Ilhan Omar just put her foot in her mouth again in what all will consider an ungrateful display for a recent immigrant who has done so well in America.
Is there any place on earth Ilhan’s miracle story - from refugee to member of Congress - is possible? Of course not.
It is absurd to criticize the one place that gave you everything, just stunning. From BPR:
Democrat Congresswoman Ilhan Omar — a Muslim refugee from impoverished, war-torn Somalia — trashed the United States under the Trump presidency, saying living here is a daily nightmare.
“It’s an everyday assault,” Omar told Vogue Arabia. “Every day, a part of your identity is threatened, demonized, and vilified.”
Keep in mind that in Saudi Arabia and in many Muslim countries, Omar wouldn’t be allowed to leave the house without a male chaperone, drive, work, or vote.
And she certainly wouldn’t be a member of the federal government. Also, wife-beating is acceptable — and even encouraged.
Omar and her family moved to the United States in 1995 from Somalia as refugees. Did you know that a Christian church sponsored the sharia advocate — all so that she could come to the United States and b*tch about it incessantly?
Omar has been criticized by other immigrants as a vile ingrate who attacks the very country that gave her refuge, freedom, and an amazing new life.
Contrast that to her homeland of Somalia, where women are often raped and then thrown in jail for reporting the rape.
From Vogue:
“It’s challenging,” she says of living in President Trump’s America, where her status and heritage is constantly criticized. “It’s an everyday assault. Every day, a part of your identity is threatened, demonized, and vilified. Trump is tapping into an ugly part of our society and freeing its ugliness.
It’s been a challenge to try to figure out how to continue the inclusion; how to show up every day and make sure that people who identify with all the marginalized identities I carry, feel represented. It’s transitioning from the idea of constantly resisting to insisting in upholding the values we share – that this is a society that was built on the idea that you could start anew. And what that celebrates is immigrant heritage.”
Wearing her hijab allows her to be a “walking billboard” not only for her faith but also for representing something different from the norm. “To me, the hijab means power, liberation, beauty, and resistance,” she says. She has a son, Adnan, and two daughters with husband Ahmed Hirsi. Whether her girls, Ilwad and Isra, want to wear the hijab, is up to them, she says.
“I grew up in a religious society and my father and grandfather believed that their role was to teach right from wrong. For me, that is how I raise my kids. I work to remove obstacles so they can live at their best and happiest selves,” she says. “If that translates to adapting the hijab, that’s fine. If they don’t, that’s also fine.
They have freedom of choice. Society tends to place lots of limitations, depending on what gender you are. I want my kids to be free.” She wants to share this approach with all women, advising them to be themselves. “Walk in your own path. We are as much worthy of joy, power, and pleasure as the next human. We are deserving and we don’t need permission or an invitation to exist and to step into our power.”
