US midterm elections 2026: Record number of hijabis elected to statewide and national offices

US midterm elections 2026: Record number of hijabis elected to statewide and national offices

Submitted by Yasmine El-Sabawi on Wed, 11/04/2026 - 16:04 There's a distinct difference when an American lawmaker is so visibly Muslim, given the rampant Islamophobia across the country Georgia State Representative Ruwa Romman speaks as part of the 'No Kings' rallies at Love Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 14 June 2025 (Lisa Lake/Getty Images via AFP) Off

Tuesday's midterm elections saw a remarkable wave of firsts that may have been unthinkable if US President Donald Trump had not spurred such backlash across the country. 

Among them were victories for four state senators-elect and one US congresswoman who all wear the hijab - a record for the country, and certainly a stunning outcome given the rabid anti-Islam rhetoric and threats that have taken hold since the Trump administration swept to power in January 2025.

These are women whose appearance has been caricatured and insulted by corporate media, Republicans, and trolls online, thus putting a direct target on their backs. 

Last week, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (Mpac) expressed concern about the escalation of far-right, anti-Muslim provocateurs in the US, because their actions often result in calls for increased law enforcement presence, and could therefore have ended up dissuading Muslim Americans from voting at all. 

But while the turnout demographics are still being assessed, several visibly Muslim, young women have now risen to elected office to take matters into their own hands. 

All of them are progressive Democrats.

In Georgia, a relatively conservative southern state that just saw its first Jewish senator re-elected and the first-ever Black woman take the governor's office, state representative Ruwa Romman won her bid for the state senate.

She was already the first hijab-wearing Muslim in the state legislature. 

Romman rose to national prominence during the 2024 presidential election, when pro-Palestine Democrats pleaded with the Democratic National Committee and presidential candidate Kamala Harris to allow a Palestinian speaker at the party's convention. That request was denied. 

Romman, whose grandfather was born in Jerusalem, was meant to be that speaker. She had already been an elected official for two years by then. 

The Biden administration's wholesale support for Israel's assault in Gaza, now called a genocide by the United Nations and Holocaust scholars, ended up costing the Democrats support among young voters, and contributed to their demise at the ballot box. 

Calls for a ceasefire in Gaza

In New York, Aber Kawas will be headed to the state senate in January.

Like Romman, she is a Palestinian immigrant to the US, and told Middle East Eye earlier this year that she sees collective action and civic engagement in her adopted city as a path towards reconciliation.

Her undocumented father was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the years after the 11 September 2001 attacks, when New York City and the country saw an aggressive crackdown on Muslims, and included FBI raids, disappearances, and mass surveillance across mosques and other institutions.

Kawas's father was held for nearly three years before he was deported to Jordan. So many of her childhood memories involve watching her distraught mother speak to her father through a pane of glass - in what she described as a "mixed-use" detention centre that also housed prisoners accused of criminal conduct, not just civil violations.

ICE's violent arrests in broad daylight and on public streets have shocked much of the country, leading to the Democratic "bluenami" in Tuesday's results. 

In Illinois, 27-year-old state representative Nabeela Syed faced stiffer competition from her Republican opponent, but won comfortably with 57 percent of the vote.  

Aber Kawas becomes first Palestinian American elected to New York State Legislature Read More »

The Indian American was first appointed to the legislature to fill a vacant seat in 2022, and has made affordability and equity in healthcare a core component of her agenda.

She was recently endorsed by The Daily Herald, a 150-year-old newspaper that covers the greater Chicago area, as well as the storied Chicago Tribune.

Like Romman and Kawas, she has criticised Israel. One day after the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, she co-signed a letter along with several other Illinois lawmakers demanding that Washington enact a ceasefire.

Critics called the letter a defence of Hamas. 

“We will not be able to achieve peace when millions of Palestinians are denied basic human rights," the letter said. "We urge the United States and the international community to work toward long-term solutions that end the inequality that is at the root cause of the violence."

In Connecticut, state representative Maryam Khan, who has been in office since 2022, is moving on to the state senate in January after defeating her Republican opponent by a landslide. In her August primary, she unseated a Democratic incumbent who had served for nearly a decade. 

Khan, who was born in Pakistan, served as House Chair of the Select Committee on Special Education, as well as the judiciary and education committees, while in the state legislature.

State Senate Democratic Majority Leader Bob Duff welcomed Khan to the chamber on X, where he called her "a former special education teacher and a fighter for our kids". 

Earlier this year, Khan came under fire from Republicans for putting a Pakistani flag on her desk, after Pakistan helped broker the first post-war US-Iran talks towards a ceasefire.

“I displayed the Pakistani flag as a reflection of my heritage and personal pride. Any suggestion that it represents something improper or disloyal is simply inaccurate,” Khan told The Connecticut Mirror.

“Pakistan is a longstanding diplomatic partner of the United States, and acknowledging one’s background does not diminish commitment to this country or to serving the people of Connecticut.”

'Islamophobia was not a winning strategy'

Perhaps no one is as familiar with the weight of Republican backlash as Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who was re-elected to the US Congress for the fifth time on Tuesday. 

In 2018, she became one of just four Muslims to ever serve in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC, and the only one to wear a hijab.

Since then, she has been a frequent target for Trump.

Just two weeks ago, federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations carried out a pre-dawn raid on Omar's home and confiscated her cell phone, laptop, and other devices.

Born in Somalia, she arrived in the US in 1995 as a child refugee, and obtained US citizenship at 17 after her now-deceased father was naturalised.

US midterm elections 2026: Abdul El-Sayed becomes first Muslim elected to Senate Read More »

The Department of Justice is reportedly looking into whether she was actually 18 at the time, meaning she would have had to apply for citizenship separately from her parents. 

Trump has repeatedly called for an investigation into whether she is a lawful citizen, and even claimed she married her own brother for immigration purposes. Omar has denied these allegations, but both the president and Vice President JD Vance have insisted for the past year that she should be investigated, and Trump has led chants of "send her back" at his rallies. 

The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed US officials, has reported that the administration is building a case to strip Omar of her citizenship and deport her. 

According to The Washington Post, nearly 100 Republican members of Congress have posted about Islam or Muslims on social media since the start of 2025, almost all of it negative, and several have called for Muslims to be deported.

In April, the Center for the Study of Organized Hate found that between February 2025 and March 2026, Republicans built "a coordinated anti-Muslim campaign involving 1,111 social media posts, eight bills, and a 62-member congressional caucus", and that many of the posts met all five criteria for speech likely to inspire violence.

Haris Tarin, vice president for policy and programming at Mpac, told MEE on Wednesday that the anti-Muslim climate that has been built up ultimately backfired. 

"Ilhan Omar won with higher margins than her previous elections, and you had multiple other Muslim women who were also elected who were visibly Muslim, so that showed that it did not work," he said.

"Islamophobia was not a winning strategy in this election cycle."

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