Muslim Lawmaker Comes Under Fire in House Debate on 'Islamophobia'

Source: New York Times

Muslim Lawmaker Comes Under Fire in House Debate on ‘Islamophobia’

A conservative Republican accused Ilhan Omar, the sponsor of a House bill to combat anti-Muslim bias, of terrorist sympathies.

By Jonathan Weisman
Dec. 14, 2021

WASHINGTON — A House effort to pass a bill to combat anti-Muslim bigotry became enmeshed in charges of exactly that prejudice when a right-wing Republican from Pennsylvania accused the bill’s co-sponsor, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, of antisemitism and harboring terrorist sympathies.

Representative Scott Perry, the incoming leader of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, assailed the measure, which would create a new special envoy position in the State Department to combat “Islamophobia and Islamophobic incitement.” But his harshest words were aimed at Ms. Omar, one of two Muslim women in the House and a co-author of the measure.

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The attack was a convoluted reference to a case more than a decade ago against the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic charity that in 2008 was convicted of funding Islamic militant groups. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a human rights group, was one of nearly 250 organizations and individuals named as co-conspirators.

The federal government at the time said it had included the organizations on the list to extract evidence for the trial, but the district court and a federal appeals court ruled that making the list public was a mistake. A decade later, the council, which is modeled on the Anti-Defamation League, honored Ms. Omar, who gave a speech to its California chapter.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/us/politics/ilhan-omar-house-debate-islamophobia.html

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