Home > Author > Ilhan Omar
1 " As a refugee who fled civil war as a child, I am still trying to figure out where I fit in - which is perhaps why the most important note I found sticking to the wall outside my office had only three words. You belong here. "
― Ilhan Omar , This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman
2 " We are motivated by radical love of country.We fight for universal healthcare because of love.We fight for a livable planet because of love.We fight for equitable housing because of love.(7/31/2020 on Twitter) "
― Ilhan Omar
3 " Stop saying "we can't afford" Homes for All, Green New Deal or Medicare for All. If we didn't spend trillions on endless wars and tax breaks for millionaires, we could afford to house our homeless, care for our seniors, and save our planet. We suffer from greed, not scarcity.(7/29/2020 on Twitter) "
4 " As we continue to perfect our union, citizens, neighbors, coworkers, and family must keep expanding our circles of self-interest to learn and relearn the fundamental truth that we are all connected. The more invested we are in one another, the better all of us ultimately will be. "
5 " The more we listen to and learn from those with different backgrounds and present circumstances from our own, the more we can find connections to our own lived experience. "
6 " The reasons for weaponizing division are not mysterious. Racial fear prevents Americans from building community with one another and community is the lifeblood of a functioning democratic society. Throughout our history, racist language has been used to turn American against American in order to benefit the wealthy elite. Every time Mr. Trump attacks refugees is a time that could be spent discussing the president's unwillingness to raise the federal minimum wage for up to 33 million Americans. Every racist attack on four members of Congress is a moment he doesn't have to address why his choice for labor secretary has spent his career defending Wall Street banks and Walmart at the expense of workers. When he is launching attacks on the free press, he isn't talking about why his Environmental Protection Agency just refused to ban a pesticide linked to brain damage in children.(7/25/2019 in the New York Times) "
7 " It's all about the Benjamins baby. "
8 " I have no religious expectation of her or of anybody else for that matter. I’m a Muslim and live as such, but I’m also a humanist. Just as I believe in God, so also do I believe that we are all connected no matter our faith, belief in science, race, or country of origin. We all have an ability to enrich one another not in spite of our differences but because of them. "
9 " You can’t take away the past; you can only add to the narrative. There is a narrative about Muslims that already exists. I’m not here to undo or rewrite history. That is propaganda or an impossibility. What I, and others, can do is expand on the notion of what it means to be Muslim, continue the story line that survives alongside us. "
10 " Although we witnessed the worst of human nature in Utange, we also witnessed the best of it. The greatest lesson I came away with from my time in the refugee camp is that your today doesn’t get to determine your tomorrow. Everything in life is fluid. Pride, strength, and responsibility—all of those notions are the domain of people in comfort and safety. When you’re facing death, you’re not guided by your importance or your past, and you certainly don’t worry about whether your pride is intact. Again and again, I witnessed that if you can push through whatever is happening today, tomorrow might be worse, but it could also be better. The only option for the human spirit is to keep going. "
11 " The big lesson was that it’s possible to treat people as your equal even as you manage them. "
12 " And yet I also rail against having every action I take reduced to a social construct stemming from my religion, stripping me of the complexities of multidimensional thought. I am a human, not a figurehead. I have always chafed at owning other people’s notions about my identities, be it what it means to be a mother or a member of Congress. "
13 " To know there was someone whom I could always count on but who also let me be whatever I wanted to be gave me more security than anything else could. "
14 " Do I care enough? If so, then I don't care about what other people think about my presence in a room or conversation "
15 " I grew up knowing that hard things only get harder when you don’t have real conversations about them. "
16 " I fully got it. The hijab wasn’t about a piece of cloth or the battle against objectification. Instead it was really a symbol of the purity of my presence in the world. It makes sense to me that I need to cover pieces of myself to preserve who I am and feel whole. I’m centered by the hijab, because it connects me to a whole set of internally held beliefs. "
17 " Even in a realm as historically dogmatic as religion, I don’t believe one size fits all. Faith is a pathway to life, but not just any life. Your life. My life. And none of us lives the same life. To wrestle with belief is to apply it within the context of your own circumstances. "
18 " My regimented food preparation was just one aspect of the environment I created in Fargo—where I was in control of everything as I saw fit. When I left Minneapolis, I was fleeing a family and culture that prescribed so many aspects of my life that I didn’t know where they ended and I began. Away from the confines of their judgments, I wanted to explore the full range of my reactions—to new people, new books, new music, new ideas. In North Dakota I found a space where for the first time in my life I was able to push all of the expectations away from my brain and focus only on what interested me. "
19 " I had suddenly discovered a great weakness I never knew I had in me. That weakness was allowing myself to mindlessly conform to family and social expectations without stopping to fully understand who I am and what my purpose is. I was the person I never imagined myself to be, the type of woman I railed against. "
20 " It was a fascinating contradiction to both stand out and completely fade into the background at the same time. But being the first is all about contradictions. "
