By VALERIE VANDE PANNE
It’s a Saturday morning at Cafe 1923, a bookshelf-lined coffee shop in a restored, 80-year old former bodega off Michigan’s I-75, and an ethnically diverse mix of hipsters—white, black, Asian and Middle Eastern—work quietly on laptops and sip espresso. A local Vice reporter swaggers through the café on his way to lunch. Musicians duck in and out of the shop, grabbing coffee to go as they prepare for the 200-band music festival kicking off that night. If you didn’t know better, you could be in Williamsburg. Except this isn’t Brooklyn. This is Hamtramck, the first city in America to come under a majority Muslim city council.
After a November 2015 election, four of the City Council’s six seats are now held by Muslims—three of them immigrants—making Hamtramck’s council the first in the United States with a Muslim majority. Predictably—if ridiculously—the city has become a lightning rod among conservatives in fear of Islamic law erupting in America. At a recent talk in Boston, a Somali women’s-rights activist named Ayaan Hirsi Ali warned an audience of academics and real estate developers that Hamtramck’s City Council would soon bring Sharia to their American backyard.
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But here in Hamtramck, on the eve of a Michigan primary in which Donald Trump is ahead in the polls by double digits, residents aren’t afraid that their city is about to suddenly establish a foothold for the caliphate. They’re more afraid of the Republican Party’s front-runner. “It’s unbelievable Donald Trump has made it this far,” says friend and resident Aaron Foley, who is gay, African-American and the editor of a Detroit lifestyle magazine called Blac. “It really feels like a bad dream that we haven’t woke up from yet. This can’t happen. It upsets me that he’s made so many disparaging remarks, not just about Muslims, but about everyone.”
Like the rest of Michigan, Hamtramck is hurting: It’s a blue-collar town with 49 percent of its residents living at or below the poverty line. For the second time in the 21st century, it’s in state receivership, overseen by a governor-appointed Transition Advisory Board. Residents have been forced to take municipal matters into their own hands, from helping the local cafe pay for a new sidewalk to filling their own potholes. The last thing voters are worried about, Foley insists, is a Muslim City Council. “People fight over dogs pooping and people not cleaning it up. People are concerned with not getting a speeding ticket. I had to fight a speeding ticket in court, and there were people who were there fighting over the length of grass in their neighbor’s yard. It’s a small town with small-town problems.”
It’s also a microcosm of an America in the midst of rapid demographic shifts: although it still has a bare majority of whites (53 percent, as of the last census), over 40 percent of Hamtramck’s residents are foreign-born, and 65 percent reported that a language other than English is spoken in their home. So far, it’s been a model of diversity. The town clerk’s office offers voting information in Polish, Arabic, Bosnian, Albanian, Bengali and Ukranian—in addition to American English. “In this little town, we manage to work out our differences and to live together,” the city’s Polish-Catholic mayor, Karen Majewski, told the Detroit Free Press earlier this year. “Not in some kind of fantasy land, but with real issues, and real day-to-day conflicts and problems that come out.”
And that’s why some in Hamtramck are wary of Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric. He’s “a vulgar demagogue who has an unfortunate talent for playing to a crowd,” Majewski told me. “The world has seen this sort of talent before, with devastating results.”
“What I’m worried about is what kind of fear is Trump inspiring in people from outside of town, like the less Muslim towns on the other side of the Detroit border?” says Foley. “What are people thinking outside Hamtramck? Fear, misunderstanding, refusal to communicate with each other. The closer you get to town, the more people are open to dialogue. What are we doing to ourselves when we don’t talk to our neighbors? And when we see the communities are getting more black and brown, are we going to keep ignoring people as they immigrate into our cities and our communities? I mean, we can’t keep doing that.”
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Today, Hamtramck is a two-square-mile oasis in the middle of Detroit—still very much a part of the city, culturally and geographically, yet different in significant ways. It’s diverse. It’s walkable. It’s safe. Twenty-seven languages are spoken in its schools. In the early years of the last century, Hamtramck was home to the Dodge Main plant, which by 1920 was churning out 140,000 cars a year and sustaining 22,000 employees. Then, during the mad dash of the auto industry’s heyday, Hamtramck was subsumed by the booming expansion of the Motor City—and incorporated as a separate entity as Detroit spread around and past it. By the 1970s, as the auto bust set in, Hamtramck’s population was 90 percent Polish Catholic, with a contracting population that was headed into the ‘burbs.
