I’m not dumping on Ilhan Omar. I’m dumping on the mostly white people in the media who have made her, in my dad’s words, “the face of American Muslims.” She has views that are far outside the mainstream for American Muslims, particularly with respect to social issues and activism. She’s welcome to have whatever politics she wants—it’s America! But it’s wrong for the media to amplify her as if she is representative of Muslims in America as a whole.
This is a problem with progressives, which have disproportionate power in the media, and academia. As a group (for example Elizabeth Warren supporters) they’re as disproportionately white as the Republican Party. But they trade on the moral authority of purporting to speak for people of color. To that end, they amplify voices like Omar and Tlaib, whose politics are indistinguishable from those of secular white progressives, and not representative of Muslims. There are probably more Muslims who voted for Trump (about 1/3) then ones who are as extreme in their politics as Omar and Tlaib. This pisses odd people like my parents, who are typical Muslim voters (moderate socially conservative Democrats).
It’s particularly problematic when, as the OP points out, whites people are judged differently for amplifying the voices of someone like Omar or Tlaib versus the voice of one of the many Muslims who voted for Trump. It suppresses conservatism within the community—progressive Muslims can count on getting tenure, getting in CNN, because white people are allowed to agree with and amplify them. But when conservative Muslims speak, white people are afraid to agree, and progressive whites often feel comfortable attacking them as tokens. This happens to other people of color as well—in the dozens of Asians you saw on CNN talking about the Atlanta shootings, how many were Trump voters (like 1/3 of Asians?)