Will Europe Resist Islamization?
[http://www.meforum.org/]
Middle East Forum
April 3, 2008
Will Europe Resist Islamization?
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
April 3, 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/pipes/5503
[JP title: "A movie and a conversion: Europe begins to resist?"]
Some analysts of Islam in Western Europe argue that the continent cannot escape its Eurabian fate; that the trend lines of the past half-century will continue until Muslims become a majority population and Islamic law (the Shari‘a) reigns.
I disagree, arguing that there is another route the continent might take, one of resistance to Islamification and a reassertion of traditional ways. Indigenous Europeans – who make up 95 percent of the population – can insist on their historic customs and mores. Were they to do so, nothing would be in their way and no one could stop them.
Indeed, Europeans are visibly showing signs of impatience with creeping Shari‘a. The legislation in France that prohibits hijabs from public school classrooms signals the reluctance to accept Islamic ways, as are related efforts to ban burqas, mosques, and minarets. Throughout Western Europe, anti-immigrant parties are generally increasing in popularity.
That resistance took a new turn last week, with two dramatic events. First, on March 22, Pope Benedict XVI himself baptized, confirmed, and gave the Eucharist to Magdi Allam, 56, a prominent Egyptian-born Muslim long living in Italy, where he is a top editor at the Corriere della Sera newspaper and a well-known author. Allam took the middle name Cristiano. The ceremony converting him to the Catholic religion could not have been higher profile, occurring at a nighttime service at St. Peter's Basilica on the eve of Easter Sunday, with exhaustive coverage from the Vatican and many other television stations.
Allam followed up his conversion with a stinging statement in which he argued that beyond "the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive." In other words, the problem is not just Islamism but Islam itself. One commentator, "Spengler" of Asia Times, goes so far as to say that Allam "presents an existential threat to Muslim life" because he "agrees with his former co-religionists in repudiating the degraded culture of the modern West, and offers them something quite different: a religion founded upon love."
Second, on March 27, Geert Wilders, 44, released his long-awaited, 15-minute film, Fitna, which consists of some of the most bellicose verses of the Koran, followed by actions in accord with those verses carried out by Islamists in recent years. The obvious implication is that Islamists are simply acting in accord with their scriptures. In Allam's words, Wilders also argues that "the root of evil is inherent" in Islam.
Unlike Allam and Wilders, I do distinguish between Islam and Islamism, but I believe it imperative that their ideas get a fair hearing, without vituperation or punishment. An honest debate over Islam must take place.
If Allam's conversion was a surprise and Wilders' film had a three-month run-up, in both cases, the aggressive, violent reactions that met prior criticisms of Islam did not take place. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Dutch police contacted imams to gauge reactions at the city's mosques and found, according to police spokesman Arnold Aben, "it's quieter than usual here today. Sort of like a holiday." In Pakistan, a rally against the film attracted only some dozens of protestors.
This relatively constrained reaction points to the fact that Muslim threats sufficed to enforce censorship. Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende denounced Fitna and, after 3.6 million visitors had viewed it on the British website LiveLeak.com, the company announced that "Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, … Liveleak has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers." (Two days later, however, LiveLeak again posted the film.)
Three similarities bear noting: both Allam (author of a book titled Viva Israele) and Wilders (whose film emphasizes Muslim violence against Jews) stand up for Israel and the Jews; Muslim threats against their lives have forced both for years to live under state-provided round-the-clock police protection; and, more profoundly, the two share a passion for European civilization.
Indeed, Allam and Wilders may represent the vanguard of a Christian/liberal reassertion of European values. It is too soon to predict, but these staunch individuals could provide a crucial boost for those intent on maintaining the continent's historic identity.
Mr. Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, is the Taube/Diller Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University during the spring semester.
Related Topics: Dhimmitude, Muslims in Europe
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The Middle East Forum
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Front Page
Mar 26, 2008
The mustard seed in global strategy
By Spengler
A self-described revolution in world affairs has begun in the heart of one man. He is the Italian journalist and author Magdi Cristiano Allam, whom Pope Benedict XVI baptized during the Easter Vigil at St Peter's. Allam's renunciation of Islam as a religion of violence and his embrace of Christianity denotes the point at which the so-called global "war on terror" becomes a divergence of two irreconcilable modes of life: the Western way of faith supported by reason, against the Muslim world of fatalism and submission.
