إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ
Surely we belong to God and to him shall we return.
It is with tremendous sadness and pain to say goodbye to my father, Nur Omar Mohamed. No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew and loved him. pic.twitter.com/gb7q0gMXG2
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) June 16, 2020
Close to a dozen members of the House and the Senate have tested positive for covid-19 or coronavirus antibodies, and other lawmakers have lost family members during the pandemic.
Donald Reed Herring, the eldest brother of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), died of the disease in Oklahoma in April. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) lost her sister to covid-19 in May, a month after she stood on the House floor and dedicated her support for a coronavirus relief package to her gravely ill sister.
In previous interviews, Omar has described being primarily raised by her father and grandfather after her mother’s death. The family fled war-torn Somalia for refugee camps in Kenya and ultimately sought asylum in the United States. In 1997, they settled in Minneapolis, where Mohamed drove a cab before finding a job at the post office.
As a middle school student who wore a hijab, Omar was the victim of bullying, she told the New York Times in 2018.
She recalled that her father told her: “Listen, these people who are doing all of these things to you, they’re not doing something to you because they dislike you. They are doing something to you because they feel threatened in some way by your existence.”
Omar ultimately went on to become one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, as well as the first Somali American member of the House.
Though a freshman, she has attracted attention as a member of “the Squad,” a group of four minority congresswomen who have shown a willingness to speak out against House leadership and have often been attacked by President Trump.
