Apparently, things have been too quiet for Rep. Ilhan Omar. And we’ve been free of Islamist attacks for a long time. So, it’s time to stir things up on behalf of Muslims. Omar has decided to stand up for Muslims by creating a position in the Department of State (without consulting the department) to protect beleaguered Muslims everywhere. She submitted a bill that passed in the House to establish the Office to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia. According to CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, there have been 500 documented complaints of “anti-Muslim hate and bias” this past year in the U.S. Given that CAIR is an outgrowth of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, I tend to be skeptical of this data. The bill passed in the House on a party-line vote on Dec. 14.

So why do I care? This bill isn’t intended to protect Muslims worldwide from acts of violence. Instead, I believe Omar plans to further destroy our already debilitated commitment to freedom of speech.

The incentive for this bill was probably a response to the “rude and ill-advised” reference to the “jihad squad” made by Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado. But the implications of this bill are much more far-reaching. Essentially, the bill targets those people who use “hate speech”; these statements are elevated into the category of “hate crimes”:

‘Hate speech’: this means that trivial incidents in which someone who is rude to a Muslim gets counted in as a hate crime, inflating the numbers of those crimes and contributing to the false impression that Muslims are victims of widespread discrimination and harassment in America today. With that low a bar, it’s no surprise that the press release at Omar’s site goes on to note that ‘in March, the United Nations Human Rights Council cited discrimination and hatred towards Muslims has risen to ‘epidemic proportions.’

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a practicing Muslim and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, has been sounding the alarm about radical Islam for many years and states the following:

The freest nation on earth is now unbelievably on the verge of creating a position in our State Department charged not with protecting inalienable human rights, but with protecting a faith ideology. This will be celebrated by our theocratic Islamist enemies across the world. The U.S. government will have a sanctioned ‘American Grand Mufti’ who will determine what is, and what is not, Islam. Every American Muslim, especially anti-Islamist (anti-theocratic) Muslims, will be marginalized by the new US government arbiter on Islam.

Any critic of radical Islam will potentially be accused of Islamophobia. Ironically, loyal Muslim Americans who attack Islamism are considered the worst Islamophobes. We have already experienced Americans accused of being racists and bigots, while the political left refuses to criticize (or comments lamely about) racist comments from Muslims in government positions. We have watched too many government agencies weaponized in the past five years: the departments of Justice (including the FBI and CIA), Education, Energy, Defense, and Health and Human Services. It’s the state’s turn.

*     *     *     *

The Senate bill was presented on the same day, Dec. 14, by Sen. Cory Booker, ending with the following amendments:

(viii) wherever applicable, an assessment and description of the nature and extent of acts of Islamophobia and Islamophobic incitement that occurred in that country during the preceding the year, including—

(I) acts of physical violence against, or harassment of, members of the Muslim community, acts of violence against, or vandalism of, Muslim community institutions, instances of propaganda in government and nongovernment media that incite such acts, and statements and actions relating thereto; and

(II) the actions taken by the government of that country to respond to such violence and attacks or to eliminate such propaganda or incitement, to enact and enforce laws relating to the protection of the right to religious freedom of members of the Muslim community, and to promote anti-bias and tolerance education.

Of course, no one has described “hate speech,” “harassment,” “propaganda,” “incitement,” or even “Islamophobia.” We needn’t worry in the U.S. about the inappropriate or unlawful use of this bill because it is directed internationally.

Right?

Let’s hope the Senate sees through this malignant effort to further infringe on our rights to free speech.