A walk down the main street in Hamtramck, Michigan, feels like a tour around the world.
A Polish sausage store and an Eastern European bakery sit alongside a Yemeni department store and a Bengali clothing shop. Church bells ring out along with the Islamic call to prayer.
“The world in two square miles” – Hamtramck lives up to its slogan, with around 30 languages spoken within its 5 sq km area.
This month, the Midwestern city of 28,000 has reached a milestone. Hamtramck has elected an all-Muslim City Council and a Muslim mayor, becoming the first in the US to have a Muslim-American government.
Once faced with discrimination, Muslim residents have become integral to this multicultural city, and now make up more than half its population.
And despite economic challenges and intense cultural debates, residents in Hamtramck from different religious and cultural backgrounds coexist in harmony, making the city a meaningful case study for America’s future of rising diversity.
The arc of Hamtramck’s history from beginnings as a town of German settlers to the modern day – it was America’s first majority-Muslim city – is etched in its streets.
Storefronts display signs in Arabic and Bengali, embroidered Bangladeshi garments and Jambiyas, a type of short curved blade from Yemen, are seen in store windows. Muslim residents queue up to buy paczki, a kind of custard-filled Polish doughnut.
“It’s not unusual to see some with miniskirts and tattoos and some in burqas walking on the same street. This is all about us,” said Zlatan Sadikovic, a Bosnian immigrant who owns a café in downtown Hamtramck.
