Ilhan Omar: “I thank the chairman for yielding. Madam Speaker, today, I rise because we are in the midst of a staggering rise of…”

“I thank the chairman for yielding. Madam Speaker, today, I rise because we are in the midst of a staggering rise of anti-Muslim violence and discrimination around the world. At its worst, it is Uyghurs in concentration camps in China and genocide against the Rohingya in Burma. But those atrocities are part of a deeper fabric of violence against Muslims and impunity for violence against Muslims at a global level. In India, Prime Minister Modi's government has moved to strip citizenship from millions of Muslims. In Sri Lanka, anti-Muslim laws and violence have imposed terror on the community. In Hungary, Belarus, and Poland, politicians have stoked fear of Muslim migrants and refugees. In New Zealand and Canada, white supremacist violence has targeted Muslims, including at their places of worship. And, of course, we in the United States are not immune to this hatred. It is no secret that the previous President of the United States explicitly vowed ``a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.'' But Trump was simply taking advantage of a deeper culture of Islamophobia that has existed for the past two decades, from the PATRIOT Act to the CVE program to Abu Ghraib. {time} 1830 None of these things are happening in isolation. We must understand that these problems are interlinked.…”