INS Monitoring desk
Srinagar,Nov 09
Americans created history when they elected two Muslim women – Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – to Congress .
The two muslim women –Ilhan omar and Rashida Tlaib made it to the US house of Representatives on Tuesday reports Dawn.
Ilhan and Omar are the first –ever muslim elected to the US Congress. On Tuesday Ilhan and Rashida were elected to represent Americans in the House of Representatives.
Although,muslim men have been elected to congress before ,Ilhan and Omar are the first muslim women elected to the US congress .
Ilhan,37,was born in Mogadishu ,Somalia ,on October 4,1981.
She was elected a democratic party member of the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2016.
Ilhan,a hijajjab wearing mother of three,is married to a Somali –American Ahmed Hirsi .She has a bachelors degree in politics from North Dakota State University .
She won the Democratic primary on August 14,2018and contested the election on a party ticket.
After the start of the civil war in 1991 ,Ilhan and her family fled Somaliya and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya.
In 1995 ,they emigrated to the United States .Ilhan ,was 12 years old ,and one of the few English words she knew was ‘shut up’.
Ilhan ran from Minnesota’s 5th district, a deeply Democratic area previously represented by a fellow Muslim, Keith Ellison, who won six terms from here.
She beat Republican Jennifer Zielinski to take Keith Ellison’s seat, which he vacated to run for Minnesota attorney general.
While as,Rashida Harbi Tlaib, is the first Palestinian-American Muslim woman to be elected to congress. Although her election was officially announced on Tuesday, she was elected unopposed as no one came forward to challenge Rashida in another deeply Democratic district.
Rashida, who is associated with a socialist group within the Democratic Party, is also very popular in this constituency.
On January 1, 2009, Rashida became the first Muslim American woman to serve in the Michigan Legislature, and the second Muslim woman in history to be elected to any US state legislature.
In 2018, she won the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s 13th congressional district and won unopposed.
She was born on July 24, 1976, to working-class Palestinian immigrants in Detroit and is the eldest of 14 children. Her parents were both born in Palestine.
Rashida played a major role in raising her siblings as her parents worked or relied on welfare are for support.
She graduated from Wayne State University with a BA in political science in 1998 and in 2004, she earned a law degree from Thomas M. Cooley Law School.
Rashida is also the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress.
