ILHAN OMAR AND THE POLITICS OF 'RADICAL LOVE': The Minnesota Congresswoman wants to redefine U.S. foreign policy as we know it.

• Author: Nichols, John

FOREIGN POLICY IS NOT AN ABSTRACTION FOR ILHAN OMAR. IT IS HER LIFE.

While Republican members of Congress propose to wall off the United States and many Democrats are shy about engaging with global issues, the Democratic Representative from Minnesota maintains a passionate sense of connection with the rest of the world.

She is an immigrant, and a refugee. She is a Somali American woman who proudly identifies as an inter-sectional feminist. Her criticisms of Israel's treatment of Palestinians have drawn a great deal of attention, including bipartisan rebukes. Yet little note has been made of the fact that this Muslim Congresswoman has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of human rights abuses in a number of predominantly Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Even less noticed has been her focus on poverty and injustice in Central America, and her ardent advocacy on behalf of women's rights and LGBTQ rights in places like Brunei.

One year into her first term, Omar has adopted a global brief that has drawn vile attacks from the President of the United States and admonishment from Congressional Republicans, as well as a number of Democrats. She has faced immense pressure to fit into the neat categories where political and media elites consign new members of Congress, yet Omar refuses to conform. She is well aware that she is new to Capitol Hill, but Omar is not prepared to wait her turn.

Rather, she is stepping up to express a deep, sometimes aching, often controversial concern for human rights, human development, climate justice, diplomacy, and peacemaking projects that might usher in an age of peace and shared prosperity. Her vision is of a "radical love" that extends beyond borders, and she maintains an even more radical faith in the willingness of Americans to think globally.

"I know we have it in us, right? We have always been aspirational," the Congresswoman tells me during one of several conversations we had in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., this year. She espouses an eyes-wide-open internationalism that recognizes the threat posed by militarism and imperialism, and calls on the United States to embrace a whole new approach to foreign relations.

"It's a very American thing, to always want to excel," Omar says. "We take pride in so many ways about our American being that I think sometimes it sort of fogs our view of the actual life that we're leading here and what the world's view is of us. I don't really have that fog, and so I'm able to clearly express myself?'

Omar's fierce determination to address "the human struggles" and "human aspirations in regard to our foreign policy," as she puts it, has made her a disruptive force in foreign policy debates since she took office in January 2017. She has been cheered on by peace groups like CODEPINK and human rights campaigners such as Hagai El-Ad, the executive director of B'Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), who says Omar's "courageous voice redefines the political space for justice."

Even those who do not always agree with Omar recognize the Congresswoman as a uniquely engaged commentator on imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, racism, and the danger of viewing global debates only within a domestic framework--issues that rarely get addressed in Congress. Her colleague in "The Squad" of new House members, New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, describes her as "one of the most effective voices right now at cutting through the authoritarian foreign policy tendencies of this administration."

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whom Omar recently endorsed for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, hailed the Minnesotan as "a leader with strength and courage." Sanders has decried Republican attacks on Omar's attempts to open up foreign policy discourse regarding Israel-Palestine and other hot spots as "a way of stifling that debate."

Support for Omar has also come from those who want that debate. When Omar was accused of anti-Semitism earlier this year for a controversial tweet she made criticizing lobbying on behalf of Israel, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the pro-Israel, pro-peace group J Street, came to her defense: "What I see is Republicans who, for partisan purposes, are trying to drive a wedge in the Democratic Party."

But these controversies obscure a larger role that Omar is carving out for herself. She is deeply engaged with her urban district, which elected her with almost 80 percent of the vote in 2018, and she has taken the lead on a host of domestic issues. This year, for instance, she has introduced major legislation with Sanders to address inequality by eliminating all student debt and to address hunger by...