Rep. Ilhan Omar Sought Leniency for Men Accused of Trying to Join ISIS
“The best deterrent to fanaticism is a system of compassion. We must alter our attitude and approach”
Ilhan Omar, the new Democrat Congresswoman from Minnesota, asked a judge to go easy on nine men on trial in 2016 for allegedly trying to join the ISIS terrorist group. She was a state representative at that time.
FOX 9 News reported in November, 2016:
Rep. Ilhan Omar asks judge for compassion in ISIS recruit sentencing
The 9 Minnesota men charged with planning to join ISIS are scheduled to be sentenced next week. Ahead of those court dates, 13 letters were sent to Judge Michael Davis in the case of defendant Abdirahman Yasin Daud, including a letter from state Rep. Ilhan Omar, who on Election Night became with first elected Somali-American lawmaker in the nation.
Rep. Omar asked Judge Davis for “compassion” and a “restorative approach to justice,” concluding that “this ruling can set a precedent and has the potential to be a landmark case in addressing extremism.”
Daud was one of two young men from the Twin Cities arrested in San Diego in April 2015 in an alleged plot to buy fake passports for travel to Syria. Federal prosecutors requested 30 years in prison for Daud, with a lifetime of supervised release.
Here’s part of Omar’s letter to the judge:
Honorable Judge Davis,
As you undoubtedly deliberate with great caution the sentencing of nine recently convicted Somali-American men, I bring to your attention the ramifications of sentencing young men who made a consequential mistake to decades in federal prison. Incarcerating 20-year-old men for 30 or 40 years is essentially a life sentence. Society will have no expectations of the to be 50 or 60-year-old released prisoners; it will view them with distrust and revulsion. Such punitive measures not only lack efficacy, they inevitably create an environment in which extremism can flourish, aligning with the presupposition of terrorist recruitment: “Americans do not accept you and continue to trivialize your value. Instead of being a nobody, be a martyr.”
The best deterrent to fanaticism is a system of compassion. We must alter our attitude and approach; if we truly want to affect change, we should refocus our efforts on inclusion and rehabilitation. A long-term prison sentence for one who chose violence to combat direct marginalization is a statement that our justice system misunderstands the guilty. A restorative approach to justice assesses the lure of criminality and addresses it.
One Twitter user did an experiment with Omar’s letter, via Twitchy:
Fun exercise:
Try reading her letter and imagine that someone wrote this about a group of young white men convicted of trying to attack a mosque.
Some excerpts:
/1 https://t.co/N0PoWVnc1a— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
Remember, we’re imagining the defendants are racist white supremacists:
“these punitive measures… align with the presupposition of recruitment: ‘Americans do not accept you and continue to trivialize your value. Instead of being a nobody, be a martyr.'” /2— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
“A long-term prison sentence for one who chose violence to combat direct marginalization is a statement that our justice system misunderstands the guilty.”
Imagine a US Rep saying we’ve “misunderstood” a white terrorist targeting Muslims.
That’s grotesque.
/3— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
“The desire to commit violence is not inherent to people — it is the consequences of systematic alienation”
Well… cultural alienation is one of the key complaints of racist white supremacists. /4— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
“The most effective penance is making these men ambassadors of reform.”
Yes yes yes, we should find all the alienated young men who are planning violence and make them ambassadors of reform. /5— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
If I read Rep Omar’s statement and imagine young white terrorists sitting in the chairs, I can feel my temperature rising.
The underlying implication is that these men are oppressed so you can understand why they want to kill people.
That’s exceedingly dangerous /END— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
It should also be noted that Omar’s desire for compassion seems to have limitations. She was part of the online mob that rushed to condemn the Covington kids.
Joseph A. Wulfsohn reports at FOX News:
Rep. Ilhan Omar deletes tweet attacking Covington students, after backlash
Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has apparently deleted an overnight tweet going after Covington Catholic students anew, after facing a social media backlash for her comments…
She wrote: “The boys were protesting a woman’s right to choose & yelled ‘it’s not rape if you enjoy it’ … They were taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants … Sandmann’s family hired a right wing PR firm to write his non-apology.”
But after an avalanche of criticism, the tweet had been removed by late morning on Wednesday.
Omar has gained infamy for her anti-Semitic tweet “may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel” infamy and her attack on Mikc Pence’s Christianity.
This hateful woman landed a coveted spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, thanks to Nancy Pelosi.
Lovely.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
the thing to do with terrorists is to kill them:
you get a zero recidivism rate that way…
and no hostage taking to get them released either.
That’s hardly restorative justice red.
In this case what exactly is she hoping to restore? Most likely these men were Somali “refugees” brought to America where they were given tons off free shit and plenty of opportunity. In thanks they want to join ISIS.
Perhaps they should be restored to Somalia via a one way plane ticket.
A nice thought, Mr. Mass, but how many of the Gitmo terrorists went right back to terrorism upon deportation to their home turf? Hmm? I’m with Red.
Treat them like the human cancer they are.
“The best deterrent to fanaticism is a system of compassion.”
________________
Yes, what utter and complete bullshit. We already gave these terrorist-wannabe idiots the golden tickets. They were flown to America from their native shithole, given “free” money, homes, medical care, education, etc., and they responded to our compassion by spitting in our faces and trying to kill us.
The best deterrent to fanaticism is to stop importing fanatics into our country, and to stop electing their idiot defenders to congress.
