WASHINGTON — A Home effort to cross a invoice to fight anti-Muslim bigotry grew to become enmeshed in fees of precisely that prejudice when a right-wing Republican from Pennsylvania accused the invoice’s co-sponsor, Consultant Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, of antisemitism and harboring terrorist sympathies.
Consultant Scott Perry, the incoming chief of the ultraconservative Home Freedom Caucus, assailed the measure, which might create a brand new particular envoy place within the State Division to fight “Islamophobia and Islamophobic incitement.” However his harshest phrases had been aimed toward Ms. Omar, one in every of two Muslim ladies within the Home and a co-author of the measure.
“American taxpayers shouldn’t be compelled to pay terrorist organizations, organizations that the maker of this invoice is affiliated with, just like the one which’s an unindicted co-conspirator within the largest terror finance case in the US of America’s historical past,” Mr. Perry mentioned.
The assault was a convoluted reference to a case greater than a decade in the past towards the Holy Land Basis, an Islamic charity that in 2008 was convicted of funding Islamic militant teams. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a human rights group, was one in every of almost 250 organizations and people named as co-conspirators.
The federal authorities on the time mentioned it had included the organizations on the record to extract proof for the trial, however the district courtroom and a federal appeals courtroom dominated that making the record 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.
None of that info was imparted by Mr. Perry. Consultant Debbie Dingell, Democrat of Michigan and an ally of Ms. Omar, moved instantly to strike Mr. Perry’s phrases from the official file of the controversy, grinding the Home flooring to a halt. Finally, Mr. Perry was barred from talking once more Tuesday night time. The invoice handed late Tuesday night time alongside get together strains, 219 to 212.
The kerfuffle confirmed the gulf between the 2 events, at the same time as Home Democratic leaders are attempting to defuse the incendiary problem of bigotry. The anti-Muslim bias invoice got here to the ground 4 weeks after a video surfaced of Consultant Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, suggesting that Ms. Omar might have been a suicide bomber and calling her a member of the “jihad squad.”
A number of Democrats needed their leaders to punish Ms. Boebert by stripping her of her committee assignments, however leaders opted to not. They’d already performed that to 2 different Republicans this yr, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California mentioned that additional motion may very well be taken towards Ms. Boebert.
Ms. Pelosi mentioned Tuesday night time that she had hoped the Home would “come collectively in a spirit of unity” on the anti-Islamophobia invoice. As a substitute, she mentioned, what adopted was “an assault on the religion of one in every of our members.”
Home Republican leaders denounced the invoice, saying it will create what they known as a redundant workplace inside the State Division, and since “Islamophobia” was not clearly outlined, they raised the prospect that such a brand new workplace may very well be used to police Israel’s efforts to counter Islamist organizations like Hamas.
Consultant Andy Barr, Republican of Kentucky, known as it “a wolf in sheep’s clothes.”