Rep. Ilhan Omar’s father has died. The Minnesota congresswoman announced the news in an emotional post eulogizing her late father, who died due to complications from COVID-19.
Omar shared a public statement in which she paid tribute to her father and shared a Quranic quote, written in Arabic, that she translated as, “Surely we belong to God and to him shall we return.”
“It is with tremendous sadness and pain that I share that my father, Nur Omar Mohamed, passed away today due to complications from COVID-19,” Omar, 37, shared. “No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew him,” she continued. “My family and I ask for your respect and privacy during this time.”
She shared the news in a tribute on social media as well, alongside a photo of herself and her father.
Omar — who is the first Somali-American and among the first Muslim women to serve as a congressional representative — was raised by her father after her mother’s death when she was a baby, the New York Times reported in an profile of the congresswoman.
In January 2019, Omar shared a photo of herself and her father walking through Virginia’s Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and she explained the significance of the location to their lives.
“23 years ago, from a refugee camp in Kenya, my father and I arrived at an airport in Washington DC,” Omar wrote. “Today, we return to that same airport on the eve of my swearing in as the first Somali-American in Congress.”
In the United States, there have been over 2.18 million reported cases of COVID-19 over the past five months, with over 118,000 deaths attributed to the virus.
