenship.
While I won’t hold my breath waiting, I’d like to see a reporter ask Representative Omar, “Do you believe that Muslims in the United States should be allowed to govern themselves with Sharia rather than civil law?” and, “Do you believe Sharia law should be subordinated to our Constitution?”
Perhaps only Catholic judges can be thus grilled, but it would be interesting to see if Omar could give a straight answer.
Image: screenshot from YouTube video
