According to The Hill, Bushra Amiwala “is part of a new generation stepping into politics.” In 2019, she was elected to the Skokie Board of Education in Illinois, making this Pakistani-American 22-year-old, the youngest Muslim elected official in the country.
Though she says she didn’t grow up with politics in mind, an internship on Republican Sen. Mark Kirk’s campaign pushed her to challenge 16-year incumbent Larry Suffredin in the Democratic primary for the Cook County Board of Commissioners in Illinois. Though she lost that race, her competitor encouraged her to run for her current position on the Skokie Board of Education.
“As women we tend to be reduced to our identities, specifically our clothing and our appearances, and as a Muslim woman who wears the hijab being reduced to my identity meant the inability for people to see beyond my religion,” comments Amiwala. “So people always called me the Muslim teenager running for office to the point where people didn’t even know my name.”
One person who definitely knows her name now is political idol Congresswoman Ilhan Omar who has started following her on twitter which Amiwala responded with: “Excuse me while I fangirl.”
