Ilhan Omar says 'Britney Spears-style meltdown' after 1st divorce made her shave her head, elope with stranger
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar reportedly had a "Britney Spears-style meltdown" after her first husband divorced her. She shaved her hair and eloped with another man she barely knew, the lawmaker in her new biography stated.
The Minnesota representative, in her autobiography, titled 'This Is What America Looks Like', however, has not mentioned her latest marriage to campaign finance manager Tim Mynett. The 37-year-old did not even mention him in the acknowledgments of the book, which released this week. Omar and Mynett were seen first seen holding hands in a California restaurant over a year before the book's release. She was married to her former husband Ahmed Hirsi at the time.
Omar, in the book, has detailed her family's flight from war-torn Somalia to a refugee camp in Kenya, her move to the United States, and her eventual rise as a Minnesota politician to her election to the House of Representatives in 2018. The Congresswoman also revealed that she miscarried twins during her marriage to Ahmed Hirsi, according to the Daily Mail.
She also touched upon her marriage to Ahmed Elmi, who she did not name. "I had a Britney Spears-style meltdown, I not only eloped with a man — whom I spent so little time with that I wouldn't even make him a footnote in my story if it weren't for the fact that this event turned into the main headline later on — but I shaved my head," Omar wrote. It is alleged that Elmi was Omar's brother.
"Yes, like the beleaguered pop star, who shaved her head in 2007, I took clippers to my own head," she added. "Too many headaches, too little sleep — I had to flee myself, my relationships, my hair. The difference between Britney and me is that I wore a hijab, so nobody knew what I had done — except my children who were very surprised. 'Mommy looks like me,'" Adnan (Omar's young son) had remarked. "And he was right, I did look like a little boy."
The Minnesota lawmaker said that similar to Spears, who eloped with childhood friend Jason Alexander in 2004 and had her marriage annulled after two days, "my impulsive second marriage ended in divorce."
She also referred to her marriage while discussing her election to the Minnesota House in 2016. Omar said that at the time an anonymous post on a Somali website "established two simple facts, which were true, but that unleashed a torrent of speculation and conspiracies that follow me to this day."
"They were that I had applied for a marriage license in 2002 and then again, in 2009, when I eloped," she wrote. "These facts — which are true — were couched in speculation that I had married a relative illegally, to get him entry into the United States — which isn't true."
Omar said that she could never find out who posted the allegation on the website. "The blog post appeared on Somali Spot, an online Somali discussion forum," she wrote.
"If someone had accurate information or true concerns that I had committed an immigration crime, they would have gone to the Star Tribune with it."
She added that when the news broke, it exploded and her fellow Somalis became some of her harshest critics at the time. "Instead of celebrating the first black Muslim woman elected to a state legislature in the United States, some people in my own community continued to work against it," she noted in the book. "They refused to accept me because I wouldn't kiss the ring. The source of the information about my brief past relationship was the work of people trying to preserve their power structure. It didn't work. Despite all their efforts, I kept rising. Ironically, I don't know if I would have the widespread support I do today if I hadn't been messed with as much as I have.
Influence and enemies go hand in hand."
The claim that Omar had illegally married her brother to gain American citizenship first emerged in conservative blogs in 2016, the Democrat at the time was running for the Minnesota state legislature. Omar had subsequently released a statement that year, calling the claims "baseless rumors" that "are absolutely false and ridiculous." The Democrat had then said that she married Ahmed Hirsi as per Muslim tradition in 2002. However, she never legally married him and their relationship ended in 2008.
Omar then legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009, however, they separated in 2011. "Insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive,” she said at the time.
Omar, in the book, said that she now regrets making the statement about the speculation that Elmi is her brother. "I wish I hadn't even given the basics of the how and why," she wrote. "Not only did the speculation on my romantic past play into a xenophobic, anti-immigrant mindset, but it wasn't effective in putting an end to the intrigue. In a world of conspiracy theories and propaganda, which flourished with the rise of Donald Trump, no answer was ever going to be good enough."