Feature: The True Story of Mo Farah, the Boy Who Ran to Be Free by Dr. Seema Yasmin

We want to tell you about a book and also about this week, because they are connected, even if the people in this story do not share one story.

Mo Farah ran because he had to. Then he ran because he could. Those are two very different kinds of running, and both are true.

Mo Farah, the Boy Who Ran to Be Free by Dr. Seema Yasmin is a children’s chapter book about a boy who left Somaliland, rebuilt his life in London, and became one of the most decorated track athletes in history. It’s a good book. It’s also part of a larger story involving Mo, and Mo would be the first to tell you that.

In 2022, Mo publicly revealed that he was born Hussein Abdi Kahin. His father was killed in the Somali Civil War when he was four years old. At nine, he was trafficked to the UK under a false identity and forced to work as a domestic servant. A PE teacher eventually noticed, intervened, and got him out. The version of his story that existed before that documentary, including the one in this book, is the version he was able to tell while he was still protecting himself. The fuller version is the one that makes his medals mean something different.

I think about that a lot right now, because two communities with deep Ohio roots just had a very bad few months, and I want to be careful not to conflate their stories into one, because they are not the same.

Columbus is home to an estimated 45,000 to 65,000 Somali Americans, one of the largest Somali communities in the country, many of whom arrived seeking asylum from the same civil war that shaped Mo Farah’s childhood, and many of whom are now citizens. In December, Columbus’s Somali community was named directly in political rhetoric ahead of Operation Buckeye, a week-long ICE enforcement surge that detained more than 280 people across the city’s immigrant communities, the majority of them Latino, alongside Somali, Afghan, and other residents, including people with valid work permits and at least two U.S. citizens from Puerto Rico. Most Somali Americans in Columbus were not at direct legal risk from the operation itself. But the rhetoric and the raids together did real damage. Naturalized citizens started carrying their passports. Somali-owned businesses lost customers who were afraid to leave their homes. Mosques and shopping centers that anchor the community went quiet for weeks. That fear is its own kind of harm, even without mass detentions.

At the end of June, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to allow the Trump administration to strip Temporary Protected Status from roughly 350,000 Haitians. For Springfield, Ohio, and surrounding areas, that means 10,000 people who were legally employed and legally present on Wednesday woke up Thursday in a completely different legal reality. Governor DeWine said it plainly: it is now illegal to employ them. These are the same people Trump and Vance targeted during the 2024 campaign with a lie about pets. Unlike most Somali Americans in Columbus, this is direct and immediate legal jeopardy, not fear of enforcement but the actual loss of legal status itself.

Different countries. Different legal mechanisms. Different histories. What connects them is the same underlying fact: belonging in this country, and the fear or reality of losing it, can be shaped overnight by people who have never met the person it happens to.

Mo Farah’s story survived because one adult decided he belonged and put themselves between him and a system that would have discarded him. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

The book is worth reading. The whole story is worth knowing. And what’s happening in Ohio right now, to immigrant communities across Columbus and to Haitians in Springfield and our neighbors across the US, for different reasons and through different mechanisms, is worth paying attention to.

Mo Farah, the Boy Who Ran to Be Free (Muslim Mavericks)

by Seema Yasmin, Noha Habaieb
Published by: Salaam Reads, Salaam Reads / Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers
on September 29, 2026
Genres: Middle Grade, Non-Fiction
Bookshop
Goodreads

From the prolific Pulitzer Prize–nominated Muslim reporter Dr. Seema Yasmin comes the second book in the exciting nonfiction Muslim Mavericks chapter book series, about Olympic gold medalist Mo Farah.

From Somaliland to the Olympic arena, there’s no distance Mo can’t go!

At the age of eight, Mo Farah moved across the world from Somaliland to London. It was difficult starting over in a new country, especially since he spoke very little English. But fortunately for Mo, running was a language everyone understood.

Once he started, he never stopped—smashing records and winning championships. Now, with four Olympic gold medals and six World titles, he is considered one of the most successful male track distance runners ever!