But it would be justice, which is all a free people should expect. Capital punishment is a permanent preventive for recidivism.
Planned Terrorist, like its Planned Parenthood counterpart, would have a nearly 100% effective abortion rate, and tolerable progressive collateral damage (e.g. refugee crises, Mediterranean waterboarding, migratory population replacement), behind the wall, under the press bullhorns, and social normalization schemes. However, unlike its PP analogue, PT would, hopefully, only target individuals with probable cause.
“The best deterrent to fanaticism is a system of compassion. We must alter our attitude and approach”
Israel has already tried this approach, and it has not worked. Now we need to return to the way wars are run, where you kill enough of the opponent’s people and cause enough property damage that they really crave peace. Until they get to the point that they want peace, you give them an immediate permanent piece in very large numbers.
All she is saying is… give Sharia a chance.
Is there a different tune for that? Sharia and Peach* don’t sound alike at all.
* Isn’t that what Lennon and the Plastic Ohno Band were singing – All we are saying is give peach a chance? That’s what it sounded like to my Artillery ears. Didn’t make any sense, but Lennon at that point was so burnt out that he didn’t make much sense anyway.
looking at her photo in the header of this post it is simply surreal–someone like her, with her bonafides, dressed the way she is and hectoring us about the failures of american law is actually sitting in the US Congress, in the 21st century,in the United States of America
god help us all
I’ve been around long enough to recall Nikita Khrushchev telling us (the USA) that we would defeat ourselves from within. Many of us laughed at the time… I, for one, am not laughing today.
We are turning our Constitution into a suicide pact.
What happens when the US government decides to make an area Muslim majority by shipping Somali “refugees” to Minnesota where many refuse to adapt to the new area.
A young 9 year old Somali boy asks his father “What is that strange head piece you are wearing?”
The father said: “Why, my son, it is a ‘chechia,.’ In Somalia it protects our heads from the intense heat of the sun.”
“And what is this clothing you are wearing?” asked the boy. “This long flowing robe seems so…”
“Oh, my son!“ exclaimed the father ”It is very simple. This is a ‘djbellah’ As I have told you, in Somalia is not only very hot, but the dirt is always blowing. My djbellah protects the entire body,”
The son then asked: “But Father, what about those ugly shoes you have on your feet?”
“These are ‘babouches’ my son,” the father replied. You must understand that although the Somali soil is very beautiful, it is also extremely hot. These babouches’ keep us from burning our feet.”
“So tell me then,” added the boy.
“Yes, my son…”
“Why are you living in Minneapolis, Minnesota and still wearing all this sh!t?
Proof positive that the ‘just be nice to them’ approach does NOT work. Otherwise, Ms. Omar would never had suggested it.
Look at the hate filled post she concocted THREE DAYS after the Covington event took place. By then the whole narrative had been completely debunked yet she posted one of the most vile character assassinations of those kids found on Twitter. A post that was literally a stream of lies that fully confirms she hates white Catholic young men as much as she does Jews.
You need to fix your post. I suspect this person doesn’t just hate “white Catholic young men”. I suspect she hates ALL whites, ALL Catholics and MOST men.
Yeah, that’s the ticket!
What the heck is wrong with Minnesota voters? Rep. Ilhan Omar is a very nasty Marxist wolf in Islamic clothing.
Islamic terrorist.
“Islam is to a man what like to a dog”
Winston Churchill
The PM knew it long ago, nothing has changed.
Forgive the typo above por favor.
“Islam is to a man like rabies to a dog”
Winston Churchill
The PM knew it long ago, nothing has changed.
Not exactly. He wrote that “fanatical frenzy” is “as dangerous in a man [not ‘to’ a man] as hydrophobia in a dog”, and that this is one of “the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries”. It may also, of course, come from other sources, and is just as dangerous then.
He also listed among these curses of Mohammedanism, “fearful fatalistic apathy” (which obviously affects different people than the “fanatical frenzy”) and “a degraded sensualism”.
In the very same passage, though, he points out that “Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.”
Churchill sure had their number. His comments are just as true today as they were in the (if I recall correctly), late 1800s.
For a serious idea of Churchill’s views on Islam, this is a must-read. Despite the negative views he formed in the Sudan, which are exemplified by the quote above, he later came to admire it in some ways. This may explain why the quote above, which is from the 1899 first edition of The River War, was omitted from the second edition in 1902.
Anything good is limited to a few, while what he wrote still applies to the majority. most certainly, Omar is close to being a moron.
The cases of these ex-Somali terrorist wannabes are instructive. They seem to have misinterpreted trivial everyday slights and standard-issue teen angst as some sort of existential rejection by America, that justifying their attempt to fall back on their “roots”. The two main roots were, apparently, first the local Somali “community” which didn’t help much—just a bunch of adults saying shut up kid, you have no idea how good you have it here. The other roots were a sensationalist and superficial impression of Islam—and oh boy, that they could do something about. Fortunately for them, they were intercepted before they could get to the Middle East and get themselves killed. The judge seems to have blown off Omar’s sophistries, and nearly all the defendants received prison sentences, some quite stiff (~35 years). His guesses as to which defendants realized they’d screwed up and might eventually be able to straighten out, and which were incorrigible, seem to have played a role. In any event, not an enviable job.
Give em a fair trial in the evening and hang em in the morning