As Magdi Allam recounted , on his road to conversion the challenge that Pope Benedict XVI offered to Islam in his
September 2006 address at Regensburg was "undoubtedly the most extraordinary and important encounter in my decision to convert". Osama bin Laden recently accused Benedict of plotting a new crusade against Islam, and instead finds something far more threatening: faith the size of a mustard seed that can move mountains. Before Benedict's election, I summarized his position as "I have a mustard seed and I'm not afraid to use it." Now the mustard seed has earned pride of place in global affairs.
Magdi Allam tells us that he has found the true God and forsaken an Islam that he regards as inherently violent. Magdi Allam has a powerful voice as deputy editor of Italy's newspaper of record, Corriere della Sera, and a bestselling author. For years he was the exemplar of "moderate Islam" in Europe, and now he has decided that Islam cannot be "moderate".
Since September 2001, the would-be wizards of Western strategy have tried to conjure an "Islamic reformation", or a "moderate Islam", or "Islamic democracy". None of this matters now, for as Magdi Allam tells us, the matter on the agenda is not to persuade Muslims to act like liberal Westerners, but instead to convince them to cease to be Muslims. The use of the world "revolution" is Magdi Allam's:
His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.
There is no deference to mutual respect and multi-culturalism. Magdi Allam forsook Islam because he considers it to be "inherently evil". As he wrote to his editor at the Corriere della Sera:
My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy ...
I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a "moderate Islam", assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Koran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive [emphasis added].
Far more important than denouncing the evils of Islam, though, is Magdi Allam's embrace of what he calls the God of faith and reason:
The miracle of the Resurrection of Christ has reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness of a tendency where hate and intolerance in before the "other", condemning it uncritically as an "enemy", and ascending to love and respect for one's "neighbor", who is always and in any case a person; thus my mind has been released from the obscurantism of an ideology which legitimates lying and dissimulation, the violent death that leads to homicide and suicide, blind submission and tyranny - permitting me to adhere to the authentic religion of Truth, of Life, and freedom. Upon my first Easter as a Christian I have not only discovered Jesus, but I have discovered for the first time the true and only God, which is the God of Faith and Reason ...
Magdi Allam presents an existential threat to Muslim life, whereas other prominent dissidents, for example Ayaan Hirsi Ali, offer only an annoyance. Much as I admire Hirsi Ali, she will persuade few Muslims to reconsider their religion. She came to the world's attention in 2004 after a Muslim terrorist murdered Theo van Gogh, with whom she had produced a brief film protesting the treatment of women under Islam. As an outspoken critic of Islam, Hirsi Ali has lived under constant threat, and I have deplored the failure of Western governments to accord her adequate protection.
Yet the spiritual emptiness of a libertine and cynic like Theo van Gogh can only repel Muslims. Muslims suffer from a stultifying spiritual emptiness, depicted most poignantly by the Syrian Arab poet Adonis (see Are the Arabs already extinct?, Asia Times Online, May 8, 2007). Muslim traditional society cannot withstand the depredations of globalized culture, and radical Islam arises from a despairing nostalgia for the disappearing past. Why would Muslims trade the spiritual vacuum of Islam for the spiritual sewer of Dutch hedonism? The souls of Muslims are in agony. The blandishments of the decadent West offer them nothing but shame and deracination. Magdi Allam agrees with his former co-religionists in repudiating the degraded culture of the modern West, and offers them something quite different: a religion founded upon love.
Only a few months ago it seemed fanciful to hail Benedict XVI as the leader of the West. I wrote late last year (The inside story of the Western mind, Asia Times Online, November 6, 2007):
The West is not fighting individual criminals, as the left insists; it is not fighting a Soviet-style state, as the Iraqi disaster makes clear; nor is it fighting a political movement. It is fighting a religion, specifically a religion that arose in enraged reaction to the West. None of the political leaders of the West, and few of the West's opinion leaders, comprehends this. We are left with the anomaly that the only effective leader of the West is a man wholly averse to war, a pope who took his name from the Benedict who interceded for peace during World War I. Benedict XVI, alone among the leaders of the Christian world, challenges Islam as a religion, as he did in his September 2006 Regensburg address.
One does not fight a religion with guns (at least not only with guns) but with love, although sometimes it is sadly necessary to love one's enemies only after they are dead. The Church has lacked both the will to evangelize Muslims as well as the missionaries to undertake the task. Benedict XVI, the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, has thought about the conversion of the Muslims for years, as I reported just before his election in 2005 (The crescent and the conclave, Asia Times Online, April 19, 2005). Where will the Pope find the sandals on the ground in this new religious war? From the ranks of the Muslims themselves, evidently. Magdi Allam is just one convert, but he has a big voice. If the Church fights for the safety of converts, they will emerge from the nooks and crannies of Muslim communities in Europe.
