Caroline Yang for HuffPost

MINNEAPOLIS ― Shortly after Ilhan Omar, the freshman congresswoman from the 5th District of Minnesota, arrived, she started to talk about Oprah ― specifically, something the media mogul once said on TV that had stuck with her. Asked how she remained confident in traditionally unwelcoming spaces for women of color, Oprah answered that she envisioned herself entering alongside the many women who didn’t have the same opportunity before her. “And so, people ask me, ‘Ilhan, do you feel afraid? Do you feel marginalized?’ And I don’t,” Omar said. “Because I know hundreds of my sisters are constantly walking with me in every single space I’m in.” “So thank you for the hugs,” she continued. “But know that I’m OK ― I got this.” The newly elected 37-year-old had returned to her home district to speak to and hear from community leaders and constituents. That Wednesday afternoon, Omar was sitting in a circle with Minnesota activists, many of them Muslim and all of them women. SUBSCRIBE AND FOLLOW POLITICS Get the top stories emailed every day. Newsletters may offer personalized content or advertisements. Privacy Policy Newsletter Please enter a valid email address Thank you for signing up! You should receive an email to confirm your subscription shortly. There was a problem processing your signup; please try again later Twitter

Facebook

Instagram

Flipboard While Omar may be a lightning rod in Washington, she’s still beloved by many in her district, where women like Nausheena Hussain remain fiercely protective of the lawmaker. When Omar first walked through the door, the women had greeted her with a defiant chant ― “When Ilhan is under attack, what do we do?” “Stand up, fight back!” But beforehand, Hussain, one of the event’s organizers, had seemed nervous. She wondered aloud whether they should move the discussion to a more secluded area of the building and asked those in attendance not to post photos of the event until 2 p.m., for Omar’s safety. “I don’t want her to go anywhere without security,” Hussain said. Her concern was justified. Already this year, two people have been arrested for making threatening calls about Omar ― “I’ll put a bullet in her fucking skull,” one of them said ― and a third is being investigated for threatening to bomb a hotel that let Omar inside. “Can you think of another time in the history of our country where a freshman congresswoman has had two people in jail because they’ve tried to kill her?” asked Simon Trautmann, a Richfield city councilmember who considers Omar a friend. “And what leads the news? Not that.”

Caroline Yang for HuffPost Rep. Ilhan Omar meets with community members at the RISE (Reviving Sisterhood) office in North Minneapolis on April 24, 2019. RISE is a nonprofit organization that works to cultivate leadership and civic engagement among Muslim women.

Caroline Yang for HuffPost Representative Ilhan Omar greets community members at the RISE (Reviving Sisterhood) office in North Minneapolis on April 24, 2019.

Such accusations have become normal in recent years, as a growing number of politicians have wielded anti-Muslim sentiment to their advantage. Trump, a particularly prominent practitioner, blatantly played into Islamophobic furor during his election campaign. “I think Islam hates us,” he said in 2016. Now, Trump reportedly wants to do so again by making Omar the new face of the Democratic Party heading into 2020. Omar, for one, is not surprised. “This is a president who has come to power because he was very much willing to vilify and demonize immigrants and refugees. He so proudly said we should halt Muslims from entering our country. He clearly has a disdain for black women who see themselves as equal to him. And so, for many people, it’s not a surprise that he finds his biggest nemesis in me,” Omar told HuffPost last week. “Clearly, I am a nightmare ― because he can’t stop really thinking about ways that he can continue to use my identity to marginalize our communities” In April, the president tweeted out footage that had circulated in conservative spheres of Omar seeming to downplay the Sept. 11 attacks by saying “some people did something.” Omar’s full comments were about the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment since 2001 ― she had stated, incorrectly, that the Council on American–Islamic Relations had been founded “because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.” But that context was stripped from the video and Trump’s tweet.

Clearly, I am a nightmare ― because he can’t stop really thinking about ways that he can continue to use my identity to marginalize our communities. Rep. Ilhan Omar on President Donald Trump

Directly after, Omar experienceda dramatic increase in threats against her life. “@IlhanMN needs to be hung. She’s a traitor and a threat to the west,” one Twitter user wrote. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) defended her fellow congresswoman by noting Omar had recentlyco-sponsored a bill to permanently authorize the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund ― but that didn’t seem to matter to Omar’s loudest critics, which included personalities as prominent as “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade. “You have to wonder if she is an American first,” Kilmeade said. The attention has shaken some of those who knew Omar before her 2018 election victory. “It’s painful, because I feel like the country is meeting someone who I don’t know,” said Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota who taught Omar during a policy fellowship. “I know this person,” he added. “I know Ilhan’s sister. I know her dad. This is a family in a lot of ways that’s the archetype of American immigrants who come to America and make their way. The idea that she’s hateful, that she’s got animus against America is ridiculous.” ***** Omar admits she sometimes still feels like a “complete guest” in Washington D.C. But back in her home district last week, she seemed calm, cracking jokes with staff and constituents alike as she tried to return to the normal duties of a freshman congresswoman. Later in the day, she toured a community clinic and participated in a panel at a Latino-influenced beer company, where one of her children sat on her lap while she answered questions. Omar insisted to HuffPost she has not heard anything from her constituents that overly concerns her.

Caroline Yang for HuffPost Omar meets with employees of Northpoint Health & Wellness Center in North Minneapolis on April 24, 2019.

