The f irebrand refugee who’s dividing US
WHEN a 36-year-old former Somali refugee was elected to Congress last year, many American Muslims saw the historic victory as a sign they might at last be moving towards being fully accepted in US society.
Congress even changed its rules to allow Ilhan Omar to wear her hijab on the House floor.
But instead of reducing the Islamophobia that’s persisted in the US since the September 11 attacks, Ms Omar has only fuelled it. She has won ecstatic praise but also stirred up controversy and resentment as soon as she arrived in Washington.
Fellow Americans have two wildly different reactions to her. Some see her as the modern, multi-cultural embodiment of the American Dream; others as a socialism-loving, America-hating political menace who would happily Islamify the US if she could.
Born in war-torn Mogadishu, Ms Omar came to the US when she was 12, knowing only two English phrases: ‘Hello’ and ‘shut up’.
She now sits in the House of Representatives for the midwestern state of Minnesota and her congressional district is almost entirely made up of the progressive, multicultural city of Minneapolis whose large population of Somalis Donald Trump has called a ‘disaster’ for the state.
She’s not only the first SomaliAmerican to serve in Congress but also one of the first two MuslimAmerican congresswomen.
Ms Omar’s soft voice and delicate features hide a tough political scrapper and the Democratic Establishment recoil from her inflammatory stance on some issues, particularly about Jews, Israel and the 9/11 attacks.
She has been a critic of US support for Israel, tweeting in 2012: ‘Israel has hypnotised the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.’ In February, she told her 1.27million Twitter followers that the Democrats’ support for Israel was ‘all about the Benjamins baby’ – Benjamin being slang for a $100 note, which bears Benjamin Franklin’s face. Democratic leaders
rebuked her for suggesting Israeli money was paying for their support.
She antagonised both Democrats and Republicans for appearing blasé about the 9/11 attacks in which nearly 3,000 people died. In April she referred to 9/11 by saying ‘some people did something’ for which all American Muslims were suffering infringements of their civil liberties.
Mr Trump accused her of supporting terrorists and she has since received death threats. But whichever way one looks at it, her rise is astonishing. Her mother died when she was two and she moved to the US with her family in the 1990s to escape Somalia’s civil war.
She became a US citizen at 17, studied politics and international affairs, won a seat in the Minnesota congress in 2016 and two years later a congressional seat in Washington.
Time magazine featured her as one of the ‘women who are changing the world’. But Americans are sharply divided over whether she is be changing it for the better – or worse.