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Rep. Ilhan Omar on Wednesday offered her perspective on the threats and threatening political rhetoric targeting her and her family due to her position as one of the first Muslim women in Congress.
After a reporter tweeted an image of Omar speaking at an event in Minnesota with a bodyguard standing behind her, the congresswoman tweeted that recent xenophobic language and threats, coming from anonymous senders as well as from the White House and the halls of Congress, have forced her "to accept the reality of having security."
\u201cI hate that we live in a world where you have to be protected from fellow humans. I hated it as a child living through war and I hate it now. \n\nBut until deranged people like this stop threatening my life and the lives of others, I have to accept the reality of having security.\u201d— Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan Omar) 1567022756
In her tweet, Omar shared one recent example of an anonymous death threat she received in which the sender wrote that she would be killed during Congress's August recess.
"You will not be going back to Washington, your life will end before your 'vacation' ends," wrote the sender. "Quite likely it will be at the Minnesota State Fair."
Democratic leadership began reviewing Omar's security needs in April after President Donald Trump tweeted a video showing images of the 9/11 attacks intercut with Omar's comments about the treatment of Muslims in the U.S. after the attacks.
Since then, Trump and other high-level Republicans have drawn outrage as they've continued to stoke Islamophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment against Omar.
Trump said in July that Omar and three other progressive women of color in Congress should "go back" to the countries they and their families had come from. Of the four congresswomen, only Omar was actually born outside the United States--emigrating from Somalia as a refugee when she was a child.
Omar shared the anonymous death threat hours after Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore echoed Trump's words, saying the congresswoman "should go back to Somalia from whence she came."
On social media, supporters of Omar decried Republicans' tacit encouragement of the threats against her and applauded her for speaking out about the danger the president and others in the GOP have helped to place her in.
\u201cCongresswoman @IlhanMN should not have to deal with the kind of hate, anger, bigotry, and just vile evil coming her way. Regardless of ideology or partisanship, threats against members of Congress are disgusting and terrifying for us all. \n\nhttps://t.co/bQeHgX4wPx\u201d— Brian Harrison (@Brian Harrison) 1567086038
\u201cSo much courage wrapped in a such a small package...\nhttps://t.co/0yI9deduyd\u201d— Jeffrey St. Clair (@Jeffrey St. Clair) 1567039026
The Jewish-led group If Not Now, which condemns the Israeli occupation of Palestine, also called on government officials to denounce anti-Muslim and racist comments against Omar by public figures with the same vigor they do anti-Semitic comments.
\u201cThe double standard \u2014 as Muslims AND Jews are under threat from white nationalists \u2014 is sickening. https://t.co/YS33GdqqCW\u201d— IfNotNow\ud83d\udd25 (@IfNotNow\ud83d\udd25) 1567021861
Omar was condemned by leaders of her own party and eventually the subject of an anti-hate speech resolution passed by the U.S. House after she remarked about the indisputable financial ties the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC has with U.S. lawmakers.
As Mehdi Hasan wrote at The Intercept on Wednesday, no such response has been evident from either party or the media since Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said in a radio interview that Omar is partially responsible for a growing lack of "respect" for the Jewish faith.
"I think it's based on the growing influence of the Islamic religion in the Democratic Party ranks," Brooks told Huntsville, Alabama station WVNN last week. "Keep in mind: Muslims more so than most people have great animosity toward Israel and the Jewish faith."
"Wow," wrote Hasan. "I have been reporting on Islamophobia in U.S. politics for more than a decade, and I honestly cannot remember coming across a more brazenly Islamophobic statement from an elected member of Congress. 'Growing influence of the Islamic religion' among Democrats? ...In an age of rising white nationalism, in which Muslims have been gunned down in mosques by domestic terrorists who believe such conspiracy theories about Islam, these remarks aren't just offensive, they're downright dangerous."
And yet Brooks' remarks received "virtually no coverage" in the mainstream press, Hasan wrote.
"The net result? Omar is hung out to dry while Brooks gets a pass," he added. "Omar is now a household name, and the subject of multiple death threats, while Brooks gets to carry on making offensive and conspiratorial claims about Islam, Muslims, and the Democratic Party without any sanction or censure."
Rep. Ilhan Omar hit back against the Republican Party of Alabama Tuesday after party leaders at a weekend meeting approved a resolution calling on the state's delegation to initiate proceedings to expel the Minnesota Democrat from Congress.
The resolution was introduced by state Rep. Tommy Hanes, a Republican from Alabama's 23rd state House district, because of what he described to The Washington Post as Omar's "disloyalty" to the U.S. The resolution, which asks the state's congressional representatives to use the Constitution's Article 1, Section 5 to expel Omar, passed during the party's retreat in Auburn.
