Fox Business guest: Rep. Ilhan Omar “has no allegiance to the United States that I can detect”
Qanta Ahmed: “Ilhan Omar is an empty vessel. She has no allegiance to the United States that I can detect. She speaks like an Islamist mouthpiece.”
Published
Citation From the January 10, 2020, edition of Fox Business' Varney & Co.
STUART VARNEY (HOST): Ilhan Omar, Democrat, she said she opposes allowing the president to use military force in this situation, but she went further than that. She opposes what she called "crippling sanctions that have starved the innocent people of Iran." Now, your response to that?
DR. QANTA AHMED: Oh, she argues that while she calls for sanctions on Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, constantly and very brutal and vicious sanctions on Israel, and she doesn't extend that feeling to Israelis or my fellow Jewish human beings. But it is true that there are risks to sanctions, however, the United States has always excluded food, medicine and humanitarian aid, and it will do that again at 11 a.m. Also, the goal is to squeeze and weaken and I hope, myself, one day see the end of the Islamist regime. We already knew that Iranian people were protesting and being shot to death by the Iranian revolutionary guard right before these events. They were not even allowed to come out in public and mourn their dead the way the country has mourned Qassem Soleimani's assassination. Ilhan Omar is an empty vessel. She has no allegiance to the United States that I can detect. She speaks like an Islamist mouthpiece. Her views are completely in line with the views of Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other sympathizers of which Iran would also be in alliance as a Shiite Islamist.
VARNEY: To be clear, you are a Muslim yourself.
AHMED: I am a Muslim and I observe Islam. I've also lived in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia. I'm in the region constantly. I was supposed to be in Iraq on Friday but obviously I'm not going to be able to go, so --
VARNEY: It is political Islam, is the Islam that's political, that's who you oppose.
AHMED: Islamism is the political, totalitarian imposter of Islam, the religion proper.