US midterms: Record number of hijab-wearing women elected to state and national office

A record number of hijab-wearing Muslim women won office in Tuesday's midterm elections, with four winning state senate seats and one re-elected to the US Congress. All are progressive Democrats.

In Georgia, state representative Ruwa Romman, the first hijab-wearing Muslim in the state legislature, won a state senate seat. Romman, whose grandfather was born in Jerusalem, gained national prominence in 2024 when pro-Palestinian Democrats pressed the Democratic National Committee and Kamala Harris to let a Palestinian speaker address the party convention. The request was denied; Romman was meant to be that speaker.

In New York, Aber Kawas, a Palestinian immigrant, will join the state senate in January. Her undocumented father was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the crackdown on Muslims after the 11 September 2001 attacks, and held nearly three years before deportation to Jordan. She has recalled watching her mother speak to him through a pane of glass at what she called a "mixed-use" detention centre.

In Illinois, 27-year-old state representative Nabeela Syed, an Indian American first appointed in 2022, won with 57 percent of the vote after campaigning on healthcare affordability and equity. A day after the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks, she co-signed a letter with other Illinois lawmakers demanding a ceasefire, which critics called a defence of Hamas. "We will not be able to achieve peace when millions of Palestinians are denied basic human rights," the letter said.

In Connecticut, state representative Maryam Khan won her state senate race by a landslide after ousting a Democratic incumbent of nearly a decade in the August primary. Khan, born in Pakistan and a former chair of the House Select Committee on Special Education, drew Republican criticism this year for displaying a Pakistani flag on her desk after Pakistan helped broker the first post-war US-Iran ceasefire talks. "I displayed the Pakistani flag as a reflection of my heritage and personal pride," she told the Connecticut Mirror. "Any suggestion that it represents something improper or disloyal is simply inaccurate."

In Minnesota, Ilhan Omar won a fifth term in Congress. In 2018 she became one of only four Muslims to serve in the House, and the only one to wear a hijab. Two weeks before the vote, Homeland Security Investigations agents raided her home before dawn and confiscated her phone, laptop and other devices. Omar, born in Somalia, arrived in the US in 1995 as a child refugee and became a citizen at 17 after her father was naturalised; the Justice Department is reportedly examining whether she was in fact 18, meaning she would have had to apply separately. President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned her citizenship and claimed she married her brother for immigration purposes, an allegation she denies, and has led chants of "send her back". The Wall Street Journal has reported the administration is building a case to denaturalise and deport her, citing unnamed officials.

The Washington Post has counted nearly 100 Republican members of Congress posting about Islam or Muslims since the start of 2025, almost all of it negative, with several calling for Muslims to be deported. 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", with many posts meeting all five criteria for speech likely to inspire violence. Last week, the Muslim Public Affairs Council warned that far-right, anti-Muslim provocateurs risked discouraging Muslim Americans from voting.

Haris Tarin, the council's vice president for policy and programming, told Middle East Eye on Wednesday that the strategy had 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."