School board member says moment of silence for 9-11 terror attacks ’causes harm’

Northern Virginia school boards continue to make headlines and not in a good way.

The latest incident involves far-left Fairfax County board member Abrar Omeish who voted against a resolution for a moment of silence to honor 9/11 victims and first responders to the terror attack with the implication that wording was insufficiently anti-racist or inclusive.

A local uproar about this alleged, so-called “woke-washing” followed.

In a prepared statement read during the September 9 board meeting, Omeish seemed to claim that systemic racism is pervasive in the local school system which apparently should be reflected in the resolution.

“I do ask, why can we not also explicitly the extensive and unwarranted structural discrimination and ethnic and religious profiling following 9/11 that tens of thousands of [Fairfax County Public Schools] students experience on a daily basis, the pain that trillions of dollars have gone into creating and perpetuating, and that continues in our very classrooms today…”

Insofar as the 9/11 terrorist attacks is concerned, “we’re elevating a traumatic even without sufficient cultural competence,” Omeish continued. “The token phrasing around 9/11 is ‘Never Forget.’

“As a nation, we remember a jarring event, no doubt, but we chose to forget, as this resolution does, the fear, the ostracization, and the collective blame felt by Arab Americans, American Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus and all brown or other individuals that have been mistaken for Muslims since that day over the past two decades. Why are we forgetting the experience of these families, their traumas?”

Watch the video of her remarks embedded below and draw your own conclusions:

Lamenting what she deemed “selective empathy,” Omeish added that “this is counter to the anti-racist, anti-bias work that we all try to achieve and sends the wrong message to educators who we rely on to prepare our students for the realities of our world.”

One parent was evidently so outraged about these comments that she walked out of the meeting. “It’s a sham, it’s a show, enjoy it!,” she reportedly yelled to the applause of other parents in the room.

Omeish was the only no-vote on the resolution which was easily passed by the Fairfax board.

In June, the same board member sparked controversy with an incendiary high school commencement speech warning graduates of a world controlled by racism, white supremacy, and greed while allegedly promoting jihad.

Fairfax resident Asra Q. Nomani, the former Wall Street Journal columnist and co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement, called out Omeish for her latest remarks.

“What a shame it is that you, as a Muslim, are such an apologist for the extremism living in our community that you would try to hijack the auspicious day of the 9/11 anniversary to try to put forward your grievances…what we have to do is teach history in a truthful way…let us all stand together remembering the memories of those who died on 9/11…”

Separately on Twitter, Nomani claimed that “So many 9/11 hijackers prayed at her family mosque, it’s called ‘the 9/11 mosque.'”

In an Op-Ed in the Fairfax County Times, 16 organizations — including Nomani’s — representing concerned parents of diverse demographics, urged the school board to censure and then, if legally permissible, remove Abrar Omeish from the panel:

Ms. Omeish’s shocking claims that a resolution for a moment of silence for the 9/11 victims was not “anti-racist” and that the resolution failed to address “state-sponsored traumas” was as tone-deaf as it was patently anti-American and callous to the pain of a nation mourning a tragedy 20 years later….

As Fairfax County School Board Members, you must immediately issue a public statement separating yourselves from the hateful and callous rhetoric of your colleague and hold Ms. Omeish accountable for her words and actions, once and for all…That which you tolerate, you proliferate. If you do not affirmatively disavow Omeish’s words and conduct, you are complicit in promoting her hateful and culturally repugnant stance.

 

Elsewhere in the D.C. suburbs, parents and teachers have repeatedly challenged the stubborn Loudoun County school board for its obsession with identity politics and critical race theory.

Progressives have yet to explain why immigrants from all over the world, legally and illegally, desire to relocate to a supposedly systemically racist country.

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