Ungrateful Somali Refugee Rep. Ilhan Omar Bashes America: “It’s an Everyday Assault”
Opinion | Somali Refugee and Democratic Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar was featured on the cover of Vogue Arabia which caused an uproar after she was recently in the limelight for making anti-semitic comments.
Conservative personalities Diamond and Silk were outspoken on how they felt about the Vogue cover. They stated, “Not only was it surprising she got on a cover because of her remarks, but it was surprising what she said about wearing the hijab.”
Ilhan Omar shared her cover of Vogue Arabia on Twitter where she made a really disturbing comment about her hijab.
“To me, the hijab means power, liberation, beauty, and resistance.”
“Power, liberation, beauty, and resistance,” isn’t the way most people would describe a hijab, given the known history of countries like Iran.
Many women are forced to wear these “liberating” hijabs and could be arrested for not wearing one.
This wasn’t the only questionable comment Omar made in the magazine, she also went on to bash the country she now resides in and was liberated in.
Omar fled her country during the Somali civil war in 1991, then she stayed in a refugee camp for 4 years in Kenya before coming to the United States.
In the Vogue interview she said, “It was the first time that all of the identities I carried and had pride in, became a source of tension. When you’re a kid and you’re raised in an all-black, all- Muslim environment, nobody really talks to you about your identity. You just are. There is freedom in knowing that you are accepted as your full self. So the notion that there is a conflict with your identity in society was hard at the age of 12.”
Then Omar said, living in “Trump’s America” is an “everyday assault.”
A policy that Omar pushes is a “just” immigration system, which is at direct odds with Donald Trump’s immigration plans.
“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,” she said.
Omar was welcomed with open arms into America where she had the privilege of being voted into state legislature and most recently into the House of Representatives, an opportunity she may have not had elsewhere.
“America has given her a platform and the power to do and say anything she wants, something that she would be unable to do in many other countries. Her home country, however, while she was safely here, was determined to be one of the worst places in the world to be a woman,” Diamond & Silk point out.
Back in Ilhan’s home country, they have been engulfed in war for the last 20 years. It was also voted one of the most dangerous places for women.
The most deaths for women happen during childbirth in Somali because of their lack of healthcare. They have no hospitals or anything. Out of every 100 live births, one woman dies.
Somalia has been described as a living hell for women. Mothers struggle to feed their own children as they face war and drought. They are vulnerable to getting raped or shot and practices like female genital mutilation is accepted there.
She should feel grateful and blessed to be able to live here in America.
