From The Guardian (UK)
Swedes will this week be treated to a new sight: a Swedish MP giving a speech in a hijab.
Leila Ali Elmi, who arrived in the country aged two after her family fled civil war in Somalia, will make her parliamentary debut after winning a surprise victory in this autumn’s polls, promising a voice for people targeted by the groundswell of hostility to immigration.
“My getting elected has caused a lot of reactions from the racists,” she says in the Green party offices in Stockholm. “They weren’t really ready for it, but here I am.”
Ali Elmi, 30, represents the other side of an election that was dominated by the issue of immigration and had an increase in the far-right vote. She fought on the issues closest to residents of Angered, the disadvantaged, immigrant suburb that has been her home for the past 28 years – unemployment, overcrowding, exclusion and segregation.
“She did not play the immigrant card. It was not: ‘We Muslims must stick together.’ Instead it was schools, segregation, jobs – all the issues that are important to people who live in the suburbs. And because she comes from there, Ali Elmi also embodies what she is talking about. That is unusual.”
Ali Elmi worked as an interpreter, helping newly arrived immigrants and refugees to navigate the administrative process. Before her election to parliament, she was a city councillor for the Greens, campaigning on the party’s broad agenda of social and sexual equality, feminism and climate change.
