IIhan Omar: I may be kicked out from House committees for being Muslim
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Staff reporter GAROWE ONLINE
- Posted On 13-01-2023, 12:30PM
Minnesota 5th District congressional representative Ilhan Omar has slammed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for plans to eject her and a number of colleagues from committees, noting that she's being targeted for being Muslim by her detractors.
IIhan Omar, who was born in Somalia, is being targeted along with her colleagues Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell and could lose rights in Foreign Relations Committee among others in what could be retaliation from House GOP leadership which is increasingly targeting Democrats.
In 2021, the House Democrats roved Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from their committee assignments for highly inflammatory statements, including about Omar. Ms. Omar is the first African-born representative to serve on the House Foreign Relations Committee.
For years, the Grand Old Party [GOP] has often claimed that Ms. Omar, who is now serving her third term, is anti-semitic, allegations which she vehemently denies. The Somalia-born legislator maintains she's a victim of Islamophobia.
“I do not actually think that he has a reason outside of me being Muslim and thinking I should not be,” Omar told HuffPost. “If you look at the comments from Republicans, it’s precisely for only that reason.”
For years, Republicans have targeted Omar and espoused conspiracy theories about her, while shrugging off egregious behaviors and comments from members of their own party, such as when Rep. Lauren Boebert [R-Colo.] repeatedly described Omar as a terrorist who might blow up the Capitol.
On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise [R-La] noted that Republicans would consider removing Democrats from committees because previously, his team has been targeted in the House without justification.
“The Democrats set a precedent that we urged them strongly not to go down last Congress,” Scalise said. “They decided they would break the precedent that had been in place for over 200 years and remove members of the opposing party that our party selected to be on committees, so that was a practice they set.”
GOP's Gosar and Greene were stripped of committee rights for mocking Presidential Joe Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and crafting of anti-semitism conspiracy theories against Ilhan Omar respectively. Speaker McCarthy has insisted that the two will be reinstated.
McCarthy can unilaterally block Swalwell and Schiff [both from California] from returning to the House Intelligence Committee because it’s a “select” committee over which the speaker has more control than regular standing committees.
Republicans have criticized Schiff for hyping what turned out to be bogus information about Donald Trump in a discredited spy dossier. Swalwell had contacts with an alleged Chinese spy who tried to help his political career from 2011 to 2015, though Swalwell was not accused of any wrongdoing.
To remove Omar from House Foreign Relations Committee should the Democrats place her however, requires the majority of the vote from the entire House which Republicans have a razor-thin majority. She has been under pressure for alleged prejudices against Jewish people.
“I promised you last year that as a speaker she would no longer be on Foreign Affairs, and I’m keeping that promise,” McCarthy told the Republican Jewish Coalition.
A number of progressive Jewish organizations published their own letter a few weeks later opposing McCarthy’s vow, writing that the groups “categorically reject the suggestion that any of her policy positions or statements merit disqualification from her role on the committee.”
“As crude and as cynical as it is for the nativist factions in our government, targeting Muslims is reliably good politics,” said Sumayyah Waheed, senior policy counsel at Muslim Advocates, a national civil rights group based in Washington, D.C.
“By stripping Rep. Omar of her committees, McCarthy kills two birds with one stone: He attempts to silence an effective, principled voice on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and he stokes the ugly culture of anti-Muslim hate for cheap political points,” she added.
Throughout her career in US politics, Ms. Omar has been facing what Removes call "unprecedented" hate given that at one point, former President Donald Trump openly dismissed her, saying she should be deported back to her native Somalia
“To date, the Republican Party leadership has done nothing to condemn and hold their own members accountable for repeated instances of anti-Muslim hate and harassment,” Omar said in November 2021 after Boebert refused to apologize directly to the congresswoman after suggesting she was a terrorist.
“This is not about one hateful statement or one politician; it is about a party that has mainstreamed bigotry and hatred. It is time for Republican Leader McCarthy to actually hold his party accountable.”
GAROWE ONLINE
