Omar and Tlaib: 1st Muslim Women Elected to US Congress

[The SC]

Wednesday, 7 November, 2018 - 06:15

Voters in Minnesota and Michigan on Tuesday elected a onetime Somali refugee and the daughter of Palestinian immigrants who become the first two Muslim women to reach the US Congress.

Both women -- Ilhan Omar, 37, and Rashida Tlaib, 42 -- are Democrats and outspoken advocates of minority communities that have found themselves in the sights of US President Donald Trump's anti-immigrant policies.

Omar won a House seat in a strongly Democratic district in Minneapolis, Minnesota, succeeding Keith Ellison who was himself the first Muslim ever elected to Congress.

Tlaib's victory was no suprise. She ran unopposed in a congressional district that stretches from Detroit to Dearborn, Michigan.

"I'm Muslim and black," the hijab-wearing Omar said in a recent magazine interview.

"I decided to run because I was one of many people I knew who really wanted to demonstrate what representative democracies are supposed to be," she said.

Omar fled Somalia's civil war with her parents at the age of eight and spent four years at a refugee camp in Kenya.

Her family settled in Minnesota in 1997.

She won a seat in the state's legislature in 2016, becoming the first Somali-American lawmaker in the country.

Before that, she had worked as a community organizer, a policy wonk for city leaders in Minneapolis, and as a leader in her local chapter of the NAACP -- the African-American civil rights group.

She decided to run for Congress after Ellison, who is also black, decided to give up his seat after 12 years in Congress to run for attorney general of Minnesota.

Omar has forged a progressive political identity. She supports free college education, housing for all, and criminal justice reform.

She opposes Trump's restrictive immigration policies, supports a universal health care system, and wants to abolish US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has conducted deportation raids.

Rashida Tlaib is the Detroit-born daughter of Palestinian immigrants -- the eldest of 14 children.

A fighter who once heckled Trump during a 2016 campaign stop in Detroit, she says she didn't run to make history as Muslim.

"I ran because of injustices and because of my boys, who are questioning their (Muslim) identity and whether they belong," Tlaib said in a US television interview in August.

"I've never been one to stand on the sidelines."

Like Omar, she blazed a trail through Michigan politics, becoming the first Muslim woman to serve in the Michigan state legislature in 2008.

In August, she emerged as the winner of a Democratic primary for a seat vacated by John Conyers, a longtime liberal lion who stepped down in December amid sexual harassment allegations and failing health.

With no Republican challenger in the race, Tlaib's election on Tuesday became a formality.

The seat she won is in a predominantly African American congressional district with few Muslim voters.

She says her constituents were attracted to her progressive politics, which are the polar opposite of Republicans.

Tlaib has advocated for universal health care, a $15 national minimum wage, union protections, and tuition-free college education.

She linked her campaign to the surge of female political activism in the United States following Trump's stunning 2016 victory, alluding to the millions of women that took to the streets of Washington and major cities across the country after his inauguration.

"Today, women across the country are on the ballot. Yes, we marched outside the Capitol, but now we get to march into the Capitol," she wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. "We are coming!"


https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1452661/omar-and-tlaib-1st-muslim-women-elected-us-congress

 

[Solomon2]

After Winning Election, Democrat Ilhan Omar Now Says She ‘Supports BDS Movement’


Ilhan Omar / Getty Images
BY: Brent Scher
November 15, 2018 3:48 pm

Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar came out against the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement during her campaign, but after winning election, she now says she "supports the BDS movement."

Omar, a Muslim Somali-American elected last week to replace outgoing Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) in the House, fought accusations that she held anti-Israel views during her campaign. As part of that effort, she told a group of Jewish voters in the state that she opposed the economic boycott of Israel, calling it "counteractive" and "not helpful in getting that two-state solution."

But Omar's tune has changed since winning the election. In an interview published Sunday by MuslimGirl, Omar said she "supports the BDS movement."

"Ilhan believes in and supports the BDS movement, and has fought to make sure people’s right to support it isn’t criminalized," her campaign told MuslimGirl, which said Omar had been criticized for coming out against BDS. Omar's campaign also pointed MuslimGirl to her vote against an anti-BDS bill in Minnesota's state legislature and her argument that boycott movements were successful in South Africa.

The comment is seen as a complete reversal by members of the Jewish community in her district.

"She’s either misrepresenting or misunderstanding, and I hope to be able to have a dialogue with her that clarifies which of those is the nature of her stance," Rabbi Avi Olitzky, who hosted the event where Omar came out against BDS, told Forward, a Jewish news outlet.

Olitzky added that Omar was starting her "tenure off on the wrong foot."

Omar defended her comments in text messages to a local Jewish reporter, saying the moderator "didn’t ask for a yes or no answer" at the initial event. Omar was asked during the debate to state "exactly where you stand" on BDS.

"I think we all look for honesty in our candidates," Beth Gendler, executive director of the National Council of Jewish Women-Minnesota, told Forward. "We’re troubled by her support of BDS, and we want to maintain our working relationship with her as a member of Congress."

The reversal was celebrated by pro-BDS groups like Jewish Voice for Peace.

"I was thrilled to hear that Ilhan Omar supports the BDS movement and that she is committed to making sure that people’s constitutional right to boycott is protected," said a member of the group, a leading organizer of anti-Israel events across the country.

Omar's stated views on Israel, which include claims that it had "hypnotized the world" and is an "apartheid regime," led even Democratic groups to condemn her. The Jewish Democratic Council of America declined to endorse Omar during the campaign.

"Now that Ms. Omar has emerged as the Democratic candidate, JDCA will not support her candidacy—and certainly will not endorse her—because her views are not aligned with our positions and values," the group said.

A Democratic operative told the Free Beacon in August that Omar would have to moderate her views on Israel if she wanted to be accepted by congressional leadership in the party.

"Ilhan Omar will either moderate her extreme and dangerous rhetoric or, at least when it comes to Middle East issues, she will be shunned by the Congressional Democratic Caucus and the party as a whole," the Democratic operative said.

 

[nahtanbob]

a few dissident congressmen will not change American position on israel