[The Urban Sombrero]

With some time off, and based on challenges presented here on BGR, I stopped off in Detroit for a couple days and on one of those days managed to have lunch with Saad Almasmari, a council member of Hamtramck, an extremely diverse community of roughly 22,000 just outside Detroit. It is, at least as of 2015, the only place in America with a majority Muslim city council.

What my new friend Saad said to me was that "the US Constitution and state and local laws are the roof for us." He mentioned he knew that the LGBT community of Hamtramck was concerned, but that fears of discrimination against them from the majority council would prove needless.

It gave me hope. America is a great country, maybe the best nation to encourage and create oppprtunities for immigrants to become part of the economy and culture of their new home that has ever existed. But, that work is not easy and is never finished.

Finally, we spoke of the inherent dignity that dwells within each human being, that it is not ours, as mere mortals ourselves, to deny or denigrate with hatred or violence or assertions of some special superiority.