Background
Her father is a retired anatomic pathologist, her mother an ophthalmologist.
Her father is a retired anatomic pathologist, her mother an ophthalmologist.
She grew up in Rotterdam and attended the Gymnasium Erasmianum.
Under the influence of Theo van Gogh, she gave up a career in management and became a columnist, first for van Gogh"s website and, after he was assassinated, as his successor as a regular columnist of Metro. Umar is the child of Kurdish Yezidi parents who came to the Netherlands in 1970. After studying management and working for a while as a manager, she began writing, under the influence of Theo van Gogh, and wrote columns for his website (van Gogh was her "friend and mentor"), and soon began writing for a number of other Dutch newspapers.
In 2005 she took over van Gogh"s column in Metro.
Umar is also the author of four books, and writes a weekly column for the Dutch women"s weekly magazine Libelle (in addition to doing interviews and panel discussions for the magazine) and for the Dutch feminist magazine Opzij. Others have criticized her for what they deem an all-too easy criticism of Dutch women, who Umar claimed were lazy and would rather rely on child support than get a job in a guest column in de Volkskrant, which was the third-most popular opinion piece in the Netherlands that year.