But what if Muslim Americans don’t come to their political choices the way pundits expect them to? Last month, Timothy Carney wrote an article about his visit to Hamtramck, a small city outside of Detroit with a large Muslim population where Trump won a significant victory. Carney explains why:
If you stroll up Campau [Avenue] through Hamtramck, you’ll see Polish bakeries, mosques, Yemeni grocers, hipster secondhand stores, and Bangladeshi families. When Campau widens to four lanes at Caniff Street, . . . the view is striking: eighteen American flags. It’s a loud display of patriotism in one of the most immigrant-dense cities in America—42 percent of Hamtramck’s residents were born outside of the United States, most of them in Yemen or Bangladesh.
But there’s a story behind those eighteen American flags. . . . The wide stretch of Campau, for a decade, flew the flags of Yemen, Bangladesh, Poland, Jamaica, and dozens of other countries. Then, in 2022, a city official hung up on Campau the latest pride flag, with its colors celebrating diverse sexual orientations and transgender ideology, turning this urban boulevard into a battlefield of the culture wars.
The official who hung the flag didn’t want to start a controversy, but the city had just elected an all-Muslim city council and a Muslim mayor, Ameer Ghalib, and they wanted to take the flag down. Protests ensued, supported by the statewide Democratic party. That experience changed the locals’ political preferences:
Ghalib has endorsed Trump, and much of the Yemeni and Bangladeshi population of Hamtramck has, along with him, walked away from the Democratic party.
Read more on Washington Examiner: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in_focus/3182621/religion-pride-clash-hamtramck-michigan-trump-president/