'This is my country': Muslim candidate aims to break boundaries in Minnesota

Two years after a brutal attack, Ilhan Omar returns to run for a district seat – and if elected she would become first Muslim woman to hold office in the state

  

 

Ilhan Omar says being attacked has only strengthened her resolve to ensure a plurality of voices in the political process - something she thinks is paramount to democracy. Photograph: Conrad Zbikowski

Ilhan Omar is unsure if it was seven or eight people who held her down and repeatedly hit her at a Minnesota party caucus in 2014, where she was working as an aide after falling for politics at a young age.

Two years after the attack, which left Omar with a concussion, she is returning to that same district caucus as a candidate on Tuesday. If she is elected, it is believed she will be the first Muslim, east African woman to hold elected office in the US.

And to win the seat in the statehouse would mean overcoming a string of identifiers that have become slurs for some candidates in the US presidential election: refugee, immigrant, woman, Muslim.

“All of these identities that I carry are going to be an obstacle,” Omar said. “I wear a hijab and that’s going to be a problem, but once one person is able to do that, it then allows other people to dream too.”

Though the never-ending campaign cycle and tawdry political fighting can breed apathy and disinterest in the American political process, Omar’s family fought for political representation, engendering in Omar a deep enthusiasm and optimism about the importance of the vote.

Omar moved to Minneapolis in 1997, having fled her birth country of Somalia and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for four years .

She was raised by her grandfather and father, who emphasized to her the importance and power of a democratic system.

So at 14, new to Minnesota and having learned English in three months, she would attend the caucuses with her grandfather, acting as his translator. “It was a free process and it wasn’t like the one he was exposed to,” she said. “In America you could be involved in a political party and you didn’t have to be a member of a specific class.”

After studying political science in college, she came back to work in the local the political scene.

Her interest was in helping minority communities navigate their government by conducting educational outreach efforts. She said while her family was always interested in politics, she is part of “this shift in young people like myself who are immigrants and are excited about getting involved in the system, while a lot of our elders are focused on being a good citizen and voting only.”

But in Minnesota’s district 60b, the optimism she felt about politics was clouded by an atmosphere reminiscent of old school American politics. An internal caucus fight created tensions between Omar and those who were supporting the longtime incumbent and a rift within the Somali community.

Omar said that one supporter of incumbent Phyllis Kahn even warned her not to attend the caucuses. But she assumed he was not referring to any physical danger. (That man, Abdi Warsame, told the Guardian Omar’s allegations about his role are “unfounded”.

 

          

When the event began, Omar said: “I would get verbal threats, in person verbal threats: ‘I shouldn’t be here,’ ‘I should be worried,’ ‘I shouldn’t be speaking,’ but I just sort of laughed it off and thought: ‘Whatever.’”

But then an argument began, she said: “And then I remember getting hit, and hit, and hit. About seven or eight people took part in holding me.”

Omar said that the incident did not drive her away from politics. “For me, if I can have a conversation with people who have had hundreds of years of a history of being oppressed and it still tells them that they need to vote and that there’s hope and that they can make change, it would be sort of hypocritical of me to say this thing happened to me and I’m no longer interested,” Omar said.

The party has planned for increased security at the Tuesday caucus and the incident has only strengthened Omar’s resolve to ensure a plurality of voices in the political process – something she thinks is paramount to democracy.

Of course, the Republican party so far has shown its interest in stifling these voices. Omar will be running for elected office at a time when the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, has called for a ban on Muslims entering the US.  
 

Nathan Lean, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, which studies Islamophobia, said that the number of Muslims in public office dropped significantly after 9/11, with about 700 Muslims in office in 2000 and about 70 in 2002.

He also said the numbers have shown no signs of improving. Lean said the climate of Islamophobia is so thick that even stating support for issues related to the Muslim community, or asserting their rights, can cause trouble.

“If you believe in equal treatment of religious minorities, even something as seemingly quintessentially American, as constitutional as that, that there is this skepticism about why is it that this person is aligning himself with Muslims? Why is he speaking favorably of their cause?”

But the Muslims who do hold public office are typically in communities with a large number of Muslim constituents, like the Twin Cities.

Still, a Muslim woman has not yet held a position in Minnesota. And Omar believes her representation could change how people see the political process.

“For me, this is my country, this is for my future, for my children’s future and for my grandchildren’s future to make our democracy more vibrant, more inclusive, more accessible and transparent which is going to be useful for all of us.”