Scandal-ridden congresswoman is treated as an icon.

In her short time in Congress, freshman U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar has made a name for herself as a vehement anti-Semite. She infamously invoked age-old anti-Semitic tropes when she tweeted “It’s all about the Benjamins [$100 bills], baby,” accusing the pro-Israel organization AIPAC of donating to politicians in order to secure favorable treatment of the Jewish state. Omar is also an ardent supporter of the Hamas-funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Now it appears that despite her highly controversial record and short career in public service, schoolchildren in Minnesota are being taught to venerate the fledgling politician.



John Hinderaker the President of the Center of the American Experiment located in Omar’s home state of Minnesota, reports on Powerline’s blog that a public elementary school in the state assigned its students to color in reverential pictures of Omar and also to write a report on the Congresswoman.



“This photo came from a public elementary school in Minneapolis,” Hinderaker reports, citing an image featuring a display of coloring pages that each depict Omar standing with an almost military bearing, face upturned, staring off into the distance. She is wearing a headscarf and keffiyeh (prayer shawl). Several detailed floral designs are arranged around her face. “I’ve been told that the same coloring project has been reported in at least one suburban school district, but I don’t have definite confirmation of that yet,” Hinderaker adds. He does not identify the school districts participating in the assignment.



As Hinderaker points out, Omar is a highly successful politician, who has raised “three to five times as much” in campaign donations as other U.S. House members from Minnesota. Apparently Minnesota’s public schools are doing whatever they can to cement her reputation as an icon.



“Omar is being raised to heroic status in her district’s public schools,” writes Hinderaker. “Elementary school students are apparently being taught to revere her, much as, in recent years, they have been taught to see Martin Luther King, Jr. as a kind of secular saint. Someone has distributed an Ilhan Omar card that students are instructed to color, while writing a ‘report’ on the inside. I assume those reports are paeans to the Congresswoman.”



Congresswoman Omar’s questionable actions and comments extend well beyond her hatred of Israel. She served as the keynote speaker at a recent event to benefit the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization known for its strong ties to Islamic extremism. Steven Pomerantz, the former chief of counter-terrorism at the FBI has baldly stated that “CAIR, its leaders and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups.”



At that event Omar shared the stage with CAIR-Florida executive director Hassan Shibly, who refuses to classify Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations. During her speech, Omar notoriously referred to the 9/11 attacks in which approximately 3000 American citizens died as “some people did something.”



Omar’s record in the Minnesota State House of Representatives, where she served as a representative from 2016-2018, is also troubling. In 2017, Omar voted against a bill that would allow life insurance companies to refuse to pay benefits in cases where the insured party died while committing an act of terrorism—one of only two state representatives to do so. She also opposed a bill which would make it a felony for parents to make their daughters undergo female genital mutilation.



Other allegations against the Congresswoman are deeply disturbing. The Minnesota Sun reported in October 2018 that “probable cause” existed to show that Omar together with her campaign committee to elect her to the state legislature in 2016 had committed “at least three separate [campaign finance] violations, including the alleged use of campaign funds to pay off legal fees related to her divorce.”



Online encyclopedia of the left, Discoverthenetworks.org, also reports that during her run for the Minnesota House in 2016, Omar “faced highly credible allegations that – in an effort to perpetrate immigration fraud and/or student loan fraud – she had married her own brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, in 2009 and was still legally his wife.” Omar responded by claiming these reports were “disgusting lies” made by those who are “deeply invested in stopping a progressive, black, Muslim, hijab-wearing, immigrant woman.”



Congresswoman Omar is establishing her own legacy—one in which scandals percolate and anti-Semitism, and apologetics for Islamic extremism take center stage. Minnesota’s public schools are attempting to give her a very different one.



To learn more about the Freedom Center's campaign to halt indoctrination in K-12 schools, please visit www.stopk12indoctrination.org. To read the K-12 Code of Ethics CLICK HERE. To order the Freedom Center’s new pamphlet, “Leftist Indoctrination in Our K-12 Public Schools,” CLICK HERE. To donate to the Stop K-12 Indoctrination campaign, CLICK HERE.