“People who were actually willing to cast their ballot for me have not ever called or asked, ‘Why can’t you say things differently?’” she said. If Trump has rattled Omar in recent months, she hides it well. “As someone who certainly has survived far worse people than him, I’m going to be alright,” said Omar, who escaped civil war in Somalia as a child. Like Trump, in fact, she sees political opportunity in their developing standoff. “I always find conflicts to be the best sources for organizing,” she said. The day before Omar met with the Minnesota activists, she had privately spoken by phone with Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, about the video the president had tweeted to attack her earlier that month. But as she sat and spoke with Mohammed, Hussain and the other women early Wednesday, Omar’s attention seemed not on the outside world, but on them. She says supporting their newly energized activism is a critical part of her growing set of responsibilities. “There are people who really have never felt completely visible in a system that wasn’t designed for them. And people who have always felt that the American dream was dying away,” Omar told HuffPost. “To now see [that] a refugee who has only been in this country two decades, who carries almost every marginalized identity that you could carry, has risen and ascended to one of the most powerful positions that you could be in our country? That is hope.”

To now see [that] a refugee who has only been in this country two decades, who carries almost every marginalized identity that you could carry, has risen and ascended to one of the most powerful positions that you could be in our country? That is hope. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)

Hussain, the first event’s organizer, had taken Trump’s victory in 2016 hard. During a stop at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport days before the election, Trump had demonized the local Somali refugee population, telling the crowd they were “coming into your state without your knowledge,” “joining ISIS” and “spreading their extremist views all over our country.” Such anti-Muslim sentiment has manifested itself violently in Minnesota in recent years. In 2016, a man shot at a group of Somali men after hurling Islamophobic remarks at them. The next year, members of a militia group bombed a Minnesota mosque. Omar’s election to Minnesota’s House of Representatives in 2016 had served as a critical “silver lining” during that period, Hussain said. She and Mohammed are now passionate defenders of the congresswoman, and say she has inspired Muslim women around the state to become more politically engaged, mirroring a national trend that saw a record number of Muslims win elected office last November. Earlier in the month, Hussain and Mohammed had protested outside a Trump rally in Burnsville in support of Omar. That day, one of the Trump supporters had yelled something that lodged itself in Hussain’s mind: Why do you hate Jews so much? “I’ve been to many rallies. And I’ve seen the signs of us all going to hell and burning in hell and ‘Jesus is coming’ and all that. But that group was different,” Hussain said.

Caroline Yang for HuffPost Omar speaks on a panel during the Paycheck Fairness and Women's Workforce Development Town Hall in Minneapolis on April 24, 2019.

But Mohammed said that nothing would stop her from defending their congresswoman. “The more people try to attack Ilhan, the more we will defend her,” she said. Omar told the women Wednesday she cannot simply assume that she accurately speaks for the many identities she embodies. “I just happen to be a woman. I happen to be a refugee. I happen to be an immigrant. I happen to be black. I happen to be Muslim, but I’m not a representative of those groups,” she said. “I still need to be in spaces, and hear the lived experiences that each of the identities that I carry still are experiencing.” And so, the women went around and told Omar of their advocacy, their successes and their struggles. One of them brought Omar flowers. A Muslim woman said what an exciting time it was to be a Palestinian advocate. “So much of it has been really led by you,” she said. A third complimented the congresswoman’s fashion ― a black pantsuit with red, white and blue flats ― and asked what they could do to help get her reelected.

Let’s be clear: Were her comments harmful and hurtful? Yes. Is she getting a ridiculous amount of ink spilled and press because she is a black hijabi-wearing Muslim refugee? Yes. Rabbi Michael Adam Latz

“I’ve heard really nasty things like ‘Ilhan should be a little quieter’ and ‘I don’t know if she’s going to get reelected,’” the woman said. “So I wanted to ask you what we can do to prove all these people wrong.” Omar told the woman that she is not too concerned about reelection right now and added that people who hope to quiet her only serve to do the opposite. “There are people who are invested in instilling fear in us,” she told them. “There are people who send me books of members of Congress who have taken on AIPAC and others and who have not returned,” Omar said. “I think it is for them in their mind to be a cautionary tale. But for me, it’s a motivation. It’s a motivation to say that somebody has to buck the system.” ***** Rabbi Michael Adam Latz of Minneapolis’ Shir Tikvah synagogue was dismayed by Omar’s remarks about Israel. “The initial comments were deeply disappointing,” he told me. But since then, Omar and her staff have reached out repeatedly “with great tenderness and thoughtfulness.” “There’s a lot of work yet to be done,” he said. “I’m glad to see that she’s beginning to do it.” The rabbi has also started to question why Omar’s comments have garnered so much attention. After all, other Minnesota politicians had waded into anti-Semitic and Islamophobic waters in the recent past. In 2016, for example, another Minnesota congressperson, Republican Jim Hagedorn, criticized his political opponent for “pro-Muslim lecturing.” Doug Wardlow, who ran as a Republican for Minnesota attorney general last year, suggested Jewish billionaire George Soros had tried to buy the election for his Democratic opponent, former congressman Keith Ellison. McCarthy, the House minority leader, similarly suggested that Soros, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer had tried to “buy” the midterm elections. Were those lesser-known comments really so different? “Let’s be clear: Were her comments harmful and hurtful? Yes. Is she getting a ridiculous amount of ink spilled and press because she is a black hijabi-wearing Muslim refugee? Yes,” Latz said. “It’s pretty grotesque, the disparity, and I think we all need to take responsibility for how disproportionate the attention is here on her.” Omar told me that the lesson she has learned since she took office is just how far people will go to “‘other’ those that they find discomfort in.” She said it reminds her of a similar lesson she learned from her father when she arrived at age 12 in the United States with only two English phrases, “Hello” and “Shut up.” Children back then treated Omar cruelly, sticking gum in her scarf and knocking her down the stairs ― physical abuse that continued into her political career. “They latch on to this really angry part of their soul that says that you must attack others to give yourself strength. You must weaken someone in order for you to have strength,” Omar said.

Caroline Yang for HuffPost Omar listens to a speaker during the Paycheck Fairness and Women's Workforce Development Town Hall in Minneapolis.