RUTHFULLY YOURS

Good ol’ Barack Obama. So deeply do he and his administration love America, that they felt secure enough in their own patriotism to appoint an America-hating radical to the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Subcommittee on Countering Violent Extremism (SCVE). After all, they undoubtedly reasoned, what possible harm could such an individual do in that kind of a setting? Perhaps you’ve heard of her—a young woman named Laila Alawa, born to Syrian parents who immigrated to the United States when the girl was ten. Soon after she became a U.S. citizen in April 2015, Ms. Alawa wrote: “I will always be Syrian. I will always be from Syria. I will always be of Syria.”

Ain’t that nice?

Ms. Alawa has long regarded the United States as a nation that oppresses and abuses Muslims, as she explained in a July 2014 piece which she wrote for The Guardian. Therein, Alawa says that ever since her arrival in America, she has “learned to view” law-enforcement officials and “my new government” with “a certain level of suspicion”—particularly after 9/11, when “stories of warrantless deportations, faith-based workplace discrimination (and termination), and arrests that resulted in unending detention were common.” Citing the “constant surveillance, government stings and wannabe informants” to which she believes Muslims in the U.S. are being subjected, Alawa laments that “my long-held suspicions have been confirmed—the knowledge that my faith makes me suspicious in the eyes of the government to which I’ve pledged my allegiance…. We know that we’re often discriminated against by our government and our fellow Americans.”

This young woman has a very bright future in the Democratic Party if she wants it. Heck, she already sounds downright Hillary-esque, and she’s only 25!

Alawa regularly disseminates views like these in her work as an opinion writer for The Guardian, Salon, Glamour, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, and The Islamic Monthly. Further, she hosts The Exposé, a weekly podcast “tackling tough topics with snark and wit.”

In addition, this multi-talented woman is also a self-described “online activis[t]” whose mission is “to elevate the voices of those who are often not heard.” Her Twitter posts are rife with allegations of — (what else?) — American racism and “Islamophobia.” Some examples:

• “I can’t deal with people saying America is the best nation in the world. Be critical. Be conscious. Don’t be idiots.”
• On April 15, 2013, Alawa responded to activist Pamela Geller’s assertion that the Boston Marathon bombings of that day were acts of “jihad” by tweeting: “go fuck yourself.”
• “We are living in a country that deems it ‘freedom of speech’ to spew absolutely hateful ish [slang for ‘sh**’] about Muslims.”
• “9/11 is your day to pull out your flag themed clothing, and my day [as a Muslim] to look behind my back as I walk home.”
• “… I can’t wait until [the television program] @TheBachelor has a man or woman be the star of the show that isn’t pure white. Or ‘prettily mixed.’ Because, Ya know, @TheBachelor, white people in America? They’re not gonna be dominant majority for much longer.”
• On April 23, 2015, Alwai tweeted: “How the hell is the shit @PamelaGeller is spewing ‘free speech’? it’s straight up warmongering hate speech. It’s xenophobia.”
• “THE US HAS NEVER BEEN A UTOPIA UNLESS YOU WERE A STRAIGHT WHITE MALE THAT OWNED LAND. straight up period go home shut up.”
• “Being American [after 9/11] meant you were white. And my immigrant self started fighting for the right to be just as American.”
• In September 2015—the day after Secretary of State John Kerry had announced that the U.S. was planning to accept some 185,000 Syrian refugees during 2016-17—Alawa mocked the “Salty white tears all over my newsfeed.” Her implication was that many white people opposed the plan because they were anti-Muslim bigots.

Pretty snarky and witty stuff, huh?

Another tweet that drew much attention to Alawa was her 2014 assertion that “9/11 changed the world for good, and there’s no other way to say it.” Alawa later claimed that her use of the term “for good” meant “permanently” and was not intended to suggest that the terrorist attacks were positive events. Who knows? Maybe that’s true, but in light of her many other remarks, it hardly matters.

In 2015, this shining beacon of anti-Americanism was one of 15 people whom the Obama DHS appointed to serve on the newly formed SCVE, which sought to promote the notion that authentic Islam is a perfectly peaceful faith that has nothing whatsoever to do with the nearly 29,000 terrorist attacks that have been committed in its name since 9/11. In June 2016, this Subcommittee issued a report recommending that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) de-emphasize Islam’s terrorist ties by devoting more attention to the transgressions of “anarchists, sovereign citizens, white-supremacists, and others.” The Subcommittee also advised that the DHS—in order to avoid offending Muslims—should begin “using American English instead of religious, legal and cultural terms like ‘jihad,’ ‘sharia,’ ‘takfir’ or ‘umma’” when discussing terrorism.

All in all, this DHS Subcommittee was the perfect forum for a young anti-American radical in search of an audience of likeminded comrades, like Laila Alawa. Moreover, it was a forum that echoed, with perfect fidelity, the very same Obama policies that quite demonstrably and indisputably caused the FBI to close its file on the jihadist who subsequently went on to slaughter 49 people in Orlando two weeks ago. Nice work, Mr. President. Nice work.