‘People who look like me’: US Muslims celebrate Tlaib and Omar victories Supporters of the first Muslim congresswomen in US history say they see themselves reflected in Congress for the first time in their lives

January 11, 2019   

(Middle East Eye) Ilhan Omar had four hours to decide whether to run for Congress.

Last June, Keith Ellison, then a representative for Minnesota and the first Muslim elected to Congress, made a late-hour entry into the state’s attorney general race, leaving his congressional seat wide open.

Omar, a 36-year-old who fled the civil war in Somalia in 1991 and lived with her family for four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before they were resettled in the US, was already serving as a member in Minnesota’s state House of Representatives.

But with little time and no consultation with her family, she decided to run for the 5th district because, in the end, she said she couldn’t trust that any of the other candidates would fight as hard as she would in Congress.

Read more.

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