HamTramck, MI, Becomes First U.S. City with Majority Muslim Council

 

By Robert Spencer
PJMedia.com

The nation’s first, but certainly not last, majority-Muslim city council has just been elected in Hamtramck, Michigan, a historically Polish city. But before anyone could break out the sparkling grape juice and toast our new diversity, Ibrahim Algahim — a Muslim activist in Hamtramck – crowed at a victory party:

Today we show the Polish, and everybody else.

Multicultural euphoria, meet Islamic supremacist reality. Algahim, at least, was not ready to link arms and sing “Kumbaya,” as the diverse peoples of Hamtramck marched towards multicultural harmony. Randy Wimbley of Fox 2 Detroit reported:

[H]istory [was made] in Hamtramck as voters elected the first majority Muslim city council in the country.

But rather than ease racial tensions, the comments from a Muslim organizer threaten to divide. [Algahim’s comment] may create or widen the rift between the growing Muslim and shrinking Polish community in Hamtramck.

 

One of those with rising tensions was one of the defeated — and Polish — city council candidates, Cathie Lisinki-Gordon:

I’m shocked that he said that. I’m a very good friend of his. I cannot believe that he would ever profile any select group. Especially when his community has felt ostracized and profiled for many years.

So ostracized and profiled … that they were able to gain a majority on the city council.

Lisinski-Gordon’s shock at her good friend Algahim’s words apparently stems from her assumption that Muslims are victims of bigotry and “Islamophobia,” and should thus know better than to take a hostile stance toward another group. Muslims, as the primary victims in today’s victimhood-obsessed culture, should be most energetic in carrying the multiculturalist torch and welcoming diversity, rather than encouraging tribalism and division.

Even though Algahim spoiled the party, no one was ready to declare Hamtramck’s exemplary exercise in diversity a failure. Bill Meyer, a supporter of Algahim, defended him:

What Algahim was saying at the time was he was meaning that the Yemeni and Bangladeshi communities worked together to go forward with a successful election. … The ultimate goal is to work together. We’ve got a great possibility of showing the world how great people can work together, ethnic groups can work together, to solve problems.

Of course. What better way to say “our communities worked together” than “today we show the Polish”?

Leaving aside the salient fact that Islam is a belief system held by people of all ethnicities and not an ethnic group, the key problem with Meyer’s hope is that Ibrahim Algahim’s victory statement strongly suggested that he, and possibly the Muslim councilmen, are not quite as multicultural as Meyer, Lisinski-Gordon, and others assume them to be.

But people like Lisinski-Gordon and Meyer wouldn’t dream of entertaining that possibility. That would place them in the camp of “racists” and “Islamophobes.” They’d rather go to Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State, than go there.

Will we see any supremacist and pro-Sharia initiatives from this city council? Yes, if they decide to set out on a course designed to “show the Polish and everybody else.” Everywhere in the world that Muslims have ever held political power, non-Muslims have suffered a diminution of their rights. Generally it begins with demands that they curtail behavior that violates Islamic law or offends Muslim sensibilities, and it develops into an increasingly precarious day-to-day existence.

Is that likely to happen in Hamtramck? No, at least not anytime soon. But Algahim’s triumphant and triumphalist words at his election party, as his comrades defiantly made the V for Victory sign, serve as a warning: the future is much more likely to be studded with increasing aggressiveness and demands from the local Muslim community in Hamtramck rather than with (all-beef) weenie roasts and sing-alongs. The local multiculturalists are racing toward this dystopian future while remaining blissfully unaware that Islamic supremacism even exists. They are still confident that rainbows, moonbeams, and unicorns lie just ahead.

The gloriously multicultural Muslim city council of Hamtramck, Michigan, introduces a scenario that is unlikely to end well. And it’s just a foretaste of what is going to be happening all over the nation before too long.