"Well, the Klan has spoken," tweeted CAIR Arizona executive director Imraan Siddiqi.
For her part, Omar replied to the news by reminding the Alabama GOP that the U.S. is a democracy and pointing out that she won her election with "78 percent of the vote."
"If you want to clean up politics, maybe don't nominate an accused child molester as your Senate candidate?" Omar said, referring to former Senate candidate and alleged predator Roy Moore, a two-time Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court who was removed from office in 2003 and suspended in 2016 on six ethics violations and whose 2017 Senate campaign imploded under accusations of misbehavior.
\u201cSorry, @ALGOPHQ, but this is a representative democracy. \n\nI was elected with 78% of the vote by the people of Minnesota's 5th District, not the Alabama Republican Party. \n\nIf you want to clean up politics, maybe don\u2019t nominate an accused child molester as your Senate candidate?\u201d— Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan Omar) 1566941741
Moore joined the fray on Wednesday, saying on Twitter that he supported the resolution and that Omar "should go back to Somalia from whence she came" in language echoing President Donald Trump's July call for Omar and fellow Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to go back to the "broken and crime infested places from which they came."
In a statement, Muslim Advocates public advocacy director Scott Simpson decried the Alabama GOP's resolution.
"Having a state political party officially adopt such a hateful, dishonest resolution is a troubling escalation of the ongoing effort to vilify American Muslims," said Simpson. "The text of the resolution reads like a laundry list of the most common anti-Muslim stereotypes: that Rep. Omar is un-American and anti-Semitic, that she disrespects the troops, that she is an ungrateful immigrant, and that she sympathizes with terrorists."
"These meritless slurs are constantly hurled at American Muslims in public life in order to silence and discredit them," Simpson said, adding that the Alabam's targeting of Omar represents "attacks on an entire community."
"They will not work," said Simpson. "When American Muslims in public life are attacked because of their faith, Muslim Advocates and countless Americans of conscience will stand up for what's right."
Just days after sharing an article from a right-wing website that blamed a "coalition of Muslim and Marxist-led groups" for his loss in Alabama's Senate election, Republican and accused child molester Roy Moore made his denial official late Wednesday night by filing a legal challenge alleging that he was the victim of widespread voter fraud.
The complaint comes just hours before Alabama officials are scheduled to certify the election results, which had Democrat Doug Jones winning by more than 20,000 votes.
At the center of Moore's challenge is the claim that "anomalous" high voter turnout in Jefferson County--where 43 percent of the population is black--constitutes evidence of voter fraud. But as analyst Daniel Nichanian noted, Moore's assertion that Jefferson Country turnout was unusually high is based on a "vast underestimation" of turnout from Alabama's Republican Secretary of State, John Merrill.
Merrill's prediction placed expected turnout in Jefferson County at 25 percent, "an implausibly low number he justified by citing low energy he saw while traveling," Nichanian writes. (Actual turnout was 47 percent.)
In effect, Nichanian concludes, "Moore cites high turnout in a county that's far higher-than-average African-American (a pattern that's not exceptional and is documented throughout state) as evidence of fraud. African Americans voting is apparently inherently suspicious."
On top of claiming that black Alabamians turning out to vote against a candidate who expressed nostalgia for the days of slavery is somehow inherently suspicious, the Moore campaign also cited a widely circulated YouTube video as proof that out-of-state voters propelled his Democratic opponent to victory.
\u201cA voter fraud complaint stemming from the Alabama Senate race was found to be baseless. https://t.co/jNUz2YOY26\u201d— Kyle Griffin (@Kyle Griffin) 1513986915
Moore's challenge also quotes a poll worker who said she witnessed a large number of people voting with out-of-state drivers' licenses. (Alabama law allows voters to use photo identification from any state.)
In crying "voter fraud" and refusing to concede defeat, Moore is taking a page straight from President Donald Trump's playbook. Trump repeatedly claimed following last year's presidential election that he would have won the popular vote if it wasn't for millions of "illegal votes."
"This entire lawsuit is a taste of what Trump and [Kansas Secretary of State Kris] Kobach's rhetoric and conspiracies lead to, and potentially a preview of what could follow if Trump loses in November 2020," Nichanian concluded.
In a CNN interview on Thursday, Alabama Secretary of State Merrill--whose office has found "no evidence" of voter fraud--insisted that Moore's challenge would not effect Jones's certification.
"Doug Jones will be certified today," Merrill concluded.