The Pope also has in reserve the European youth movement "Communione e Liberazione", which he has nurtured for decades. Forty-thousand members turned out in 2005 when the then Cardinal Ratzinger addressed a memorial service in Milan for the movement's founder. European Christianity may be reduced to a few coals glowing in the ashes, but it is not dead, only marginalized. If the Catholic youth of Europe are offered a great task - to evangelize the Muslims whose restlessness threatens to push Europe into social chaos - many of them may heed the call.
As I wrote in 2005, "Now that everyone is talking about Europe's demographic death, it is time to point out that there exists a way out: convert European Muslims to Christianity." Today's Europeans stem from the melting-pot of the barbarian invasions that replaced the vanishing population of the Roman Empire. The genius of the Catholic Church was to absorb them. If Benedict XVI can convert this new wave of invaders from North Africa and the Middle East, history will place him on a par with his great namesake, the founder of the monastic order the bears his name.
As Magdi Allam enjoins his new Church:
For my part, I say that it is time to put an end to the abuse and the violence of Muslims who do not respect the freedom of religious choice. In Italy there are thousands of converts to Islam who live their new faith in peace. But there are also thousands of Muslim converts to Christianity who are forced to hide their faith out of fear of being assassinated by Islamic extremists who lurk among us. By one of those "fortuitous events" that evoke the discreet hand of the Lord, the first article that I wrote for the Corriere on September 3, 2003, was entitled "The new Catacombs of Islamic Converts". It was an investigation of recent Muslim converts to Christianity in Italy who decry their profound spiritual and human solitude in the face of absconding state institutions that do not protect them and the silence of the Church itself. Well, I hope that the Pope's historical gesture and my testimony will lead to the conviction that the moment has come to leave the darkness of the catacombs and to publicly declare their desire to be fully themselves.
What the outcome will be of the evangelization of Muslims lies beyond all speculation: that is a matter of every soul's relationship to God. But the global agenda has changed, not through the machinations of statesmen or the word-mincing of public intellectuals, but through the soul of a single man. Benedict's Regensburg challenge to Islam now demarcates the encounter between the West and the Muslim world, and nothing will be the same.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Unsold Homes Tie Down Would-Be Transplants - USA
THE NEW YORK TIMES
April 3, 2008
Unsold Homes Tie Down Would-Be Transplants
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
Unsold Homes Tie Down Would-Be Movers
Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times
Unable to sell his Detroit home, Sam Kirkland has been kept apart from his wife in Phoenix.
Sam Kirkland expected the home in Detroit owned by him and his wife, Dr. Michele Morgan, a psychiatrist working in Phoenix, to bring $200,000. A similar home nearby sold for $90,000.
Dr. Michele Morgan migrated last fall from Detroit to Phoenix, taking a job as a psychiatrist. She expected her husband, Sam Kirkland, to soon join her, since he was accepting an early retirement package from his employer, General Motors. But he cannot move, he says, because he has not been able to sell the four-bedroom family home.
“As things now stand,” said Mr. Kirkland, who is 51 and intends to seek work in Phoenix, if he ever gets there, “my wife might decide to give up her job in Phoenix and come back to Detroit for a while, until we can sell the house.”
The rapid decline in housing prices is distorting the normal workings of the American labor market. Mobility opens up job opportunities, allowing workers to go where they are most needed. When housing is not an obstacle, more than five million men and women, nearly 4 percent of the nation’s work force, move annually from one place to another — to a new job after a layoff, or to higher-paying work, or to the next rung in a career, often the goal of a corporate transfer. Or people seek, as in Dr. Morgan’s case, an escape from harsh northern winters.
Now that mobility is increasingly restricted. Unable to sell their homes easily and move on, tens of thousands of people like Mr. Kirkland and Dr. Morgan are making the labor force less flexible just as a weakening economy puts pressure on workers to move to wherever companies are still hiring.
Signaling an incipient recession, nearly 85,000 jobs disappeared in the United States from December through February, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to announce on Friday that March failed to produce a turnaround in hiring.
“You hear a lot about foreclosure and the thousands of families who are being forced out,” said Joseph S. Tracy, director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “But that is swamped by the number of people who want to sell their homes and can’t.”
No government agency counts those who move for a job, either across state lines or just from one town to another in the same state. The Census Bureau, however, calculates how many people move across state lines for all reasons, and that number fell by a startling 27 percent last year, after climbing by almost that percentage for each of the previous three years.
