EXCLUSIVE: Ilhan Omar reveals she had a 'Britney Spears-style meltdown' after her first husband divorced her, shaving her head and then eloping with a man she 'hardly knew' - but skips saying if he's her brother

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar claims she had a 'Britney Spears-style meltdown' after her first husband divorced her, shaving her head and eloping with a man she hardly knew, according to her new autobiography. 

But the Minnesota congresswoman, 37, largely skips past details of whether the man who became her second husband is her brother. 

And she completely ignores her latest marriage to campaign finance manager Tim Mynett, never mentioning him — not even in the acknowledgements.

Omar's autobiography, This Is What America Looks Like, was released this week, more than a year after she was first seen holding hands with Mynett in a California restaurant and two and a half months after she married him in Washington, DC.

It also comes in the same week that her hometown of Minneapolis has been engulfed in protests following the death of black man George Floyd while he was being arrested.

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FIRST HUSBAND: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar claims she had a 'Britney Spears-style meltdown' after her first husband Ahmed Hirsi (pictured together) divorced her, shaving her head and eloping with a man she hardly knew, according to her new autobiography

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SECOND HUSBAND: But the Minnesota congresswoman, 37, largely skips past details of whether Ahmed Elmi (pictured) who became her second husband is her brother

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Omar wrote: 'Yes, like the beleaguered pop star, who shaved her head in 2007 (pictured), I took clippers to my own head. Too many headaches, too little sleep — I had to flee myself, my relationships, my hair'

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THIRD HUSBAND: And she completely ignores her latest marriage to campaign finance manager Tim Mynett, never mentioning him — not even in the acknowledgements. Omar's autobiography, This Is What America Looks Like, was released this week, more than a year after she was first seen holding hands with Mynett in a California restaurant and two and a half months after she married him in Washington, DC

Ilhan Omar takes affair with her employee public

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Omar, 37, goes into great personal details about her family's flight from war-torn Somalia to a refugee camp in Kenya, her move to the United States and her rise through local Minnesota politics to her 2018 election to the House of Representatives. 

She even details miscarrying twins during her first marriage to Ahmed Hirsi.

Of her marriage to her alleged brother, Ahmed Elmi, who she does not name, she writes: 'I had a Britney Spears-style meltdown, I not only eloped with a man — whom I spent so little time with that I wouldn't even make him a footnote in my story if it weren't for the fact that this event turned into the main headline later on — but I shaved my head.

'Yes, like the beleaguered pop star, who shaved her head in 2007, I took clippers to my own head. Too many headaches, too little sleep — I had to flee myself, my relationships, my hair.

'The difference between Britney and me is that I wore a hijab, so nobody knew what I had done — except my children who were very surprised. ''Mommy looks like me,'' Adnan (her young son) declared. And he was right, I did look like a little boy.'

She said that like Spears, who eloped with childhood friend Jason Alexander in 2004 only to have the marriage annulled after two days, 'my impulsive second marriage ended in divorce.'

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Of her marriage to her alleged brother, Ahmed Elmi (right), who she does not name, she writes: 'I had a Britney Spears-style meltdown, I not only eloped with a man — whom I spent so little time with that I wouldn't even make him a footnote in my story if it weren't for the fact that this event turned into the main headline later on — but I shaved my head'

She only returns to the marriage when she discusses her election to the Minnesota House in 2016.

She said an anonymous post on a Somali website 'established two simple facts, which were true, but that unleashed a torrent of speculation and conspiracies that follow me to this day.

'They were that I had applied for a marriage license in 2002 and then again, in 2009, when I eloped.

'These facts — which are true — were couched in speculation that I had married a relative illegally, to get him entry into the United States — which isn't true.'

She says she has never been able to find out who posted the allegation. 'The blog post appeared on Somali Spot, an online Somali discussion forum,' she wrote.

'If someone had accurate information or true concerns that I had committed an immigration crime, they would have gone to the Star Tribune with it,' she said mentioning Minneapolis's main newspaper.

She said the news then exploded around the country and some of her harshest critics were fellow Somalis.

'Instead of celebrating the first black Muslim woman elected to a state legislature in the United States, some people in my own community continued to work against it,' Omar writes.

'They refused to accept me because I wouldn't kiss the ring,' she adds.

'The source of the information about my brief past relationship was the work of people trying to preserve their power structure.

'It didn't work. Despite all their efforts, I kept rising. Ironically, I don't know if I would have the widespread support I do today if I hadn't been messed with as much as I have.

'Influence and enemies go hand in hand.'

Omar says she now regrets issuing a bland statement about the speculation that Elmi is her brother. 'I wish I hadn't even given the basics of the how and why. Not only did the speculation on my romantic past play into a xenophobic, anti-immigrant mindset, but it wasn't effective in putting an end to the intrigue.

'In a world of conspiracy theories and propaganda, which flourished with the rise of Donald Trump, no answer was ever going to be good enough.'

Omar does talk about her first marriage to Ahmed Hirsi, who she wed in an Islamic ceremony when she was a teen. 

They first met at a soccer game when she was 16 and he was visiting Minneapolis from his home in Houston. 

A fight broke out at the game and Omar found her car was penned in, so Hirsi offered to give her a lift and they went to the Mall of America.

But her view of marriage is far from conventional. 'The idea of two people confining themselves in a legal and social construct because they entered into the metaphysical state of love always struck me as bizarre,' she writes.

'The institution of marriage had everything to do with respectability and acceptance and not with a couple's devotion.

'I looked upon it as a performance that added nothing to what Ahmed and I were to each other.'

Hirsi divorced her in 2008. 'Because we had only been married Islamically (we applied for a marriage license, but busy with school work, and family, we never got round to going to City Hall to make it official), all Ahmed had to do to end our marriage was declare it to be so,' Omar writes.

'There was nothing formal. We didn't want to be together anymore, and that was that.

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Omar first married Hirsi in an Islamic ceremony in 2002 when she was 19. Six years later, after two children, the couple said they had 'reached an impasse in our life together,' and divorced. She even details miscarrying twins during her first marriage to Hirsi. Pictured: A young Omar and Hirsi with their first child

'It was such a subdued split, even our families didn't know Ahmed had moved out. I wasn't hiding our divorce; I just didn't care enough to share it.'

It was then, she said, that she eloped and went to North Dakota State University in Fargo. She does not mention that Elmi also attended the university at the same time. 

She divorced Elmi in 2017 and remarried Hirsi the following year only to divorce again last fall.

Omar reveals some unexpected details — such as that she learned English by watching the 1990s lifeguard show Baywatch and that the person she would most like to have met is British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who died in 2013.

'It surprises people that the leader of Britain's Conservative Party is my greatest shero. While her politics aren't mine, she was also a first — the first female prime minister of Britain. Thatcher was a self-starter in the grandest of ways.'