I'm Muslim, and not particularly a fan of Ilhan Omar (though I also agree with her on many things). But she's not the "face of Islam in America" because "white

I'm Muslim, and not particularly a fan of Ilhan Omar (though I also agree with her on many things). But she's not the "face of Islam in America" because "white progressives in the media" decided that. She's one of like 3 Muslims in Congress, all of whom happen to be very progressive. She's the only one who wears a hijab (i.e. she's more obviously Muslim and probably more genuinely religious than Ellison or Tlaib, as far as I can tell). I would bet Republicans would want her to be the face of Islam in America too--she unites two conservative bogeymen: Muslims and progressives. > It’s also white liberals who bankroll most political activist groups claiming to speak for Muslim Americans. (CAIR might be an exception given foreign funding.) ?? What your dad is complaining about also represents a generational gap within the Muslim community. There are a lot of young Muslim Americans who are quite religious (more personally pious and abiding by the dictates of the religion than me, certainly) and simultaneously very comfortable identifying as progressive and allying with groups who hold views contrary to our religion's beliefs. For example, I was briefly the president of the Muslim Law Student's Association at Columbia. Our year and the previous year were not that practicing, but the year I was president, we had two incoming 1Ls join who were two hijabi girls who were simultaneously very religious and very progressive. They wanted to partner with all sorts of organizations whose beliefs are, in my view (and your dad's), inconsistent with Islam (i.e. pretty left LGBTQ groups). They also wanted to lobby the law school for prayer space within the building because they pray 5x a day. What's more, plenty within the Muslim community, irrespective of age or views on social issues, believe that far-left positions on economics and also the environment are more consistent with Islam than moderate or conservative positions on those issues. Shit, I know a Muslim guy who voted for Trump because he hates feminism who agrees that market socialism is the most consistent economic position from an Islamic perspective. > It will be no surprise that this person will think white liberals are right and the vast majority of Muslims are wrong on every issue where the two disagree. Whose fault is that? Why fault liberals for appointing an ideologically-aligned justice instead of faulting Christian conservatives for their bigotry and short-term thinking w/r/t Muslims? With due respect to you given our back-and-forth in this thread, what you're saying does not strike me as logically tenable, and instead seems more driven by a kind of emotional response. I agree with the general sentiment of being against this stuff, but I think you want to see what basically amounts to a kind of "conspiracy" here that doesn't exist. A huge part of why all of the issues raised in this thread exist is because of a dynamic where this country has tended to skew heavily conservative (compare us to the rest of the Western world) and biased, and substantive change seldom happens. IMO, there's a huge backlash factor at play that makes contemporary progressives more extreme than they should be.