People often ask why I am running for Congress. My answer is simple: I am running because I love America, something my opponent, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), would never be able to say. I am running because I have seen firsthand what the world looks like without the freedoms this country represents. I have seen what happens when dangerous ideologies go unchallenged, and I refuse to watch that happen here.
When a journalist spends more than three decades covering wars, terrorist attacks, international summits, and even the White House, a lifetime of stories begins to take shape. Many fade with time. A few refuse to.
This is one of them.
ILHAN OMAR’S PRO-ISRAEL MUSLIM OPPONENT MAKES HER ‘FINAL ARGUMENT’ TO FLIP SEAT RED
It is not simply a memory. It is the life I have lived, and a fight I chose to endure.
In 2006, while reporting for the U.S.-funded Alhurra Network, I was sent to Iraq. My work led me inside prisons, where I sat across from jihadists and terrorists, listening, without mediation, to the ideology that drives violence, rationalizes brutality, and strips life of its value.
What followed was inevitable.
Al Qaeda issued a fatwa against me, a religious decree that marked me as an enemy and called for my death. Our office in Washington was alerted. I was relocated to the Green Zone and placed under armed protection. But I did not leave.
I remained. I completed the work. Because telling the truth carried greater weight than fear.
For more than 25 years, I have stood in direct confrontation with this ideology, examining it, exposing it, and warning of its consequences. I understand how it advances, I recognize how it conceals itself behind language that distorts reality, and I know, with certainty, what unfolds when it is ignored.
I did not leave it behind only to witness its gradual emergence in the United States.
I was not raised to be an activist, but a truth teller. Born in Baghdad to a mother who helped shape modern Iraqi theater, I grew up in a home anchored in culture, coexistence, and dignity, where her devotion to art and humanity stood in quiet defiance of fear and authoritarianism, teaching me from an early age that freedom is fragile and that silence is how it is lost.
Years later, working in Washington and as a journalist across the Middle East and beyond, I witnessed firsthand what happens when radical Islamism takes hold; it does not arrive with a warning, but embeds itself gradually in institutions, in language, and in the normalization of fear.
Radical Islamism is a toxic political ideology that uses religion as a tool to control, dominate, and intimidate. To understand the scale of that danger, one must confront the central force behind it: the Muslim Brotherhood.
With support from states such as Qatar and Turkey, the Brotherhood has expanded its reach far beyond the Middle East. At the same time, several Arab nations aligned with Washington have identified it as a primary security threat, recognizing its ability to destabilize societies not only through confrontation but through infiltration.
In the U.S., organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations have played a visible role in this ecosystem; while presenting themselves as civil rights advocates, they have advanced narratives aligned with broader Islamist objectives and politically groomed figures such as Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
In 2018, CAIR’s director, Nihad Awad, introduced Omar to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during the United Nations General Assembly in New York prior to her election; Following her entry into Congress, her voting record has always aligned with Islamist positions, including her refusal to support the 2019 resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide under the Ottoman Empire.
Equally concerning is the growing convergence between political Islamists and the radical left.
At first glance, these movements appear fundamentally different. Yet they increasingly align around shared narratives, opposition to Western institutions, hostility toward capitalism, and the portrayal of the U.S. as inherently unjust.
This alignment is not accidental.
This is why my fight does not end with words.
In Congress, I will take decisive action to confront the radical Islamist movements everywhere. I will oppose any effort to place sharia law above the U.S. Constitution, and I will push to designate the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist organizations. I will stand firmly against terrorism in every form — without exception or hesitation. I did not come here to watch these values erode. I came to defend them, and I will continue to speak, act, and confront, because silence is not neutrality.
WHY IS IT A ‘RISK’ FOR DEMOCRATS TO CONDEMN ISLAMIC TERRORISM?
It is surrender, and I will never accept it.
That is what makes me a proud American.
Dalia Al-Aqidi is an award-winning journalist who is running against Ilhan Omar for Minnesota’s 5th U.S. Congressional District.