(Daily Caller News Foundation) — The anti-Islamophobia bill passed in the House Tuesday was introduced by a representative with a history of anti-Semitic comments and has the potential to chill free speech, critics told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“This legislation is a nightmare for Muslims and non-Muslims alike — for all Americans,” M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, told the DCNF. The bill, he argued in an article for the Center for Security Policy, creates a space in U.S. bureaucracy which exists exclusively to attack our allies with charges of anti-Muslim bigotry when they criticize Islamist regimes.
The House passed Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Combating International Islamophobia Act late Tuesday after a public feud between Omar and Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, who made a joke about Omar being a terrorist. The bill creates an office within the State Department to combat global Islamophobia.
This bill which i dubbed the “American Caliph Act” if it passes would be an unmitigated crime for our legislators to pass. Here’s my piece if you missed it last week: https://t.co/Pc6YgyjLtk @TheMuslimReform @ReformThisRadio https://t.co/XVl4MZWJIr
— M. Zuhdi Jasser زهدي جاسر (@DrZuhdiJasser) December 14, 2021
Supporters of the legislation “make a habit of slandering and libeling other Muslims in the Muslim Reform Movement as Islamophobes,” Jasser wrote in his article. “Islamists uniformly exaggerate the frequency, extent and proportionality of anti-Muslim bigotry compared to other minorities in the United States.”
Jasser called the bill “the first step down the road towards an American Caliph, an established religious office in government issuing edicts regarding what Islam is or isn’t.”
Ellie Cohanim, former deputy special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, criticized the bill for failing to define Islamophobia, noting that the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism is clearly defined. She said the legislation would be used to silence critics as “Islamophobic.”
She pointed out that Omar, who introduced the bill, has a history of anti-Semitic comments such as her “all about the Benjamins” remarks insinuating that support for Israel is driven by a profit motive. Omar, along with Linda Sarsour and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, cynically label criticism of themselves as “Islamophobia,” Cohanim told the DCNF.
“This labeling is an effort to silence those who take issue with the anti-American and anti-Semitic statements [Omar and other ‘squad’ members] have made in the past including, for example, Omar’s recent attempt to compare the United States to the Taliban,” Cohanim told the DCNF.
