Ilhan Omar Remains Resilient In Face Of Increased Death Threats
By Christianna Silva
Representative Ilhan Omar has become the aim of even more death threats right after a Twitter attack from President Donald Trump.
On Friday, April 12, Trump tweeted a video with graphic images from the 9/11 terrorist attacks spliced with each other with willfully out-of-context remarks Omar made in March while in an event for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy categorize. It was a video that endangers not only Omar's own life, yet those of
millions of other Americans.
“Violent crimes and other acts of hate by right-wing extremists and white nationalists are on the rise in this nation and about the world,” Representative Omar, the only Black Muslim woman currently serving in the Home of Representatives, mentioned in a
statement posted to Twitter on Sunday, April 14. “We can no longer disregard that they are being encouraged by the occupant of the highest office in the land.”
According to the FBI’s annual report, hate crimes have increased every year since Trump took office. The President also has a history of
inciting his followers to violence, along with a track record of anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions: The week he took office he signed a
executive categorize banning citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. For 90 days. He has also
tweeted a series of anti-Muslim propaganda videos, refuses to stop using the term “
radical Islamic terrorism,” and followed Omar's Sunday statement with
another attack on her personalized character.
In her statement, Omar noted how counties that hosted Trump rallies in 2016 seen a 226 percent increase in hate crimes in comparison to counties that did not host such rallies,
pulling from a study announced by the Washington Post in March 2019.
“Violent rhetoric and all forms of hate speech have no place in our society, far less from our country’s Commander in Chief,” Omar mentioned in her statement. “We are all Residents of the
U.S.. This is endangering lives. It has to stop.”
This statement is moreover to a
thread she tweeted over the weekend saying that “no one individual – no matter how corrupt, inept, or vicious – can threaten my unwavering love for America.”
In just one day, Trump’s video acquired nearly 100,000 retweets and over 1/4 of a million likes,
according to Rolling Stone. At one point, Trump even pinned the tweet to the best of his page, ensuring it was the opening thing anyone would visualize as soon as they clicked on his account.
“For far also long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen and frankly, I’m tired of it each and every Muslim in this nation should be tired of it,”
Omar mentioned at the March 23 event Trump's clip focuses on. “CAIR was founded soon after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were beginning to lose access to our civil liberties.”
Omar was clearly referring to the attack as “something” done by “some people” as a way to show that there really are millions of Muslim Residents of the
U.S. Who have been
persecuted due to the actions of a few. However, that didn’t stop
Republicans, including Trump, from claiming that Omar’s language was disrespectful to those who lost their lives while in the terrorist attack.
While some Democrats have condemned the attacks against Omar — including
Speaker of the Home Nancy Pelosi,
Sens. Kamala Harris,
Cory Booker and
Elizabeth Warren, and
Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — many folks are worried that some statements came also little also late, and vary in their solidarity with Omar. Although, on Sunday, Pelosi called for Trump to remove the video and has called for extra security measures to protect Omar, her family member and her employees,
NBC News reported. And more than 150 progressive leaders and groups signed a solidarity letter in support of Omar,
according to POLITICO.
“The attacks aimed at Rep. Omar are behind the pale,” the letter derived by POLITICO reads. “Far from legitimate disagreements and critiques, there really are intentional efforts to spread misinformation and incite fear and hate in the hearts of people in this nation. These are blatant attempts to divide and distract us, while Trump and the GOP undermine our democracy and enrich themselves and their friends.”
Although it doesn’t look like Omar is planning to let death threats scare her away from doing her job as an elected member of Congress.
“Thank you for standing with me – against an administration that ran on banning Muslims from this nation – to fight for the America we all deserve,”
she tweeted to followers on Saturday.
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