Fox News Host Jeanine Pirro: Ilhan Omar’s hijab is “indicative of her adherence to Sharia law”
Fox News Host Jeanine Pirro suggested during her Saturday evening show Justice with Judge Jeanine that Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, wears a hijab because of her “adherence to Sharia law.”
The remarks of the network anchor, who is an ally of President Donald Trump and spoke at one of his political rallies last year, comes on the heels of Congress formally condemning anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hatred after Omar made alleged anti-Semitic tropes for the second time since taking office in January.
“Your party is not anti-Israel, she is,” Pirro said of Democrats and Omar. “So, if it’s not rooted in the party, where is she getting it from? Think about it. Omar wears a hijab, which according to the Quran 33:59, tells women to cover so they won’t get molested. Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”
Pirro later said more explicitly that she thinks “this is Sharia-adherent behavior and it is somewhat disturbing if she is someone who is Sharia-compliant.”
The former judge’s criticism of the Muslim congresswoman earned her backlash from a fellow Fox News employee. Hufsa Kamal Khan, an associate producer for the network’s Special Report w/ Bret Baier, according to her LinkedIn profile, tweeted at Pirro to “stop spreading this false narrative.”
“[Judge Jeanine] can you stop spreading this false narrative that somehow Muslims hate America or women who wear a hijab aren’t American enough?” Khan said. “You have Muslims working at the same network you do, including myself. K thx.”
Omar has been a target for Republicans, many of whom have accused her of using alleged anti-Semitic tropes, such as suggesting Americans’ support for Israel represents dual loyalty and derives from pro-Israel lobbying groups buying the support of Congress.
At the same time, Democrats became divided on how — if at all — to reprimand the freshman congresswoman last week ahead of a House resolution to condemn her remarks. Some members came to Omar’s defense, arguing there should be no resolution, despite her making no apology. Others pushed for Islamophobia and other forms of hate language to be added to the resolution’s text, so as to not single-out Omar. The text did not name the congresswoman. And other Democrats went a step further, telling Newsweek a future repeat offense would likely lead to her removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) rallies with fellow Democrats before voting on H.R. 1, or the People Act, on the East Steps of the U.S. Capitol March 8 in Washington, DC. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Ultimately, the House passed a resolution condemning “every form of bigotry and hatred,” succumbing to demands from some Democrats to include anti-Muslim bias and anti-white supremacy language after an anti-Muslim poster showing Omar’s picture was posted in the West Virginia state legislature. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended Omar following the passage of the resolution, saying Friday that the Michigan congresswoman “has a different experience in the use of words, [and] doesn’t understand that some of them are fraught with meaning.”
Republicans slammed Democrats for not removing Omar from the committee, saying it was hypocritical because Democrats supported the GOP’s recent decision to remove Congressman Steve King from his committee assignments for questioning the offensiveness of such terms like “white nationalist” and “white supremacist.”
“[Anti-Semitism] seems to be more fashionable in Europe, it seems to be more fashionable in this country—regretfully—among some members of the new class in the House,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters last week.
Democrats have argued that King’s long history of promoting white nationalists and his Twitter engagement with neo-Nazis cannot be fairly used by Republicans to say that King and Omar deserve similar punishment.
“[Republicans] waited, what, 20-something years before acting on Steve King’s hateful remarks on white supremacism,” Democrat and Foreign Affairs Committee member Gerry Connolly previously told Newsweek.
Judge Jeanine Pirro of FOX News Network makes remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor, Maryland, February 23, 2017. MIKE THEILER/AFP/Getty Images
This story has been updated to include comments from Hufsa Kamal Khan.
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