A Somalian immigrant poised to become one of America’s first Muslim women legislators
BY LAURA DANIELS
Ilhan Omar, a Somalian immigrant who only in 2016 became a member of the local House of representatives in the State of Minnesota, is one easy step away from becoming one of America’s Muslim female members of Congress come November. She beat four other Democratic candidates yesterday in her state to fill a seat left vacant by Congressman Keith Ellisan who is aspiring to becoming the state’s attorney general.
Running in Minnesota’s solidly Democratic 5th congressional district, she is expected to easily beat her Republican opponent Jennifer Zielinski in November.
A Somalian-born American who, before coming to the United States at age 12, spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya, Omar is a mother of three who made history by becoming America’s first Somali-American legislator in 2016. She then told HuffPost, a major American online news source:
“I hope my candidacy would allow people to have the boldness to encourage people who don’t fit into [a] particular demographic to seek office, to believe in the good will of the people to select someone they believe shares their vision and not necessarily their identity.”
She also said then, in the wake of her history-making prowess:
“Oftentimes, you are told to be everything but bold, but I think that was important for me in running as a young person and running as someone who is Muslim, a refugee, an immigrant. To believe in the possibility that all of my identities and otherness would fade into the background, and that my voice as a strong progressive would emerge if I was bold and believed in that.”
Following her victory last night, Omar tweeted:
“We started this campaign to prove people are ready and willing to fight for an America that works for all of us. To every staff member, volunteer, donor, and voter, this win is just as much yours as it is mine. Together, we will move our district, state and nation forward.”
Ilhan Omar’s victory last night and quasi-assured entry in the U.S. Congress come at a tough time for American immigrants of the non-white race, during the tenure of probably the most racist president the United States has ever known, Donald Trump, whose prejudice against minorities non-white men, women and disable people is out in the open everyday.
These are particularly tough times for Muslim Americans who are subject to hate crimes favored by Trump’s Islamophobic rhetorics and policies that have led to his travel ban targeting some majority-Muslim countries, including Omar’s Somalia.
These are also special times in America when an unprecedented number of women, including a record number of Muslim candidates, are running for office, in a country that owes its success and world-wide attraction largely to immigrants from a wide range of backgrounds.
Most of this new breed of candidates are running as Democrats in a movement that aims at pushing the party further to the left. Like many other in this movement, Ilhan Omar is campaigning on such highly progressist items as $15-per-hour minimum wage, the abolishing of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, an agency that has proved particularly harsh on illegal immigrants under the Trump administration by arresting them on buses and separating them from their children in an unprecedented fashion, resulting in some of ICE agents being unable to figure out who the parents are, because the latter are sometimes too young to talk to identify their parents in court.