from
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-michigan-muslim-council-lgbtq-pride-flags-banned

man standing in front of a pride flag
Darren Shelton, executive director of Planet Ant Theatre, came to work
on his day off so that he could hang this LGBTQ+ flag in Hamtramck,
Michigan, on Tuesday. Photograph: Robin Buckson/AP
Michigan

‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags
Many liberals celebrated when Hamtramck, Michigan, elected a
Muslim-majority council in 2015 but a vote to exclude LGBTQ+ flags from
city property has soured relations

Tom Perkins in Hamtramck, Michigan
Sat 17 Jun 2023 06.00 EDT

In 2015, many liberal residents in Hamtramck, Michigan, celebrated as
their city attracted international attention for becoming the first in
the United States to elect a Muslim-majority city council.

They viewed the power shift and diversity as a symbolic but meaningful
rebuke of the Islamophobic rhetoric that was a central theme of then
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.

Ramadan in Hamtramck, Michigan<br>HAMTRAMCK, MICHIGAN, USA - MAY 22:
Muad Aimogari a teacher and US citizen from Hamtramck, Michigan talks
about Ramadan, fasting and his sister who is still in Yemen on Tuesday,
May 22, 2018. (Photo by Bryan Mitchell)
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This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully
Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning
Pride flags from being flown on city property that had – like many
others being flown around the country – been intended to celebrate the
LGBTQ+ community.

Muslim residents packing city hall erupted in cheers after the council’s
unanimous vote, and on Hamtramck’s social media pages, the taunting has
been relentless: “Fagless City”, read one post, emphasized with emojis
of a bicep flexing.

In a tense monologue before the vote, Councilmember Mohammed Hassan
shouted his justification at LGBTQ+ supporters: “I’m working for the
people, what the majority of the people like.”

While Hamtramck is still viewed as a bastion of multiculturalism, the
difficulties of local governance and living among neighbors with
different cultural values quickly set in following the 2015 election.
Some leaders and residents are now bitter political enemies engaged in a
series of often vicious battles over the city’s direction, and the Pride
flag controversy represents a crescendo in tension.

“There’s a sense of betrayal,” said the former Hamtramck mayor Karen
Majewski, who is Polish American. “We supported you when you were
threatened, and now our rights are threatened, and you’re the one doing
the threatening.”

For about a century, Polish and Ukrainian Catholics dominated politics
in Hamtramck, a city of 28,000 surrounded by Detroit. By 2013, largely
Muslim Bangladeshi and Yemeni immigrants supplanted the white eastern
Europeans, though the city remains home to significant populations of
those groups, as well as African Americans, whites and Bosnian and
Albanian Americans. According to the 2020 census some 30% to 38% of
Hamtramck’s residents are of Yemeni descent, and 24% are of Asian
descent, largely Bangladeshi.

After several years of diversity on the council, some see irony in an
all-male, Muslim elected government that does not reflect the city’s makeup.

The resolution, which also prohibits the display of flags with ethnic,
racist and political views, comes at a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under
assault worldwide, and other US cities have passed similar bans, with
the vast majority driven by often white politically conservative Americans.

People who could not get into the Hamtramck city council chambers try to
listen via YouTube or on the monitor in the hallway during the city
council meeting at City Hall in Hamtramck on Tuesday.

While the situation in Hamtramck largely evolved on its own local
dynamics, some outside rightwing agitators connected to national
Republican groups have been pushing for the ban on Hamtramck’s social
media pages and voiced support for it at Tuesday’s meeting. They are
from nearby Dearborn where they were part of an effort last year to ban
books with LGBTQ+ themes.

Their talking points mirror those made elsewhere: some Hamtramck Muslims
say they simply want to protect children, and gay people should “keep it
in their home”.

But that sentiment is “an erasure of the queer community and an attempt
to shove queer people back in the closet”, said Gracie Cadieux, a queer
Hamtramck resident who is part of the Anti-Transphobic Action group.

Mayor Amer Ghalib, 43, who was elected in 2021 with 67% of the vote to
become the nation’s first Yemeni American mayor, told the Guardian on
Thursday he tries to govern fairly for everyone, but said LGBTQ+
supporters had stoked tension by “forcing their agendas on others”.

“There is an overreaction to the situation, and some people are not
willing to accept the fact that they lost,” he said, referring to
Majewski and recent elections that resulted in full control of the
council by Muslim politicians.

Though the city’s Muslims are not a monolith and some privately told the
Guardian they were “frustrated” with council, the only leader to
publicly question it was the former city council member Amanda
Jaczkowski, a Polish American who converted to Islam.

In a statement, she raised concerns about the move’s legality: “There
are far too many questions to pass this today with any semblance of
responsibility.”

On one level, the discord that has flared between Muslim and non-Muslim
populations in recent years has its root in a culture clash that is
unique to a partly liberal small US city now under conservative Muslim
leadership, residents say. Last year, the council approved an ordinance
allowing backyard animal sacrifices, shocking some non-Muslim residents
even though animal sacrifice is protected under the first amendment in
the US as a form of religious expression.

Protesters hold signs during demonstration against President-elect Trump
and in support of Muslim residents in Hamtramck, Michigan on 14 November
2016.

When Michigan legalized marijuana, it gave municipalities a late 2020
deadline to enact a prohibition of dispensaries. Hamtramck council
missed the deadline and a dispensary opened, drawing outrage from
conservative Muslims who demanded city leadership shut it down. That
ignited counterprotests from many liberal residents, and the council
only relented when it became clear it had no legal recourse.

At other times, the issues are not unique to Hamtramck. In the realm of
local politics, personal fights among neighbors, warring factions and
dirty politics are a common part of the democratic process across the US.

“I don’t know that we’re really all that different from other cities in
most ways,” Majewski said.

However, race and religion add more fraught layers to Hamtramck’s
issues. Islamophobia exists here, and some Muslims say they saw bigotry
in local voter fraud investigations, and in LGBTQ+ supporters not
respecting their religion.

But Majewski said the majority is now disrespecting the minority. She
noted that a white, Christian-majority city council in 2005 created an
ordinance to allow the Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast from the
city’s mosques five times daily. It did so over objections of white city
residents, and Majewski said she didn’t see the same reciprocity with
roles reversed.

Muslim men pray at the Baitul Mukarram Mosque in 2018.

Ghalib disagreed, and labeled the prayer broadcast a “first amendment
issue” while noting no one was asking for city hall to broadcast the calls.

Moreover, the white majority council was not always hospitable to Muslim
residents who have previously faced overt racism. And with a
majority-Muslim council in place, more Muslims had been appointed to
boards and commissions, and hired in city hall. So had some LGBTQ+
residents, Ghalib added.

Despite the political clashes, he thinks there is hope for Hamtramck to
live up to its multicultural ideals.

“We can get along and people are not violent here,” he said.

Cadieux agreed peaceful coexistence was possible.

“We aren’t in the business of excluding people from our society and I’m
not going to exclude socially conservative Muslims – they have a place
at the table just like everyone else,” she said. “However, they cannot,
and will not, shove another community out of the way.”

Topics
Michigan
US politics
LGBTQ+ rights
Islam
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