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Rashida Tlaib tears up during testimony where US ‘war on terror’ is exposed as discriminatory

June 7, 2019 at 2:36 pm

US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib in Washington DC, United States on 10 January 2019 [Safvan Allahverdi/Anadolu Agency]

The US “war on terror” was labelled racist and discriminatory for its failure to address the growing threat of white supremacy during a hearing in which Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib broke down in tears.

The hearing, which took place earlier this week, saw Tlaib giving testimony at a House Oversight Committee hearing on white supremacy and domestic terrorism. Her testimony took an emotional turn when the Michigan representative began to convey details of the kinds of threat and abuse she has received since taking office.

Questioning Michael McGarrity, assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, about the Justice Department’s handling of domestic terrorism, Tlaib, who is the first Palestinian Muslim to be elected to Congress, began to read out one of the death threats she had received.

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“Attention, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and ragheads Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar,” said the author of the email. “I was totally excited and pleased when I heard about 49 Muslims were killed and many more were wounded in New Zealand. This is a great start. Let’s hope and pray that it continues here in the good old USA. The only good Muslim is a dead one.”

Details of the threatening email were shared in the exchange between Tlaib and McGarrity, which focused on whether America’s domestic terrorism statute sufficiently addressed the growing threat of white supremacy. Tlaib suggested that the legal tools were not suitable in dealing with far-right white extremists that “threaten to kill people for their faith and beliefs” and expressed her shock over the fact that threats directed at her would not fall under existing domestic terror laws.

An emotional Tlaib informed the Committee that the specific threat directed at her and her two Democrat colleagues was copied into the Department of Justice, President Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security, among others in the federal government and she was puzzled over why they were not being taken seriously.

Ocasio-Cortez also gave testimony at the Oversight Committee hearing. The representative from New York questioned the FBI over what she said was double standards in the way the US legal system deals with perpetrators of violent extremism. She said Muslim mass killers tended to be charged with terrorism while massacres carried out by white supremacists were considered only to be “hate crimes”.

Citing recent mass killings of Black American and American Jews by white supremacists, which according to Ocasio-Cortez, were designated as only “hate crimes and not domestic terrorist incidents”; the Democrat Congresswomen accused the FBI of double standards, alleging that the agency designated perpetrators of mass shootings as terrorists only if they were Muslims.

READ: Ocasio-Cortez calls out Congress double standards

McGarrity rejected the claim and seemed to imply that deadly acts committed by white supremacist were not designated as terrorists because it wasn’t a global issue and was not connected to a “foreign group”. He eventually conceded that there was a gap in the law. Admitting that white supremacy was indeed a global issue, McGrrity said that the reason why violent acts committed by white people were not designated as terrorism was that the US Congress doesn’t have a statute for domestic terrorism like it does for foreign terrorist organisations such as Daesh and Al-Qaeda.

The admission by McGarrity implied that violence perpetrated by Muslims can easily be linked to an international conspiracy with ease even if none had existed while acts of terrorism committed by white supremacist would only be seen as a lone act, even if there was a clear global dimension to it.

McGarrity’s explanation of the discrepancy according to Ocasio-Cortez highlighted the “gaps” and “holes” in US terror laws which she suggested makes a distinction between hate crimes committed by Muslims and hate crimes committed by Caucasians. The same crime according to Ocasio-Cortez was interpreted differently based on the religion and colour of the perpetrator; the first is automatically designated “domestic terrorism” while the second isn’t.

Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian US congresswoman - Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian US congresswoman – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]