Just as Prime Minister Modi wrapped his US tour and headed to Egypt, his second state visit this month, Ilhan Omar is back in the news and how. Omar, who is a member of the US House of Representatives, is moving a resolution against India condemning its human rights record and treatment of minorities that include Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and interestingly Jews as well. This is pretty ironic for a representative who has been seated out from the foreign affairs committee of the Congress over her anti-Semitic remarks targeting the Jews. In fact, unlike what Ilhan Omar is claiming in the resolution to tarnish India’s image, India has always been one of the safest places for Jews the world over. It has a civilisational history of giving refuge to the Jewish community when they were facing persecution in their own native lands. But Omar clearly isn’t someone who gives credence to facts over propaganda.
In the resolution, she has called on the Secretary of State to designate India as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ in the next annual report of the US International Religious Freedom Commission. India has been already mentioned as a country of particular concern for the last four years in the USIRF annual report. But Omar is unrelenting in her pursuit of labelling India as a country that doesn’t accord its minorities their due rights. This is not the first time that she has moved a resolution against India at the US Congress. In 2022 also, she had moved a resolution targeting India over the treatment of minorities. She also boycotted Prime Minister Modi’s joint address to the US Congress last week, joined by fellow democrats Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Ideally, a Muslim politician moving a resolution in the legislative body of a powerful democracy must send India into serious introspection mode but the truth is Ilhan Omar is no well-meaning politician who indeed has the best interests of India’s minorities in her heart. She is an Islamist who has been called out on multiple occasions for pandering to radical Islamist forces. In 2020, Qasem Soleimani, a powerful Iranian General was killed in a drone strike by the United States in Iraq. Soleimani was responsible for many American deaths and was even designated as a foreign terrorist by the US. But instead of supporting the government in his elimination, she showed solidarity with him going against the interest of her own country. This reaction by her was in complete contrast to how she had responded to the 9/11 attacks where she famously remarked that “some people did something” and mocked the victims of the brutal terror incident.
Also unmissable is her stand on the Iranian anti-hijab protest. When a large number of women in Iran had taken to the streets to reclaim their freedom, Omar, who is a habitual victim card player over her identity as a Muslim woman, did not even support them. In fact, she sided with the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown by comparing it with how the police in the US has to maintain public order.
Omar’s love for the Islamists is no secret as she has openly indulged leaders such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a man who has firmly pushed the country away from a secular polity towards the path of a deeply rooted Islamisation. In 2022, she paid a visit to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. This was another of her usual tricks to use Islamophobia as a trope to hide the crimes of the Islamists. Expectedly, she raised the issue of how the Indian state is violating human rights without even recognising the horror of Islamic terrorism that has plagued Kashmir. Her antics led the US government to distance itself from the visit and issue a clarification that it was a private trip. There were multiple allegations against her that the trip was funded by a Pakistani businessman who had also arranged her meeting with Imran Khan, the former Prime Minister of the country.
Ilhan’s intention in raising the false bogey of ill-treatment of minorities in India reflects her ambition to position herself as a crusader against Islamophobia. But her record on real issues of Muslims and the lack of empathy shown by her in raising them is proof enough that she is nothing but a hypocrite. This is evident in her frequent involvement with states such as Turkey and Pakistan who have emerged as the new axis of Islam. Both states have a pathetic record of how they treat their minorities. In Pakistan, every single week, a Hindu minor girl is either raped or forcefully married and converted to Islam. For all these players, India is just a punching bag which they use to amass more credibility and material benefits from the Islamists.
Since India is a rising power, it is bound to face more vicious attacks in the time to come. But the likes of Ilhan Omar must be exposed for what they really are — a racist bigot who panders to one of the most authoritarian states in the world.
The author is a PhD in International Relations from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. Her research focuses on political economy of South Asia and regional integration. Views expressed are personal.
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