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On November 1, 2023, less than a month after the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, Harris, who at the time was serving as Vice President, announced – in what has to be one of the most tone-deaf political actions of our time – a new “National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia.” In her announcement, she made the following remarks: “For years, Muslims in America and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks. As a result of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, we have seen an uptick in anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents across America, including the brutal attack of a Palestinian-American woman, who is Muslim, and the killing of her 6-year-old son.”
The child in question was Wadea al-Fayoume of Plainfield Township, IIlinois; his killer was the family’s landlord, Joseph Czuba. The murder was abominable, of course. But note the way in which Harris managed to foreground this isolated incident and present it – dishonestly – as representative of a massive wave of violence against Muslims in America – while tucking Hamas’s murder of 1,195 people into a subordinate clause and sandwiching anti-Semitic acts in between the far less common anti-Arab and Islamophobic acts. As Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) commented in a tweet: “After the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and a breakout of pro-Hamas activism on campus, the White House is claiming Islamophobia is our top concern.”
Harris’s exaggerated focus on Muslim suffering and her downplaying of the worst anti-Semitic atrocity since the Holocaust was hardly out of character. Eight years earlier, on December 2, 2015, a Muslim couple named Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik had killed 14 people and seriously injured 22 others at a Christmas party for employees of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, for which Farook worked. It was a clear-cut act of jihadist terrorism, and came three weeks after a series of jihadist attacks in and around Paris that took 137 lives and injured 416, mostly at the Bataclan theater.
At the time, Kamala Harris was Attorney General of California. Her response to these violent actions committed in the name of Islam was to hold an event to which she invited leaders of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and various other Muslim, Christian, and Jewish organizations, as well as police officials. In her remarks, Harris did two things. One, she criticized terrorism in a very generalized, pro forma sense – which is to say that she didn’t acknowledge the direct connection of these events to Islam. Two – and this was the real reason for the gathering – she condemned “Islamophobic” rhetoric, focusing not on the mass murders in San Bernardino and Paris but on several recent “hate crime incidents” in California, and celebrated American Muslims as allies in the struggle against terrorism.
“As Americans,” Harris said, “we are unified in our commitment to protect our country from terrorist attacks, and we must seek justice for those who lost their lives in the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. Ultimately, not only is it immoral and contrary to our values to stoke fear and cast aspersions against an entire faith and the millions of law-abiding American Muslims, but it is also strategically unwise. This very community is a critical ally in the short and long term fight combatting terrorism and radicalization here at home and across the world.”
This was sheer sophistry. Or, to use a simpler word, hogwash. Harris knew – she hs to have known – that CAIR and other Islamic groups represented at the event, far from being opposed to terrorism, had intimate links to terrorist groups. These links, however, have not prevented her from maintaining, over the years, a remarkably warm and friendly relationship with CAIR. In 2016, she accepted a $1,750 contribution by CAIR to her Senate campaign. In 2017, she praised CAIR for its purported efforts “to improve understanding about Islam” – this about an organization that is relentlessly dedicated to whitewashing the so-called Religion of Peace. In a 2018 letter congratulating CAIR on its 24th anniversary, Harris expressed her “gratitude and admiration” for the organization’s “tireless work to promote peace, justice, and mutual understanding” – more nonsense.
In June 2016, a few months after the San Bernardino atrocity, came the deadly shooting by a Muslim named Omar Mateen at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53. Harris, who at the time was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, spoke publicly about Mateen’s butchery, attributing it, along with the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, to “mental illness and violent extremism” before quickly pivoting, as before, to the subject of “Islamophobia.” The next month, Harris once again condemned “Islamophobia,” this time at a Ramadan event at the Islamic Center of Southern California (a group that, in 1988, spawned the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which has refused to call Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organizations).
Then came the first anniversary of the San Bernardino atrocity, at which time Harris issued a statement claiming to “remember those who lost their lives and the loved ones they left behind,” to extend her “support to those who were wounded and are working every day to rebuild their lives,” and to “honor the brave first responders who acted decisively and courageously, putting themselves in harm’s way to save lives.” Needless to say, she didn’t breathe a word about the motives of the perpetrators.
Little wonder, then, that when Harris ran for President, Muslim leaders lined up to endorse her, despite their concern about the support (tepid though it was) that the Biden-Harris administration had given to Israel in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks. An October 2024 letter signed by 25 prominent American imams declared that Harris was the obvious choice for Muslim voters, especially given that the alternative was – horrors! – Donald Trump. “Knowingly enabling someone like Donald Trump to return to office, whether by voting directly for him or for a third-party candidate, is both a moral and a strategic failure,” the imams pronounced. “Given his well-documented history of harming our communities and country, as well as what he has promised he will do to Muslims and Palestinians should he return, it is incumbent upon us not to allow our high emotions to dictate our actions to our detriment.”
In her own statement responding to the imams’ action, Nasrina Bargzie, Harris’s director of Muslim and Arab American Outreach, stressed that Harris had always “been steadfast in her support of our country’s diverse Muslim community, including ensuring that they can live free from the hateful policies of the Trump administration.”
Harris has indeed been steadfast in defending American Muslims – and in ignoring the dark reality of Islamic teachings. A.S. Ibrahim, an Egyptian-born Islamic scholar who teaches at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and has written books about the Koran and the life of Muhammed, argued in an article last August that Harris evinced what he called “a politically driven ignorance about terrorism.” In a speech to California Muslims the previous month, Harris had “voiced dissatisfaction with how people associate acts of terror with Islam,” objecting to the use of terms like “radical Islamic terror.” In Ibrahim’s words, “Harris never elaborated as to how we should describe acts of terror executed under the banner of Islam. If the world follows Harris’ ill-informed statement, we should all turn a blind eye when we see atrocities accomplished by self-identified Muslims who state that they’re pursuing Islam and the application of its commands.”
In short, observed Ibrahim, “Harris doesn’t know what she is talking about.” To “deny the undeniable role of Islam in Muslim terrorism” is sheer ignorance: “Islam and its texts clearly and explicitly drive some Muslims to commit acts of terrorism.” Terrorists like those in San Bernardino and Paris, Ibrahim pointed out, “act in accordance with and in fulfillment of what they view as sacred commands, grounded in authoritative Muslim texts.” In fact, noted Ibrahim, the Koran itself uses the word terror, with Allah promising to “cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved” and commanding Muslims “to slaughter” the infidels. Muhammad, for his part, stated that he had been “helped by terror.” Jihadist murderers, quite simply, “believe they’re doing service to Allah” and “following Muhammad’s example.” For Harris to close her eyes to this fact, concluded Ibrahim, “undermines our own national security and puts American lives at risk.”
But then Kamala Harris has been closing her eyes to the facts about Islam throughout her political career. The entire history of her unqualified support for Islam, and of her close ties to Islamic groups with known terrorist links, has been nothing less than a grotesque affront to fundamental American values. What a bullet we dodged when this shameless, dissembling apologist for Islam lost the 2024 election.