By Mark Goldfeder
Last Wednesday, the House passed the Combating International Islamophobia Act, which would create an office within the State Department to monitor and report on violence, harassment, and abuse against Muslim people, schools, and religious centers.
A number of Republican lawmakers opposed the bill, worried that it might distract from, or even hinder, the fight against antisemitism. In theory, this should not be an issue. Islamophobia is dangerous and intolerable, religious freedom is a fundamental value, and we can and should monitor the spread of both diseases. As Rep. Scott Perry noted during the floor debate, we all agree that no one should be persecuted for his or her faith. But Republicans are not wrong to worry about specific ways that this new position might be abused given the sponsor of the bill, and if Democrats are surprised by this reaction, they have only themselves to blame.
The act was drafted by Rep. Ilhan Omar, a hatemonger who works to mainstream antisemitism. To date, she has avoided any real censure from the leaders of her party, who seem content to let her get away with it. As it relates to this bill, Omar has a personal history of making vile antisemitic comments and then victim-blaming her Jewish critics with false accusations of Islamophobia. This is true even when those critics are her own Democratic colleagues.
Perry was lambasted for claiming that Omar associates herself with terrorist organizations. He was not entirely wrong though, and context definitely matters. Omar is closely associated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the organization Perry referenced. She has keynoted its fundraisers and just this year was honored as its “American Muslim Public Servant of 2021.” CAIR has a long and problematic history of affiliation with Hamas, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization, as well as Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR was designated a terror organization in its own right by the United Arab Emirates, and as Perry pointed out in his comments, it was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist financing case in U.S. history.
Zahra Billoo, a senior executive at CAIR, recently gave a public address in which she smeared Jewish Zionist organizations and synagogues as “enemies” that are part of a “conspiracy” behind Islamophobia. She specifically called out organizations that want to have a good relationship with the Muslim community, rallying hard against the idea of cooperation and interfaith understanding. She also, quite insanely, blamed everything from issues at the border to police brutality on Jews and the Jewish state. CAIR pulled a page out of its honoree Omar’s playbook by predictably refusing to apologize, calling the outraged response to Billoo’s antisemitic comments a “smear campaign.” A few years earlier, when Billoo was voted off the board of the Women’s March for antisemitic tweets, she likewise responded by labeling anyone who opposed her “Islamophobic.”
In 2019, after Omar sparked outrage by first claiming that her colleagues who support Israel only do so for money, then accusing them of dual loyalty, two classic antisemitic tropes, Billoo breathlessly praised her friend for "broadening the conversation" about ways that people can criticize the Jewish state. Billoo and Omar’s CAIR relationship goes back several years, and just last month, they once again shared a stage at a CAIR event .
To be clear, Islamophobia is always wrong, no matter who it is directed against. But it is not, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has described it, an attack on Omar’s faith for a member of Congress to point out that she is associated with CAIR — the same way Omar insisted it was not antisemitic when she called a Jewish member of the Trump Organization a “white nationalist.” More importantly, it is not irrelevant to a debate about monitoring Islamophobia, when both Omar and CAIR, an enthusiastic endorser of the bill, have been known to weaponize false charges of Islamophobia as a sword and a shield against their “enemies” — and specifically to further antisemitic hate. Perry’s comments were made after Democrats called him “Islamophobic” for offering amendments that would prevent U.S. tax dollars from going to organizations with ties to terrorism. In that context, and given the author of the bill, his concerns are not unfounded.
Monitoring Islamophobia is important, but Republicans are right to be wary of Omar’s involvement and worried about any influence she might have on how the “monitoring” gets done. No one wants to hear a lecture about the evils of racism from an unrepentant racist. In her speech in support of the bill, Omar derided “cynics who would rather see us divided” instead of “standing united against all forms of bigotry.” If only she and her friends at CAIR really meant those things, perhaps this bill might have bipartisan support as it moves to the Senate.
Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder, Esq. has served as the founding Editor of the Cambridge University Press Series on Law and Judaism, a Trustee of the Center for Israel Education, and as an adviser to the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations. Read full bio here.