Ilhan Omar Demands Apology From MSNBC’s Joy Reid Over “Islamophobic Comments”

MSNBC personality Joy Reid is under fire once again after making an allegedly “Islamaphobic” comment”. But this time, her accuser is none other than controversial Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who herself has refused to apologize for comments that were heralded as anti-semitic, while once blithely – and publicly – dismissing 9/11 as “a thing that happened”.

Omar and a anti-defamation league-type group called Muslim Advocates complained that Reid made callously Islamophobic remarks on air during a broadcast the other night.

Reid’s crime? She compared the way President Trump acts to the way “Muslims” act. She intended to compare Trump’s behavior to that of somebody like Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which is hilarious because in reality, there is no real grounds for comparison. Even their rhetorical styles differ markedly, though both have shown a penchant for “interfering” with the central bank.

But that’s not how it came out.

During her show, Reid said, “the leaders, let’s say in the Muslim world, talk a lot of violent talk and encourage their supporters to be willing to commit violence, including on their own bodies, in order to win against whoever they decide is the enemy. We in the U.S. media describe that as they are radicalizing those people—particularly they are radicalizing young people. That’s how we talk about the way Muslims act. When you see what Donald Trump is doing, is that any different from what we describe as radicalizing people?””

In a statement, Muslim Advocates demanded that Reid “apologize on air tonight.”

“Joy Reid must apologize on air tonight for spreading the false, dangerous myth that Muslims are inherently radical and violent. MSNBC also needs to take action to ensure anti-Muslim bigotry has no place on its network. Muslims have been gunned down in their homes and houses of worship by people who believe in the very same hateful, false smears that Reid shared on her program. This is deadly serious and it’s part of a dangerous, longstanding pattern. 

Omar made a similar request.

Honestly, this kinda of casual Islamophobia is hurtful and dangerous.

We deserve better and an apology for the painful moment for so many Muslims around our country should be forthcoming. https://t.co/megnZyL9dd

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) September 1, 2020

This isn’t the first time Reid has been in the cross-hairs of Islamic rights groups. Back in 2018, a furor was unleashed when several old blog posts bearing homophobic and Islamophobic messages were unearthed.

Here’s an excerpt from one particularly “problematic” post:

“My feeling is that the only reason that a world war between civilizations has not already broken out is that the vast majority of Muslims living in the world today are so desperately poor that they have the time, energy and resources for only the occasional burst of AK-47 fire into the air from the garbage and sewage laden streets outside of their mud huts. Give them resources and I fear that they will come after us everywhere that they can find us, which is to say everywhere.”

Her use of the phrase “mud huts” is particularly appalling.

Yet, Reid survived past scandals and managed to hang on to her job at MSNBC. It’s almost like the news organization can’t fire her.

Last time around, Reid laughably made things worse by claiming that “hackers” published the offending blog posts under her name.

Will Reid make history as one of the first people to mendaciously cry “deep fake?”