The assassination of conservative commentator and activist Charlie Kirk yesterday at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, has elicited a range of responses from Islamists in the United States. Islamist organizations seem to be keeping a low profile in response to the shooting, but some individual commentators have taken to social media to weigh in. Some condemn Kirk’s assassination even as they lambaste Kirk— who was murdered by a rooftop gunman—for his support for Israel and concern about the impact of Islamism on Western democracies. Others gloat or make light of his death, suggesting it was just desserts for his support for Israel as it fights to defeat Hamas in Gaza.
Radical Islamists and their leftist allies who justify the murder of Charlie Kirk also justified the murder and kidnapping of hundreds of Jews on October 7, 2023.
Founder of Muslim Skeptic Mocks Kirk’s Death
Daniel Haqiqatjou, founder of the Islamist website Muslim Skeptic, took to X to suggest that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Kirk’s assassination.
In addition to declaring that the Trump administration might use Kirk’s assassination for political purposes, the Texas-based Haqiqatjou also retweeted a post from a fellow American Muslim who stated that video of Kirk’s assassination posted X was the first video she had seen on her feed in two years “showcasing blood & gore that wasn’t of a Palestinian.” (A screenshot of this post can be seen here.)
Later in the day of Kirk’s assassination, Haqiqatjou offered another take on X, portraying Kirk as a likely victim of a Zionist conspiracy to end his life despite his support for Israel.
Hamzah wald Maqbul
Another Islamist, Hamzah Wald Maqbul, an expert on Islamic law whose YouTube channel boasts 2,700 subscribers, took to X excoriate Kirk for, among other things, his defense of Israel during its war with Hamas, stating “I have no sympathy for him nor do I pray for his well-being. He was a genocide denying racebaiter. Expressing sympathy for such people is the opposite of good character.” (Image here.) Maqbul, a scholar associated with Ribat, a center of Islamic learning located in Illinois, went on to declare that with Kirk’s assassination, “one criminal was killed by another.” (Image here.) In another post,
CAIR-Chicago’s Executive Director Condemns Kirk—And His Assassin
While most Islamist organizations have remained silent about the assassination, Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, posted a lengthy statement in which he admits despising Kirk for his defense of Israel against the allegation of genocide. But as much as he despised “Charlie and his hateful views” Rehab declared that he cared for Kirk’s “small children whom I don’t know; I care that they get to keep their loving father. And so this horrific crime must be condemned by us all. If Charlie is not safe, no one is.” CAIR-Chicago re-posted this statement on its own Facebook page.
Yasir Qadhi
Yasir Qadhi, the imam at East Plano Islamic Center in Texas, used the assassination as a springboard to launch a furious attack on Israel, blaming the Jewish state for “genocide.”
“No one deserves to be shot brutally in public, sliced open by the bullet of a cowardly sniper,” Qadhi stated on X, briefly acknowledging Kirk’s killing before shifting to accusations against Israel, claiming the IDF had carried out the “targeted assassination of at least 1,500 Palestinians by snipers—many of whom were women and children collecting food—by the IDF cowards in Gaza.”
Qadhi went further, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of overseeing the “bombing and intentional killing of over 70,000 civilians in Gaza by the genocidal regime.” He also alleged that Israeli forces had instigated clashes in the West Bank that left more than 1,000 Palestinians dead.
The cleric dismissed sympathy for those who supported Israel or mocked Palestinian deaths, declaring, “Anyone who justified or mocked those deaths deserves no sympathy and is no hero… Dying by violence does not cleanse a legacy of justifying violence.”
5Pillars Gloats
The U.K. news outlet 5Pillars posted a lengthy article under the headline, “Islamophobic U.S. commentator Charlie Kirk shot dead at university event.” The unsigned article condemned Kirk for asserting that Islamic values are incompatible with Western democracies and took particular issue with his assertion that “It’s not Islamophobia to notice that Muslims want to import values into the West that seek to destabilize our civilization.”
Comments Not a Surprise
Thomas Mountain, vice chair of the Massachusetts Republican Jewish Committee, indicated that the hateful comments directed at Kirk after his death come as no surprise.
“Radical Islamists and their leftist allies who justify the murder of Charlie Kirk also justified the murder and kidnapping of hundreds of Jews on October 7, 2023,” Mountain said. “They especially hated Charlie for exposing their lies about Israeli ‘genocide’ in Gaza.”
