Minnesota and Michigan elect the first Muslim legislators in the United States

Voters in Minnesota and Michigan on Tuesday elected the first two Muslim legislators from the United States to the House of Representatives, a former hostage who fled the civil war in Somalia . an American palestine born in Detroit.

The victories of the two Democrats, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are announced during an election night during which several members of several minority groups had the opportunity to vote for the first time.

In Minnesota, Omar, a 36-year-old naturalized US citizen, succeeds another pioneer: US Congressman Keith Ellison, who in 2006 became the first Muslim elected to Congress and retired to run as Attorney General. .

The Minneapolis woman campaigned to promote the policies of the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party: universal medical care, free university tuition, and social housing.

"I did not expect to come to the United States and find in the school children worried about food, like me in a refugee camp," Omar said at the time. an interview last month. The new congressman spent four years as a child in a refugee camp in Kenya.

Two years ago, she became the first US-born Somalian to win a seat in the state legislature, the same day the Republican Donald Trump won the presidency after a campaign in which he pleaded. prevent the entry of Muslims to the United States.

Omar would also be the first American legislator to wear a hijab or scarf.

Tlaib, 42, has also always broken down the barriers: she became in 2008 the first Muslim woman elected to the state badembly of Michigan.

Tlaib, the eldest of 14 children, is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants from Detroit, where her father worked in a Ford Motor factory.

The former state representative also opted for a liberal platform supporting medical care for all, a reform of immigration and appeal to the cancellation of the decree of Trump that forbids nationals of five Muslim-majority countries to enter the United States.

Tlaib linked his campaign to a rise in women's political activism in the United States after Trump's resounding victory in 2016, after which millions of women took to the streets of Washington and major cities to demonstrate .

"Today, women from all over the country are on the ballot, yes, we are leaving the Capitol, but now we can go to the Capitol," Tlaib wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. "Let's go!"