Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's father died on Monday from COVID-19 complications, the politician has announced. For the last eight days, Ilhan's father Nur Omar Mohamed, 67, had been in coma in Hennepin Medical Center.
Ilhan is the US Representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district. The Somali-American was elected to US Congress in 2019. She is the first naturalized citizen from Africa to be elected to Congress, as well as the first woman of color to hold elective office from Minnesota.
Mohamed was said to have opposed his daughter's marriage and political career. Ilhan lost her mother when she was just two.
Paying tribute to her father, Ilhan, the youngest of his children, said:
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. No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew him. My family and I ask for your respect and privacy during this time.
Father-Daughter Differences
A family friend earlier told the DailyMail that Mohamed told his family that he didn't want Ilhan near him, but wanted Sahra to take charge of everything.
The source further said that the daughter and father were not speaking in recent months since the media had posted pictures of Ilhan and her new husband Tim Mynett with his hand on her rear.
Her father thought it was very demeaning to walk around in public like that, according to the source. 'They have hardly spoken in three months,' the report said.
Mohamed, also called Nur Said Elmi, felt that Ilhan brought shame upon him and the family "for having an affair while married."
However, after media reports, Omar herself put a picture of herself and Mynett with her father happily smiling at the Iftar, on Instagram
Ilhan's Memoir
In her book, This Is What America Looks Like, Ilhan says her father was strict, while being was liberal at the same time. Sometimes she wished he had been tougher with her when she was a child. But she said that in her teenage years he used to get upset if her clothes showed too much skin.
Speaking about her strict father she says: "My friends joked that I was more afraid of my father than I was afraid of God. ''God is forgiving,'' I would say. 'My father isn't."
