Rep. Ilhan Omar isn’t backing down from the GOP and says that she and Muslim congresswoman Rashida Tlaib are facing a barrage of political attacks by Donald Trump and his Republican cronies in an attempt to “silence” Muslims.
“I tell my sister Rashida Tlaib that her and I have the strength to endure any of the mischaracterization or efforts to distort and vilify and mischaracterize our message,” Omar said Tuesday in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
Omar said the hateful rhetoric she has endured was “designed to silence, sideline and almost eliminate [the] voice of Muslims from the public discourse.”
Omarsays there’s been increased death threats against her since Trump tweeted out a 911 video infused with Omar’s image, Yahoo reports. Right-wing pundits have joined in on the attacks after Trump charged people to look into Omar, calling her “anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and ungrateful U.S. HATE statements.”
“When someone like the President tweets something like that, it’s not an attack only on myself, but an attack on all Muslims… women of color… on immigrants and refugees,” Omar said previously. “That message was being used to vilify anyone who shared an identity with me… to say you don’t belong.”
Omar has been fighting back and published a CNN opinion piece with Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who is Jewish, people Americans to challenge white nationalism.
“As a Muslim American and a Jewish American elected to the United States Congress, we can no longer sit silently as terror strikes our communities,” the congresswomen wrote. “We cannot allow those who seek to divide and intimidate us to succeed.”
“Whatever our differences, our two communities, Muslim and Jewish, must come together to confront the twin evils of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic violence,” they added.
“We must be united in our diversity,” Omar said. “We can’t allow people to [pit] us against one another.”