CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad speaks at a press conference in Washington, D.C. (video screenshot)
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which boasts of being the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, condemned President Trump for redistributing a Twitter message that claimed Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., “partied on the anniversary of 9/11.”
Trump added a comment to the tweet, stating “Ilhan Omar, a member of AOC Plus 3, will win us the Great State of Minnesota. The new face of the Democrat Party!”
Omar responded Wednesday morning with a tweet saying the video in the tweet of her dancing to Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” was from a Congressional Black Caucus event Sept. 13.
“The President of the United States is continuing to spread lies that put my life at risk,” she wrote. “What is Twitter doing to combat this misinformation?”
CAIR has launched a campaign urging Twitter to suspend the president’s account.
“President Trump once again displays an absolute disregard both for the truth and for the harm he causes by spreading false, anti-Muslim smears for his own political gain,” said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad.
“Twitter must suspend the president’s account and stop his weaponization of social media to target Muslims, other minority communities and his perceived political enemies.”
Awad, according to an FBI probe in a terror-financing case, was among the Hamas operatives who founded CAIR in 1994. CAIR was designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the case by the Justice Department. The United Arab Emirates has designated CAIR a terrorist organization, and more than a dozen CAIR figures have been the target of terror-related charges.
In a speech at a CAIR fundraiser in April, Omar praised the group, mistakenly claiming it was founded in response to a purported backlash against Muslims after 9/11. She described the Islamic terrorist attack that killed nearly 3,000 people as “some people did something.”
On Sunday on “Face the Nation,” Omar was asked about the comment after the son of a 9/11 victim said at the official memorial service last week that the congresswoman’s description of the attacks “tore [his] heart apart.”
“What I was speaking to was the fact that as a Muslim, not only was I suffering as an American who was attacked on that day, but the next day I woke up as my fellow Americans were now treating me as a suspect,” Omar said on “Face the Nation,” calling 9/11 “an attack on all Americans.”
But Omar still doesn’t understand why her comment was so offensive to 9/11 families, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told Fox News on Monday.
Fleischer, who was in the White House during 9/11, said Omar’s charge that Muslims faced civil rights violations also is not true.
“Nobody had their civil liberties stripped. In fact, they were protected,” he said.
Omar, along with fellow Muslim Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is a supporter of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction, or BDS, movement that aims to eliminate the Jewish state.
Her anti-Semitic tweets prompted a resolution by the Democratic-controlled House condemning hate speech.
Meanwhile, the executive director of CAIR’s Minnesota chapter, Jaylani Hussein, also weighed in on the Trump retweet.
Hussein said it’s “unconscionable that the president of the United States would so casually promote falsehoods that threaten the life a member of Congress elected by the people of Minnesota.”
“Action must be taken by Twitter against the president and the source of the false information.”
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