House Passes Rep. Omar's Combating International Islamophobia Act

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A bill introduced in October by U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar passed the House of Representatives passed Wednesday along party lines.

The bill was passed weeks after a video surfaced in which Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert called Omar a member of the "Jihad Squad" and suggested she might be a suicide bomber. Boebert later apologized to "anyone in the Muslim community I offended."

The vote to approve H.R. 5665, the Combating International Islamophobia Act, was 219 to 212, with three members not voting Wednesday. The bill now goes to the Senate.

The bill requires the Secretary of State to establish an Office to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia in the State Department headed by the new special envoy. That office would be responsible for assessing "acts of Islamophobia and Islamophobic incitement" and consulting with any organizations or institutions the special envoy may wish.

The nine-page bill also calls for the inclusion of descriptions of violence, harassment, vandalism, racist propaganda, hate speech, detention targeted Muslims, as well as the response by foreign governments, in State Department reports on human rights practices and international religious freedom.

Omar, who came to the U.S. as a child in the mid-1990s before being elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2017 and Congress in 2019, said Wednesday during her floor speech the nation's leadership in protecting religious freedom requires the recognition that Islamophobia is a global problem.

"We are in the midst of a staggering of anti-Muslim violence and discrimination around the world," Omar said.

"At its worst, it is Uyghurs in concentration camps in China and a genocide against the Rohingya in Burma. But those atrocities are part of a deeper fabric of violence against Muslims and impunity for violence against Muslims at a global level," Omar continued.

"In India, Prime Minister Modi's government has moved to strip citizenship from millions of Muslims and has occupied Kashmir. In Sri Lanka, anti-Muslim laws and violence have imposed terror on the community. In Hungary, Belarus, and Poland, politicians have stoked fear of Muslim refugees and immigrants. In New Zealand and Canada, white supremacist violence has targeted Muslims, including at their places of worship."

In a United Nations Human Rights Council report earlier this year, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion Ahmed Shaheed said that suspicion and fear of Muslims and people perceived to be Muslims had risen to "epidemic proportions" following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and subsequent acts of violence carried out in the name of Islam.

Several GOP members of Congress criticized the bill for its lack of a definition of Islamophobia. And Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, suggested that Omar was "affiliated with" unspecified terrorist organizations and that her bill would finance them, the Washington Post reported. Democrats objected and requested that his remarks be removed from the Congressional Record.

President Joe Biden's office issued a statement endorsing passage of the bill, including language that highlights forced labor and concentration camps targeting Muslim ethnic minorities

"The Administration looks forward to working with Congress to ensure the Secretary of State has the necessary flexibility and permissive authority to designate such an office and special envoy and to provide for an annual report monitoring concerning acts of Islamophobia in foreign countries."