Ilhan Omar

US Congresswoman and one of the biggest advocates for Islamists, Ilhan Omar, is at it again. Recently, at an event hosted by the Indian American Muslim Council, she delivered a speech attacking India, accusing the country of being in the “eighth stage of genocide”. She further insinuated that minorities are facing extinction in India because of systematic and societal repression, which is not limited to the Modi government alone.

For the unversed, the ‘eighth stage of genocide’ that she referred to is part of the ‘Ten Stages of Genocide’ model developed by Gregory Stanton, founder-president of ‘Genocide Watch’, a Washington DC-based NGO. As per the model, the eighth stage refers to the persecution stage, followed by extermination and then denial of genocide as the final stage. The event was held in Minnesota and was also attended by the state’s Attorney General, Keith Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to the US Congress (2007–2019) and the first Muslim elected to statewide office in the country. Also present were other state senators of Somali origin, including Zainab Mohamed and Omar Fateh.

As expected, the attack has met with a sharp response in India where, instead of a diplomatic pushback, it is ordinary Indian women who have taken to social media and exposed Ilhan Omar’s farcical claim. A number of prominent voices from the community accused her of using Indian Muslims to advance her own political career. Writer and popular observer of social and political issues, Arshia Malik, even highlighted how the Muslim population in India has instead grown significantly from just 35 million on the eve of Independence to over 200 million today. Others also joined her in support, citing their own record of freedom, which they enjoy because of India’s plural ethos, while also noting how the state machinery has co-opted and rewarded the community at every level of governance, where they have a right to shape their destiny and the future is in their own hands.

Anyway, this is not the first time that Ilhan Omar has targeted India in order to appease Islamists. In 2019, when India repealed Article 370 to integrate Kashmir with the mainstream, she ran a letter campaign urging the US to pressure India. Then, in 2020, she again targeted India during the farm protests by framing it as an authoritarian country. In 2022, she literally blew her own cover as an objective politician when she visited Pakistan-occupied Kashmir accompanied by officials from the country and accused India of unleashing atrocities on Kashmiris. The same year, she also co-sponsored a resolution condemning India over its treatment of minorities and urged the designation of India as a country of particular concern. She even boycotted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s joint address to the US Congress in 2023 in order to draw attention to how the country treated its minorities.

Ilhan Omar’s long history of targeting India over its treatment of minorities is not born out of some genuine concern for the Muslim community in India. It is part of a well-crafted strategy to appease Islamists in order to advance her own politics. She is the representative for Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, which has a large Somali-Muslim immigrant population. Her identity as a hijab-wearing Muslim woman who speaks on behalf of Muslims living in Palestine and Kashmir makes her a symbol of the fight against Islamophobia, which is why her constituency votes for her by huge margins. It also helps her raise funds and network with like-minded groups that support her career in American politics.

However, her association with Islamist networks such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Indian Muslim American Council (IAMC) is increasingly becoming a matter of concern and controversy in the country. CAIR was originally founded by Muslim Brotherhood leaders and was even named as a co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, which involved allegations of funnelling $12.4 million to the designated terrorist organisation Hamas. Some American states, such as Texas and Florida, have even banned CAIR over its alleged links with terror groups. Similarly, IAMC, which masquerades as an organisation representing Indian Americans, is actually presented by critics as a front for international Islamist forces such as Turkey. Both IAMC and CAIR work in close coordination under the broader patronage of the Muslim Brotherhood, which itself receives significant backing from both Turkey and Qatar. The influence of Islamists over IAMC can be understood from the fact that its social media handles are not operated from the US, where the organisation is physically based, but from Turkey.

Incidentally, the event at which Omar was speaking was organised by IAMC, which plays a key role in lobbying against India in the United States. There are reports documenting how it has paid thousands of dollars to lobbying firms in order to get the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to designate India as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’. No prize for guessing that such efforts are financially backed by Islamist regimes such as Turkey. In fact, an interesting detail has emerged recently, as highlighted by the ‘Citation Integrity Database’, a portal that evaluates the integrity of academic methods and citations. According to it, there exists a well-documented citation loop between the reports of IAMC and USCIRF, where both keep cross-citing each other’s claims of minorities being persecuted in India, with no other independent reports available to verify those claims.

No wonder Ilhan Omar finds herself a long-term associate of both IAMC and CAIR, organisations that further the strategic interests of the Islamist lobby in the US. Omar is not only a recipient of their financial support but also a regular speaker at their events.

In the last decade, India’s rise has led to sustained attacks on its reputation by various actors, of which Islamists are one of the most prominent groups. On one hand, there is the Western machinery that uses religious division as a weapon to exploit India’s diversity to its advantage, and on the other there is the lobby from the emerging Islamist axis of Turkey, Qatar and Pakistan. Unlike the Arab countries that have outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood due to the threat it presents to their respective monarchies, Qatar and Turkey have emerged as its chief patrons. Both these countries have regimes that are increasingly styling themselves as leaders of the Islamic world. In order to solidify their claim, they often target countries such as Israel and India, using the Palestinian and Kashmir causes to portray themselves as champions of Muslims worldwide.

However, thanks to a large immigrant population, politicians such as Ilhan Omar become their allies in the West and readily lend their voices to these Islamist elements. Omar has been called out in the past for publicly seeking the release of a Muslim Brotherhood terrorist. She was even removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 2023 over her antisemitic remarks about Israel. Today, she is little more than a fringe figure in mainstream politics in the United States, which is why she continues to make these outrageous claims against India in an effort to stay relevant. Every false claim that she makes against the country is handsomely rewarded by Islamists.

(The author is a New Delhi-based commentator on geopolitics and foreign policy. She holds a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. She tweets @TrulyMonica. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)