{UAH} Misinformation clouds Rep. Omar's career
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Misinformation clouds Rep. Omar's career
Buy PhotoLois Thielen (Photo: Times photo)
Politicians often are glorified or vilified, but few in recent times as much as U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who represents Minnesota's 5th congressional district.
Originally standing out as the first Somali-American member of Congress and the first member to wear a hijab on the floor of the House of Representatives, Omar was thrust into the spotlight a few weeks ago when President Trump told her and three other congresswomen of color to go back to their "broken" countries of origin instead of trying to fix ours. (It should be noted that the other three were born in the United States and Omar has been a naturalized American citizen since 2000.)
Throughout her political career — first as a state representative elected in 2016 and then being elected a U.S. representative in the fall of 2018 — she has been the target of those afraid of the changing makeup of America, which includes more people of color and more people who profess a faith other than Christianity.
There are endless right-wing websites and blogs shrieking that Omar is a radical Islamic, that she married her brother to give him a green card and that she is in this country illegally.
Two such stories the past week insist her father, who emigrated with her in 1995, was a Somali war criminal (cited false by Snopes fact-checker) and that she had abandoned her husband and three children to live in a luxury penthouse in Minneapolis (apparently too far out for Snopes to even bother to check.)
A few newspapers have done some in-depth investigation into the stories that swirl around Omar, and their conclusions will be disappointing for those getting their daily drama fix from such headlines and websites.
Omar was born in 1982 in Somalia and was theyoungest of seven children. Her mother died when she was 2 years old. The family fled Somalia during its civil war and spent four years in a Kenya refugee camp. The family came to the United States when Omar was 12 and eventually relocated to the Cedar-Riverside Somali community of Minneapolis.
During that time Omar became a naturalized American citizen and accompanied her grandfather to DFL caucuses and fell in love with politics.
She sought a legal marriage license with Ahmed Hirsi in Minnesota (though they did not legally marry at the time) when she was 19 and they had two children together. Six years later they reached "an impasse" in their life together and split up. She then legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009. She identified him as a British citizen, but records show he attended a St. Paul high school, according to the article "Omar's past haunts her present" in the June 23 Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Here's where the story gets complicated. Omar and Elmi divorced in 2011 in their "faith tradition" but not according to civil law; they would not procure a legal divorce until 2017. In 2012, Omar reunited with Hirsi and they had a third child together. Omar finally got a legal divorce from Elmi in 2017 and she and Hirsi got married in 2018, according to the Star Tribune story.
So the big scandal is that because she only divorced her husband in a faith ceremony, not on a civil level, she was considered legally married to Elmi while she was living with Hirsi and having a child with him.
But if that's a crime, today a good part of the American population would be criminals because there are many children born outside of marriage or the product of what can be considered bad behavior.
Financial issues also have supplied fuel for right-wing opponents. For example, Omar in 2014-15 filed joint tax returns with Hirsi instead of Elmi, to whom she still was legally married. She used campaign funds to pay for legal work to fix her tax filings, and was fined for doing so. She has since apologized for doing so and paid the fine and the bills with her own money, according to the Star Tribune story.
Omar also draws fire because she sees herself as a leader for her Somali people, one who is in a position to articulate what the downtrodden and marginalized are unable to say. She has repeatedly spoken out against what she sees as racism by the current administration and isn't afraid to challenge the president.
She has not always gotten her facts straight, she has not always handled divorce or filing taxes correctly, and she refuses to give out as much personal information about her family or her past as Americans may expect.
But as she concluded in a Washington Post interview, entering politics is a lot like becoming a new parent. There's no training before becoming one and the experience often leaves one feeling tired and sad, often at one's own ineptitude that only is overcome by experience.
This is the opinion of Lois Thielen, a dairy farmer who lives near Grey Eagle. Her column is published the first Tuesday of the month.
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