New York Post uses 9/11 front page to attack Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar

‘It’s absolutely vile bigotry, which could very possibly incite violence against Muslims’

The New York Post has featured a photo of the World Trade Centre exploding into flames alongside a quote by Ilhan Omar on its front page in response to comments the Muslim congresswoman made on Islamophobia.

The front-page headline on Thursday’s edition of the newspaper read: “Here's your something... 2,977 people dead by terrorism.”

It comes after Ms Omar made some brief remarks about Islamophobia at an event in March that came in the aftermath of the shooting that left 50 Muslim worshippers dead in New Zealand.

But after video of the event was published this week, conservative figureheads fixated on the way she had phrased a reference to 9/11, as "some people did something".

The New York Post front page has been condemned by liberal commentators online. Many felt the newspaper, which has a history of incendiary front pages, had overstepped the bounds of acceptability.

Others said the cover amounted to incitement of violence against Ms Omar, who has faced a growing number of threats.

“Disgusting,” wrote Josh Marshall, the editor and publisher of Talking Points Memo.

“Ugly and so fundamentally dishonest,” tweeted writer Jill Filipovic. “This is not in any way a fair representation of what she said.

"The hate for a black Muslim congresswoman is simply astounding.”

“It's absolutely vile bigotry, which could very possibly incite violence against Muslims,” Ryan Cooper wrote in The Week.

Ms Omar made the remark last month at a banquet hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil liberties organisation that is a frequent target of far-right criticism.

Her speech came a week after the mass shooting in Christchurch, which officials have called an act of terrorism.

Hundreds of people protested Ms Omar outside the banquet, chanting things like “Burn the Quran”, “Ilhan Omar go to hell” and “Shame on you, terrorists.”

She used her speech to talk about Islamophobia, and said she believed Donald Trump has played a role in fuelling “hate against Muslims.”

“For far too long, we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen, and, frankly, I'm tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it,” she said.

“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognised that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.

"So you can't just say that today someone is looking at me strange and that I am trying to make myself look pleasant.

"You have to say that this person is looking at me strange, I am not comfortable with it, and I am going to talk to them and ask them why. Because that is the right you have.”

(CAIR was actually founded in 1994, as The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler noted.)

But conservatives have stuck on the description of 9/11 as “some people did something.”

Congressman Dan Crenshaw, of Texas, a former Navy SEAL, helped amplify the controversy.

He retweeted a snippet of Ms Omar's remarks on Tuesday and wrote: “First Member of Congress to ever describe terrorists who killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 as 'some people who did something.' Unbelievable.”

The next day, Brian Kilmeade, a host of Fox & Friends, questioned Ms Omar's loyalty, saying “You have to wonder if she is an American first.” Those comments echoed those made recently by another Fox host, Jeanine Pirro.

Other conservative figureheads, like Donald Trump Jr, joined in.

“This woman is a disgrace,” Trump Jr tweeted on Thursday.

Many Democrats have come to Ms Omar's defence.

“It's horrible what they're doing,” congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters on Thursday. “Frankly, this is getting to a level that is beyond politics or partisanship.”

Ms Ocasio-Cortez said that it was also irresponsible to use an image of 9/11 in that way.

“To circulate all around New York City an image that is incredibly upsetting and triggering for New Yorkers that were actually there and were actually in the radius and that woke up one morning or were in their schools and didn't know if they were going to see their parents at the end of the day, to elicit such an image for such a transparently and politically motivated attack on Ilhan,” she said, trailing off.

“We are getting to the level where this is an incitement of violence against progressive women of colour.”

On Twitter, she noted that Ms Omar was a co-sponsor – one of 213 – of a bill to reauthorise the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.

“She's done more for 9/11 families than the GOP, Ms Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, called the New York Post's cover a “pure racist act.”

The New York Post, which did not respond to a request for comment sent to a spokeswoman, has largely avoided this kind of critical attention in recent years, aware, perhaps, of Mr Trump's unpopularity in the city. But the newspaper has a long track-record of controversial front pages and headlines.

Another cover that drew a comparable level of criticism was one it published in the days after the Boston marathon bombing.

The cover showed two men – a teenager and a man just a few years older than him – at the Boston Marathon, with the headline “BAG MEN,” seeming to suggest the two were potentially suspects in the case.

“Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon,” the headline also said.

But the two men, Salaheddin Barhoum and Yassine Zaimi, in a lawsuit they later filed against The New York Post, said they were never suspects in the case, nor had they ever been sought by law enforcement in connection with it.

“Today's front page of the Post is a black mark in the annals of newspaper history, and it shows that the Murdoch paper deserves no benefit of the doubt,” Ryan Chittum wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review. “Any pretence of professionalism – as thin as it might have been – is gone.”

The New York Post later settled the defamation lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.

Washington Post