Florida state Senator Randy Fine, who is running to fill the vacancy in Florida’s 6th U.S. congressional district, singled out Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar on Tuesday. Quote-tweeting an endorsement from the Republican Jewish Coalition, Fine posted, “​​The ‘Hebrew Hammer’ is coming. @RashidaTlaib and @IlhanMN might consider leaving before I get there. #BombsAway.”

Tlaib and Omar are two of just three Muslim members of Congress, and the only two Muslim women.

Fine has a history of using demeaning rhetoric against Muslims and Palestinians and trafficking in Islamophobic tropes. In the past, he has said that “we have a Muslim problem in America” and that “while many Muslims are not terrorists, they are the radicals, not the mainstream.”

In August 2021, when Fine was a representative in Florida’s state House, the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a complaint against him with the House Public Integrity and Ethics Committee, alleging that Fine “violated his duty as an elected official” by “encouraging his constituents to run over people at Palestinian advocacy protests,” “call[ing] for the annihilation of the Palestinian people,” and direct-messaging a Floridian to “blow yourself up,” among other instances of “egregious conduct.”

In September, Fine took to X to cheer the death of 26-year-old American citizen Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, an activist reportedly killed by the Israeli forces while peacefully protesting illegal settlements in the West Bank. “Throw rocks, get shot. One less #MuslimTerror ist. #FireAway,” Fine wrote.

Donald Trump threw his support behind Fine’s candidacy last week, referring to him as an “America First Patriot” in a Truth Social post.

Source: Yahoo News

A source close to the drafters said that the government’s antisemitism monitor, a position created in 2004, was a model for the proposal. The name proposed in the letter, Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combatting Islamophobia, is a precise echo of the existing office, Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.

“In recent years, we have seen a dramatic increase in violent Islamophobia and the persecution of Muslims manifesting itself around the world,” said the letter, which cites ongoing persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China and Rohingya Muslims in Burma, as well as a mass casualty attack on a New Zealand mosque in 2019 and a recent deadly attack on a Muslim family in London, Ontario.

Among the 23 Democrats signing are the House’s two other Muslims, Andre Carson of Indiana and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and seven of the 25 Jewish Democrats in the House.

Source: Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Now, however, with anti-Muslim sentiment ablaze among supporters of Donald Trump, and the president hardly discouraging it, that love-in is a distant memory. American Muslims are gaining political visibility, but only on the far left of the spectrum. Symptomatic of this shift is the election to the House of Representatives of two Muslim women (Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar) who along with two female colleagues, also left-wing Democrats, have been taunted by Mr. Trump and his supporters.

A huge change in Muslim sentiment was clear in the 2004 presidential race and confirmed by the 2008 contest won by Barack Obama. By 2007 some 63% of American Muslims at least “leaned towards” the Democrats, against only 11% for the Republicans. These figures have not changed very much since, according to Pew Research, a pollster. Among Muslims who voted in the 2016 presidential race, only 8% said they opted for Mr Trump (who had declared that “Islam hates us”) and 78% for Hillary Clinton…

Continue reading at: The Economist

Two Muslim women from the Midwest were elected to the House of Representatives on Tuesday, making history as the first females of their faith to serve in Congress. The candidates secured their wins by running on a socially progressive platforms.

Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American, will represent Michigan, and Ilhan Omar, once a Somali refugee in Kenya, will represent Minnesota. Both received an overwhelming majority of the vote in their respective districts on Tuesday and join a surge of Democratic women coming to the new Congress.

The women align with the left wing of the Democratic Party which focused its campaigns on vows to extend Medicare health coverage to all Americans and increase the minimum wage to $15. In 2016, Ms. Tlaib was arrested for disrupting a speech from then-candidate Donald Trump in Detroit, where she shouted at him that “our kids deserve better,” a move that cemented her progressive political credentials for some supporters.

Both Ms. Tlaib, 42, and Ms. Omar, 37, have made comments that are critical of Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not a central campaign issue for either candidate, but their views on the matter could test Democrats in a narrow House majority. The party typically draws widespread support from Jewish voters and donors. Seventy-one percent of American Jews voted for the Democrats, as did 80% of Muslims, according to AP VoteCast, a pre-election and Election Day survey of about 90,000 people who said they voted in the midterms or intended to do so.

Ms. Tlaib has said she would vote against bills that include aid to Israel; Ms. Omar has drawn criticism for a 2012 tweet in which she says that “Israel has hypnotized the world” with its “evil doings.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal