The father of controversial leftist congresswoman Ilhan Omar is desperately ill in a Minneapolis hospital suffering from Covid-19, DailyMa...
The father of controversial leftist congresswoman Ilhan Omar is desperately ill in a Minneapolis hospital suffering from Covid-19, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively.
But Nur Omar Mohamed has banned the congresswoman from his bedside amid a furious argument father and daughter have been having over her affair and marriage to her campaign fundraiser.
Mohamed, 67, has been in a coma in Hennepin Medical Center for the past eight days.
He is so ill that Ilhan’s elder sister Sahra is flying in from Kenya to be at his side.
‘It is not looking good, he is very sick,’ one friend of the family told DailyMail.com.
‘He told the family he did not want Ilhan near him and wanted Sahra to be in charge of everything.
The source said Mohamed — who is also known as Nur Said Elmi — and Omar have not been speaking in recent months since DailyMail.com posted pictures of her and her new husband Tim Mynett with his hand on her rear.
‘He thought that was very demeaning that she should be walking around in public like that,’ said the source. ‘They have hardly spoken in three months.’
‘He has been very angry about the shame his daughter brought upon him and the family for having an affair while married.'
Ilhan Omar's father Nur Omar Mohamed, 67, has been in a coma in Hennepin Medical Center for the past eight days suffering from COVID-19
The source said Mohamed and his congresswoman daughter have not been speaking in recent months since DailyMail.com posted pictures of her and her new husband Tim Mynett with his hand on her rear
Mohamed is being treated at the Hennepin Medical Center in Minneapolis
Soon after DailyMail.com initially reported the rift, Omar put a picture on Instagram of herself, Mynett and her father happily smiling at the Iftar.
Omar’s spokesman Jeremy Slevin confirmed that Mohamed is in the hospital with COVID but denied that he and his daughter were on the outs. ‘They talk regularly and recently had Iftar together,’ he said, referring to the after-sunset meal that Muslims eat during Ramadan.
‘The man is seriously ill, his whole family is grieving,’ added Slevin.
Omar, who is facing a tough Democratic Party primary to hold on to her Minneapolis-based seat, married Mynett, her chief fundraiser in March.
Nur Mohamed moved to the United States with Sahra and Ilhan in 1995 after spending more than four years in a camp for Somali refugees in Kenya. Other siblings who could not get permission to come to America went to Britain.
In the congresswomen's book, This Is What America Looks Like, Ilhan alternates between saying her father was strict and that he was liberal
The family moved first to Alexandria, Virginia, before settling in Minneapolis where Mohamed worked first as a taxi driver and then for the United States Postal Service.
Ilhan's mother had died when she was just two years old.
His background in Somalia has always been clouded. Ilhan's Wikipedia page says he was a teacher, but others have claimed he was the propaganda minister for the repressive government of dictator Said Barre, and as such he should have been barred from moving to the United States.
He had seven children — Ilhan is the youngest.
In 2009 she married British subject Ahmed Elmi, who some have said was Mohamed's son and so her brother. The marriage allowed him to get an education at North Dakota State University.
In her memoir published this year, Ilhan Omar said she had a 'Britney Spears-style meltdown, shaving off her hair and eloping with Elmi, who she hardly knew.
In the book, This Is What America Looks Like, Ilhan alternates between saying her father was strict and that he was liberal.
She said she sometimes wished he had been tougher with her when she was a child, saying he and her grandfather 'were annoyingly accommodating to each person's opinion.'
But she said he got upset with her during her teenage years if her clothes showed too much skin.
'It is not looking good, he is very sick,' one friend of the family told DailyMail.com. Ilhan's father is pictured at her swearing in ceremony with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
Ilhan's elder sister Sahra (pictured) is flying in from Kenya to be at their father's side
Nur Mohamed moved to the United States with Sahra and Ilhan in 1995 after spending more than four years in a camp for Somali refugees in Kenya
'He wouldn't have been fixated on the fact that a shirt didn't cover up my chest enough but rather on the fact that he had failed to teach me that my value as a human wasn't based on the extent of my body that I had on display.
'He would have blamed himself for not giving me enough self-esteem, resources, or love,' she wrote.
But in another part of the memoir This Is What America Looks Like, she said he was stern.
'Although most other kids my age went to clubs, I never went—not because I would be tempted to drink. No, I worried about there being a shooting or a fire and getting stuck or dying inside and my father's having to live with the fact that I had been in a club.
'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.'
Omar, who is facing a tough Democratic Party primary to hold on to her Minneapolis-based seat, married Mynett, her chief fundraiser in March
'My father raised me with a strict morality, not strict rules. He never said I needed to be home by a certain time, but he would have been angry if I came home late because I was at a party with my friends.
'He never once said to me, ''You can't leave the house unless you wear a hijab.''
'A lot of the Muslim girls I went to school with would change their clothing as soon as they were out of their parents' house—the skirts got shorter as they got closer to school.
'This was a time when jeans with cutouts were popular. I told my dad I wanted a pair, and he went out and bought them for me. When I left the house, my friends, who put their cutout jeans on only when they were out of sight of their parents, were shocked. 'You're the devil's child,' one said.
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