Exactly two years ago, then still a candidate, Donald Trump was in Detroit to address an invited gathering. Among the audience were also 12 women who had secured the tickets to the event and as Trump started speaking, every two minutes one of the women stood up and heckled him about his stance on sexual harassment at the work place.
Amidst boos from Trump supporters, one by one, all of them were swiftly pulled out of the room by security personnel. One of those booted out from the event was Rashida Tlaib, an attorney of Palestinian origin, who had also served on the state legislature for five years.
On Wednesday, exactly two years after that event, Tlaib created history by securing the Democratic Party’s nomination and will be the first Muslim woman in US Congress.
She secured the nomination from Michigan’s 13th Congressional district after beating five other candidates. No Republican candidate is running for the post in November mid-term elections, so she will win unopposed.
She will also be the first Arab-American Muslim to serve in Congress. What’s more, as local journalist Niraj Warikoo of the Detroit Free Press points out, she won in a district that’s majority-black and about one-third white, and does not have many Arabs or Muslims compared to nearby districts in Dearborn and Hamtramck.
Minutes after the results, Palestinian flags were waved in Detroit and reports of celebrations started coming in from her ancestral village in West Bank. She was soon trending on Twitter and grabbing headlines on national networks.
“I will uplift you in so many ways,” she told her supporters, adding, “Not only through service, but fighting back against every single oppressive, racist structure that needs to be dismantled, because you deserve better than what we have today in our country.”
She has called Trump “a bully” and challenged him saying: “I don’t know if he’s ready for me.”
Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and his comments on women have spurred a record number of women, including Muslim women, to run for high offices.
“Trump being the president of the United States was a bad signal for many women across the country, not just Muslim women but women from all backgrounds and it was a call to say, we have to act,” says Ms Tlaib, who is the eldest of her 14 siblings.
There are now 11 female nominees for governor and at least 185 for the House of Representatives race this November. Bangladeshi-American Nina Ahmad, Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi were some of the Muslim women who ran for office this year, made a mark, but lost.
"I am thrilled with Rashida Tlaib's resounding victory. That she won being a Muslim woman, child of immigrants, is a repudiation of religious bigotry, the un-American values being peddled by #45 (referring to Trump) and the current administration," Ahmad told Bangla Tribune.
She had run for the Lieutenant Governor's post in Pennsylvania on a platform "ready to take on Donald Trump". She is a first-generation Bangladeshi immigrant who served as Philadelphia’s Deputy Mayor until late last year and also worked for President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
There are many who believe that Tlaib’s victory will give a big boost to younger generation of Muslims, particularly women, that they can make a change.