Cross-racial coalitions enabled the election of the first immigrant Muslim congresswomen

Evidence

A noteworthy outcome of Muslims’ increasing cross-racial coalitions is the election of the first two immigrant Muslims to the US Congress in 2018— both of whom are women. Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota and Representative Rashida Tlaib from Michigan campaigned as progressive Democrats with a race-conscious agenda. Tlaib is a first-generation American of Palestinian descent, and Omar is a naturalized American of Somali descent. Their life experiences as dissident Palestinian and Somali Americans (the most targeted Racial Muslims in the US counterterrorism regime), respectively, give them a profound understanding of how the intersection of race and religion extends structural racism against African Americans, Native Americans, and other racial minorities to Muslims in the post-9/11 era. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 1055