In one of those faith-based marriages we have heard so much about from Ilhan Omar, Omar’s ex — Ahmed “Southside” Hirsi — remarried in Mogadishu 37 days after the dissolution of his marriage to Omar was finalized. It’s international news, first reported by Martin Gould here in the Daily Mail yesterday. The New York Post followed up on the Daily Mail story here. The Daily Mail has even acquired video of the ceremony, from which both Hirsi and his bride were absent.
The Daily Mail story repeats the received version of Omar’s tangled marital history, omitting the fact that Omar’s first “legal” marriage — to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi — was to her brother. I’m going to have to work on getting Gould out to Minneapolis to immerse him in the rest of the story.
Meeting with two Somali sources at a diner in the uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis on November 12, a week after his divorce from Omar had been finalized, we spotted Hirsi through the window at our booth. He was entering the India Palace restaurant next door. One of the sources closed my notebook and exclaimed: “There’s Southside!”
Hirsi looked happy as a lark. We had no idea he was moving on in such a big way.
Meeting with another Somali source this past Friday, I was told about Hirsi’s remarriage and directed to a photo of the happy couple honeymooning in Mecca that had been posted on Instagram. I was advised that Hirsi’s new wife, unlike Omar, is a member of the same Somali clan as Hirsi.
The Daily Mail notes that Omar has congratulated the happy couple, sharing a photo of the two on her Instagram story: “Mash Allah. Hambalyo boowe. Congratulations, may Allah accept your umrah and bless your union.” Readers who get their news from the Star Tribune will be surprised to learn about the story one of these days.
Scott Johnson
Scott W. Johnson is a Minneapolis attorney who writes for Power Line and serves on the board of Alpha News.
