(WASHINGTON, D.C., 1/25/23) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is calling on all Americans to take part in its click-and-send action alert urging their U.S. House representative to reject any attempt by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to schedule a vote to remove Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from her House Foreign Affairs Committee assignment.
TAKE ACTION: URGE YOUR U.S. HOUSE REP. TO REJECT ANY ATTEMPT TO REMOVE REP. OMAR FROM HER COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS
Speaker McCarthy has vowed to remove Rep. Omar from her foreign affairs committee assignment based on bad-faith attacks against her character. However, removing Rep. Omar requires a simple majority vote and several House Republicans have already indicated that they would reject the attempt. If several more House Republicans join their GOP colleagues in publicly voicing that they would not vote to remove Rep. Omar, then McCarthy’s plan to hold a vote could collapse or fail on the House floor.
According to Politico, Republican U.S. Representatives Victoria Spartz (R-IN) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) have already said they would vote against removing Rep. Omar. It is being speculated that several Republicans may still join them. CAIR believes that now is the time for all Americans to demand that their member of Congress reject McCarthy’s attack against Rep. Omar.
SEE: Dems mobilize to defend Omar in face of GOP defections
While Speaker McCarthy has announced that he will remove Californian Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee – as McCarthy has the authority to remove Intelligence Committee members on his own – he would need to schedule a vote on the House floor to remove Rep. Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Speaker McCarthy’s pledge to remove Reps. Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar from their committee assignments is being viewed as an act of political revenge against House Democrats for last year removing Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) from their house committee assignments for making separate threats against their Democratic colleagues.
On January 18, CAIR publicly called out House Republican leaders’ “double standard” in moving to reinstate the committee assignments of proven anti-Muslim and antisemitic conspiracy theorists like Rep. Greene in the wake of Speaker McCarthy pledging to remove Rep. Omar, staying that, “Racism and Islamophobia would be the only explanation for this hypocritical double-standard.”
BACKGROUND ON IN-BAD-FAITH ATTACKS AGAINST MUSLIM MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
CAIR has observed that American Muslims elected to Congress, starting with former Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), to current Representatives Andre Carson, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, have all had to endure a litany of in-bad-faith attacks against their character because of their Muslim identities, ethnicities, or gender, and because they dare to oppose the human rights violations that our government and other actors have committed in the Middle East and around the world.
Democratic and Republican political opponents of Rep. Omar have over the past several years sought to remove her from her position on the House Foreign Affairs Committee because she has used that position to challenge establishment views in that committee – especially when making commonsense observations that supporting Israel’s discriminatory and apartheid government is incompatible with democratic values here at home.
CAIR notes that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, have all recently recognized that the Israeli government’s decades-long human rights abuses against the Palestinian people, including physical segregation and different laws based on race, constitute a system of apartheid.
Often the statements of American Muslim members of Congress are purposefully misinterpreted and misconstrued when they speak about human rights abuses committed by Israel. CAIR believes that it would be wrong to remove Rep. Omar from her assignment on the House Foreign Affairs Committee – or any other member of Congress from their committee assignments, including American Muslim members of Congress – for speaking such uncomfortable truths.
Congresswoman Omar is best known for several firsts. Rep. Omar is the first Somali American and the first naturalized citizen of African birth to serve in the U.S. Congress, and the first woman of color to represent Minnesota. She is also the first woman to wear a hijab on the House floor after successfully advocating for a change to the House rules that denied her religious freedom to wear a head covering.
CAIR will oppose any attempt in the 118th Congress to remove Rep. Omar from any of her committee assignments based on bad-faith attacks.
CAIR continues to support the overall process of censuring and removing members of Congress from their committee assignments – like Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, and former Congressman Steve King (R-IA) – for statements, attacks, threats, or other actions that promote racism and other forms of bigotry like white supremacy, anti-immigrant sentiment, anti-black racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. A member of Congress that holds such bigoted views cannot truly represent the interests of their constituents in a plural and diverse representative democracy like the United States.
CAIR’s mission is to protect civil rights, enhance understanding of Islam, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.
La misión de CAIR es proteger las libertades civiles, mejorar la comprensión del Islam, promover la justicia, y empoderar a los musulmanes en los Estados Unidos.
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CONTACT: CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, [email protected]; CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw, 202-742-6448, [email protected]; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, [email protected] CAIR National Communications Coordinator Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, [email protected]