After giving the invocation in Congress last week, I have been attacked online and threatened with violence. This hate is similar to the hate that led to the other massacres above. It’s a hate that seeks to fracture the communities it targets. It’s a hate that takes the most vulnerable communities in the country and intimidates them into silence so that the only thing they can do is brace for another attack.

On Sunday, the Dallas Morning News published an op-ed by Muslim Brotherhood linked anti-American Omar Suleiman. In this editorial, the Dallas-based imam claims that the accusations of anti-Semitism by Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, Fox host Lou Dobbs, and others following Suleiman’s delivery of the invocation last Thursday, May 9 are motivated by hate and are comparable to the hate that led to the New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Pittsburgh, and San Diego massacres.

From his rhetoric it’s easy to forget that Suleiman has provided no direct evidence of any threats of violence and that he has also neglected to mention that the criticisms lobbed against him are based on his social media footprint. In other words, the “haters” are using fact-based evidence to make an argument.

It’s also easy to forget that, in terms of growing influence, Suleiman has had a pretty good year. He has 1.3 million Facebook followers and just last year he was able to convince Google to alter its algorithm on searches related to Islam and Muslim-related issues. This year his fellow Islamists Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar occupy seats in Congress. And on Thursday, May 9, 2019, Suleiman, by the request of Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, delivered the invocation from the House floor.

Suleiman’s prayer was innocuous enough, calling “for peace, not war; love, not hate; benevolence, not greed; unity, not division.”

Such calls for love and not hate were also part of his rhetoric last December when Suleiman and 32 others were arrested at the Tijuana-San Diego border in the “Love Knows No Border” rally in support of immigrants and asylum seekers. But a closer look at his speeches and his social media footprint reveal his disdain for the country he calls home.

Suleiman was a keynote speaker at the Muslim American Society’s (MAS’s) West Coast Conference in November 2018. The organization is described by law enforcement as being founded “as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” In the opening of his talk, Suleiman described the United States as a “white supremacist” country that could not accept the presidency of Obama because of his blackness. According to Suleiman, this racism at the core of the nation is institutionalized so that “at the end of the day it’s 96% of the wealthiest Americans being white, or over 80% of Congress remaining white, or every president except for one remaining white. It’s [white supremacy] enshrined in all of these different things and a lot of the time we don’t’ see it because we focus on the outcome…”

At a December 2017 rally in front of the White House, in protest of President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, Suleiman had this to say:

"We should understand that, if anything, what this announcement has done is it has exposed what we've known for a very long time -- that the United States is anything but an honest broker," he said. "Never has been. Previous administrations were not… Our blind support and loyalty to a government [Israel] that has disregarded all international forms of accountability because it knows that it has our backing is shameful. It has made us not only an unprincipled and contradictory nation in regards to our policies, it has also put us at odds with the vast majority of nations around the world who can see right through our claim to greatness and our claim to being the moral superpower of the world." [emphasis added]

Suleiman’s depiction of the United States as dishonest, immoral, shameful, unprincipled, contradictory and unworthy of power are reminiscent of Omar’s statement in March 2019 that Trump is “not human.” This depiction of the United States also happens to fall in line with the views of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Suleiman has posted support for in this Facebook post in 2013.

Of course, one shouldn’t forget Suleiman’s tweet from just a few weeks ago when he quoted his Palestinian Christian relative who said that Jesus was a Palestinian. A pattern is emerging here. Jesus the Jew is a Palestinian because Suleiman wants Jesus to be a Palestinian, and he wants American evangelicals to side with the Palestinians against Israel. In the same way, he has stated publicly that the first Muslims came to Texas in 1854 even though there is no record of a mosque anywhere in the United States until the 1920s. Suleiman’s vision for the United States is a curious mixture of Marxism and progressivism and, yes, Sharia. This is the man who publicly posted an image of the Rabia in 2013, who gave the invocation on the floor of the House on May 9, 2019.

In a talk uploaded to YouTube in November 2015 on Slavery and Islamic Law, Suleiman discusses the humanity of taking a concubine as a prisoner of war as such actions will safeguard the concubine from a life of prostitution.

Suleiman’s charisma is unmistakable. However, the appearance of the man is not the same as the man himself. Beneath the smiling and peaceful exterior, Suleiman is a radicalized individual who views the United States as flawed, immoral, and corrupted by unearned privileges and undeserved wealth. From his speeches and social media posts, it would seem that Suleiman would love to see a redistribution of wealth, open borders, and a magnificent growth of the Dar al Islam within the country.