Now, Poles make up just 12 percent of the population. From the earliest days of the auto boom—when Henry Ford was more likely to hire a Middle-Easterner than an African-American—the Detroit area has attracted large numbers of Middle-Eastern immigrants, including Syrians and Lebanese. (Hard numbers are tough to come by, in part because there hasn’t been a consistent designation for the many countries that constitute the Arab world; today, Arab-Americans are counted as “white” in the U.S. Census.) More recently, a new wave of Arab immigrants, driven west by war and ethnic turmoil, has settled in Dearborn and throughout Southern Michigan—but Trump might be surprised to hear that a ban on Muslims would not necessarily halt it. The vast majority of Arab immigrants in Hamtramck (and the United States) are vetted and come here legally. Of Arab-Americans in the United States, about 50 percent are Christian—including metro Detroit’s growing Iraqi Chaldean community.
Hamtramck does have a community of about 600-800 undocumented immigrants. But they’re not Arabs or Muslims: They’re Eastern European Christians—many Ukranian Orthodox. And since they’re white, they tend to blend in.
Ted Radzilowski, president of the Piast Institute, a research and policy center focused on immigration in Hamtramck, says some Ukranians are coming on false documentation from other countries, including Canada. Others come as tourists. “They don’t cause trouble. I don’t think they’re a big problem,” he says, noting that when they do get in trouble it’s for things like “fishing in the Detroit River, and accidentally crossing into [Canadian water]. Border patrol jumps on that.”
Radzilowski says the population of undocumented Polish residents is actually falling—in part because economic conditions in Michigan are no longer substantially better than they are at home. “Ten years ago,” he says, the undocumented Polish population “was probably triple what it is now.” During the 2008 recession, he says, there was an exodus of Poles to the European Union, and “with the admittance of Poland to the E.U., many have gone back.” The Poles go back, he says, for decent wages and social benefits. The undocumented Poles who stay, he says, “did come here quite a while ago, built a life here, and don’t have anything to go back to.”
As for Hamtramck’s Muslims, they’re a complex mix of class, ethnicity and tradition. Having immigrants from Bangladesh and Yemen on the City Council doesn’t mean they are united by practicing Islam—they are often divided on cultural issues. They don’t even speak the same native language. In fact, the greatest threat to Hamtramck’s way of life may ultimately be gentrification—the biggest influx of newcomers is coming from hipster college students priced out of midtown Detroit in search of a safe, walkable community.
On the Saturday before Michigan’s presidential primary, I drove into Hamtramck, exiting off Detroit’s I-75 onto Holbrook Avenue, where a large, flashing neon sign for Kowalski’s—in the shape of a 30-foot tall sausage—welcomes visitors. I wonder if I can get a Halal one. On the car radio, Arabic music played on 102.3 FM, broadcast out of nearby Windsor, Canada.
At the Royal Kabob, a Middle Eastern restaurant on Caniff Ave., the smell of grilled lamb hangs over a dining room where the city’s diversity is on full display. Waiter Lukman Shah, 21, said many diners are from Yemen, Bosnia, Albania and Poland, in addition to America. “We’ve lived here together for a long time,” he says, gesturing across the dining room. Shah’s family immigrated from Bangladesh. He doesn’t like Trump. “I think he’s exposing how people feel about certain subjects. He’s exposing the racism people feel in the South,” he says. “I don’t find him a threat. I watch all the debates, even the Republican ones. I don’t think he’ll go all the way.”
Just a few blocks from Royal Kabob, on Joseph Campau Avenue, is the Polish Market, a large supermarket where almost everything—from the cheese to the tea to the juice and the bread—is imported from Poland. The smell of sausage is enticing. Natalia Kaszowicz, 18, was born in Poland and now works in the store’s delicatessen. “I’m not for Trump. He says absurd things, I don’t see how people can want or trust him to be our president,” she says, thoughtfully. “Trump being president scares me—he’s the type of president I feel could cause World War 3.”
Natalia said it makes her sad when media focus on Hamtramck’s majority Muslim City Council, because “Hamtramck is not a racist place.”
“I feel like it’s simple,” she adds. “If you wanna be respected, you have to be respectful.”
Fooad Ali, an 80-year old Muslim from Palestine, owns the place next door to Polish Market. It’s called Pro-Discount, and it’s not easy to describe: the inventory includes record players, bikes, men’s dress shoes and work boots, women’s purses, hardware, and—literally—kitchen sinks. Ali’s extended family came to Michigan years ago to work in the car factories, and he lives nearby in Dearborn, a town made famous by Henry Ford, and now an Arab-American cultural mecca.
