GOP House Candidate Tried to Get Muslim Congresswomen to Retake Oath on Bible

Last week, Marjorie Taylor Greene won her Republican primary for Congress in Georgia.

That a far-right candidate won a congressional primary would be concerning enough, but Greene isn’t merely a right-wing extremist. She’s a fringe candidate who has repeatedly supported QAnon and promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories.

But that’s not all!

In early 2019, when Greene was a political commentator, she posted video online of a visit to Washington, D.C. during which she tried (unsuccessfully) to confront Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib over claims they weren’t legitimate members of Congress because they didn’t take their oath on a Bible.

… During the video, she falsely claimed that they’re illegitimate members of Congress because they took their congressional oaths of office on the Quran and said she wanted to make them retake their oath on the Bible. She also said she wanted to tell them they “really should go back to the Middle East if they support Sharia.” In addition to being bigoted, her remarks are also ignorant as their oaths were legitimate and neither representative is from the Middle East.

She went on to explain her reasoning for interrogating the two representatives:

I truly feel like as a woman in America, I really need to go talk to these ladies. Yeah, because they support — you know what? They support Sharia. And these are — these are women that really would like to see Sharia in America, and as an American woman, as a business owner, as a mother — I have two daughters — I never want to see Sharia in America. And so I really want to go talk to these ladies and ask them what they are thinking and why they’re serving in our American government. They really should go back to the Middle East if they support Sharia. So let’s go talk to them. I definitely want to go talk to them.

To be clear, no one has to swear an oath on the Bible. It’s tradition; it’s not mandatory. Other elected officials have sworn in on law books, children’s books, Kindles, and more. If the Bible isn’t your holy book, or even if it is, you’re under no obligation to use it. (This point was memorably made in 2017 when Roy Moore‘s spokesperson got humiliated on CNN after saying a Bible was an oath requirement.) All that matters is that people promise to do the jobs they were elected to do.

Besides that, the idea that Tlaib and Omar support Sharia law is laughable to anyone who’s ever listened to them speak or followed their votes. Greene would know that, too, if she bothered to do any research. It’s like saying that all American Christians are like the Westboro Baptist Church. Yet the same Christians who get offended at the thought of being lumped in with the bad apples in their faith have no trouble making the same arguments against people of other faiths.

Greene is in a Republican district. She will likely get elected. This is the sort of person Republicans have decided to empower.