CAIR Warns Of Rise In Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes After New York Arrests
16 June 2019Islamophobia, The United
States
An advocacy group is warning of increased Islamophobia after a New York man
was charged with threatening the life of a Muslim Congresswoman.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Saturday it welcomes the FBI's
arrest this week of Patrick Carlineo Jr. but warned of "normalized hate
speech."
Carlineo was charged with placing a threatening call to the Washington office
of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. His attorney declined to comment.
Omar is among the first of two Muslim women elected to Congress.
The FBI this week arrested another New York man who authorities say talked
online with white supremacists about a reenactment of the New Zealand mosque
massacre.
Thomas Alonzo Bolin was charged with lying to federal agents about whether he
owned firearms. Bolin's attorney declined to comment.
Trump under fire for 'disgusting' comments about Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan
Omar
U. S. President Donald Trump is under fire from veteran Democrats in the
Senate for his "disgusting" and "shameful" remarks on Democrat Congresswoman
Ilhan Omar.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, two Democrat presidential runners,
slammed Trump on Twitter.
Earlier on Saturday, Trump tweeted a video and retweeted another person's
tweet which targeted the Minnesota representative.
"Ilhan Omar is a leader with strength and courage. She won't back down to
Trump's racism and hate, and neither will we. The disgusting and dangerous
attacks against her must end," Sanders said.
"The President is inciting violence against a sitting Congresswoman—and an
entire group of Americans based on their religion. It's disgusting. It's
shameful. And any elected leader who refuses to condemn it shares
responsibility for it," Warren said.
Trump criticized the Muslim lawmaker after comments surfaced of her talking
about the Islamophobia Muslims faced in the post-Sept. 11 era.
The video pulls a snippet of Omar's speech last month to the Council on
American-Islamic Relations in which she described the 2001 attacks on the
World Trade Center as "some people did something," as well as news footage of
the hijacked planes hitting the twin towers. Trump tweeted, "WE WILL NEVER
FORGET!"
Neither Trump's tweet nor the video includes her full quote or the context of
her comments.
Omar told CAIR in Los Angeles that many Muslims saw their civil liberties
eroded after the attacks, and she advocated for activism.
"For far too long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class
citizen and, frankly, I'm tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country
should be tired of it," she said in the March 23 speech, according to video
posted online. "CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some
people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our
civil liberties."
CAIR was founded in 1994, according to its website, but its membership
increased dramatically after the attacks.
Twitter users opened several hashtags in support of Omar.
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