Ali didn’t want to talk about Trump, lumping him in with all the other candidates, including Hillary Clinton. To him, all politicians are “bullshitters.” “What do they do for Palestinians? Nothing. To me they don’t exist. They don’t scare me. I have nothing to do with them. They have nothing to do with me.” His son, Yasser Ali, 45, was born in Venezuela and also lives in Dearborn. “The Unabomber was Polish,” Yasser points out, adding that no one got mad at Polish people because of him. “If you are a Muslim, it means you’ve given yourself to God,” he says. “The people who murder are terrorists. You can’t be a terrorist and a Muslim.”
Just then, an elderly man interrupted our conversation. His name is Amuar Bassm, and he’s from Iraq. “I’m Christian!” he declared proudly, showing off an old, faded cross tattoo on his arm. “Christian, Muslim, Catholic, Jew, its what’s in your heart. I need good people to stay. Bad people can go to hell!” He then turns and walks out.
“America already has feelings about Muslims as it is,” Yasser continued. “I hope people educate themselves rather than just listen to whatever [Trump] says. It’s not the American way [to believe whatever a politician tells you].”
When the conversation turned to Bernie Sanders, Yasser reflected, “I didn’t know he was Jewish though. There is no way he can get in. The Jews are still not liked in this country.”
Down the street from Ali, at Lo & Behold Records, owner Richard Wohlfeil, 31, was preparing for the Hamtramck Music Festival, and played old soul on a turntable. You can measure how tired of being asked about Hamtramck’s City Council the town’s residents are by the degree of exasperation on their faces when you ask about it. Wohlfeil is no exception—when I asked, he rolled his eyes. “I don’t see it as any different than a having an all Polish City Council. It’s not like Sharia law was brought in.”
A Michigan native, Wohlfeil views Trump as “the biggest turd on the planet. I just don’t seem him doing anything good for anybody, ever. If he gets voted in then something is really wrong with this country. That guy will never consider a working class city’s interest.”
At a bar called Whiskey in the Jar, a local watering hole and unofficial politico hangout, preparations were under way for the night’s music festival. Curling and hockey played on the TVs, and hipsters hung out drinking Jack Daniels or PBRs. Someone passed around a phone with a video, from the Republican debate, of Ted Cruz appearing to eat his own booger. The clocks were all 10 minutes fast, disorienting if you’re not accustomed to Michigan’s “bar time.”
Eric Bradley, 33, an African-American, Detroit native, does think Trump is something to be scared of. “To see Donald Trump make a dick reference in a televised debate. … I’m glad Canada is close by.”
His friend, though, Regan Watson, 37, is originally from Canada and is now a naturalized American citizen. She doesn’t have plans to move back to Canada anytime soon. Her big concern is “bringing more businesses to the area and getting a larger tax base” in Hamtramck. “I walk home at night by myself and not scared to be in this area in the least. I think our police department is excellent. There’s a lot of families here. There’s community.”
“I think if you were to visit here you’d find people are friendly, and honestly a smile goes a long way. It breaks barriers. You can still be friendly even if you don’t speak the same language.”
Back at the Cafe 1923, Michelle Iqbal was the only woman in the cafe wearing a hijab, and no one seemed to be concerned by it. Iqbal is studying biological sciences (with a minor in health psychology and peace and conflict studies) at Wayne State University in Midtown, and hails from Saginaw, Michigan—where, she says proudly, there are two mosques.
She laughs at questions about Trump and Hamtramck’s Muslim City Council. “Practicing any religious doctrine [in government] is unconstitutional so, um, I don’t see it at all here.”
“I am an American before I am a Muslim,” says Hamtramck’s most recent city councilor, Saad Almasmari, a native of Yemen. “I don’t understand why people keep talking about the Muslim city council. It was a political election, not a religious one.” He stresses that he seeks to represent all of Hamtramck residents, in accordance with local laws and the Constitution, regardless of their culture or religion. His goal, he says, isn’t to make the city Muslim but to “bring more financial resources to the city.” If there’s someone who “is against American values and the American dream,” says Almasmari, it is not Hamtramck’s city council—it’s Trump. “This country,” he says, “was built by different immigrants, with different religions.”
“It’s interesting that people are concerned about Muslims being the majority in a place,” Iqbal observed. “No one is concerned when it’s a majority Christian. But as soon as someone is not white … It shows how much work needs to be done in America today in terms of increasing awareness, tolerance and acceptance.”
