US House of Representatives passed a bill to combat Islamophobia

US House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to pass a Democratic bill for a US State Department office to address Islamophobia after a republican congresswoman used an anti-Muslim slur against a Democratic colleague.

Representative Ilhan Omar authored the bill which would create a special envoy for monitoring and combating Islamophobia and include state-sponsored anti-Muslim violence in the department’s annual human rights reports “We are in the midst of a staggering rise of anti-Muslim violence and discrimination around the world,” Omar said on the House floor.

She said: “Islamophobia is global in scope and we must lead the global effort to address it.”

The House backed the bill in a party-line vote of 219-212. This comes a few weeks after a video emerged showing first-term Republican lawmaker Lauren Boebert calling Ilhan Omar, a member of a “jihad squad.”

In introducing the debate, Representative James McGovern, the Democratic chairperson of the House Rules Committee, cited surveys showing an uptick of anti-Muslim sentiment nationwide and around the world – and the need for an energetic U.S. response. McGovern said the House had arrived at this moment because a colleague has “told a completely fabricated story, again and again, that implies a Muslim colleague is a terrorist … just because they are Muslim.”

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