With homes changing hands easily in a booming market, interstate migration reached 2.2 million people in 2006, excluding the effects of Hurricane Katrina. As the economy and home prices began to unravel in 2007, however, interstate migration plunged to 1.6 million people.
“That is still a historically high number,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “It reflects the relatively strong economy until midyear. But given what’s happening now, I would be surprised if domestic migration isn’t at a record low in 2008.”
Worker mobility — or rather immobility — is making a big contribution to this decline, Mr. Zandi and other economists say. Retirees are similarly stuck in their homes. In normal times, they frequently sell so they can move to condos in Florida or assisted-living facilities or smaller quarters near adult children.
“These older people spent all of their lives earning the money to buy their homes,” said Robert J. Shiller, a Yale economist who is an expert on housing, “and now they resist selling for less than they believe their homes are worth.”
Corporate transfers contribute significantly to worker mobility, and employers often cover at least some of the cost of selling a home in the old location and buying one in the new. That practice can backfire, says Richard Shaw, a vice president of Applied Industrial Technologies, which sells gears, motors, bearings and other industrial parts from 337 centers around the country.
Out of 3,500 employees in the United States, Applied normally transfers 25 to 30 each year from one center to another, or to the headquarters in Cleveland. Almost all are career people rising in the ranks. Despite the opportunity, transfers have fallen by half, Mr. Shaw said. That is mainly because transferred employees too often find themselves owning two homes — one in the old location and one in the new — and paying two mortgages.
Applied tries to minimize the problem by paying one of the two mortgages for up to six months, the expectation being that the old home will sell by then. Increasingly, that does not happen, not with inventories of homes across the country at an 18-year high, according to the National Association of Realtors. That makes employees reluctant to move, even for a raise and a promotion, Mr. Shaw said.
He tells of one transferred executive “who ended up owning two homes for more than six months and, finding himself paying two mortgages, opted to move back to his original city, surrendering his new house to the bank.”
Mr. Kirkland is determined to sell before he moves. But that might take months, he acknowledges. A house that he thought would bring $200,000 — its appraised price three years ago — in fact might bring only $90,000 if he were to sell it today. That was the selling price for a similar 2,500-square-foot home on the next block, and Mr. Kirkland wants more than the $125,000 in debt that he and his wife still have on their house.
“When I stop working at G.M., I am going to devote myself to the house, making it look as pristine as possible,” Mr. Kirkland said.
He is also trying to make a major career transition. After 30 years as a G.M. employee — most recently at a parts warehouse in Pontiac, Mich., serving as a full-time union official of his United Automobile Workers local — he accepted one of the early retirement packages that the company is offering to shrink its work force. Taking courses by mail, he is studying for a master’s degree in organization and development. His goal is to get work in that field in Phoenix, perhaps with a community organization. His wife, who is 47, relocated in October, in time to escape the Michigan winter, and his two daughters are away at college.
But getting to Phoenix is now problematic. He will not leave the house, afraid that if it sits empty, it will be a target for vandals. “I might have to spend so much time living at the house and working on it,” Mr. Kirkland said, “that my wife will say, ‘I can always have a job as a psychiatrist here in Phoenix, but I might have to go back to Detroit for a while.’ ”
Gayle Newton, in a somewhat similar fashion, delayed her departure from Taylorsville, N.C., for two years while she tried to sell her two-bedroom home, on a large parcel of land, for $89,000. She finally gave up, rented the house last September and moved in with her daughter and son-in-law in Baltimore, quickly landing a job there for $15 an hour in the accounts payable department of a granite quarry. Until she left Taylorsville, Ms. Newton, who is 53, did similar work for a furniture company at $9 an hour.
She had put her home on the market in 2006, not long after her husband died and she found herself alone in Taylorsville in a job that did not pay enough to keep her there. She decided to live near her daughter, to find higher-paying work and to apply the proceeds from selling her home toward another one in Baltimore.
“That seemed like a good year, 2006,” Ms. Newton said, “but the downturn in housing had already started in our area. I didn’t realize it. I never imagined that a house on seven acres would not sell. I thought at $89,000 it would be a steal and I could move on to Baltimore much sooner than I did. My daughter finally came and insisted. She could not stand my whining any longer.”
The house in Taylorsville is still unsold.
April 3, 2008
Unsold Homes Tie Down Would-Be Transplants
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
Unsold Homes Tie Down Would-Be Movers
Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times
Unable to sell his Detroit home, Sam Kirkland has been kept apart from his wife in Phoenix.
Sam Kirkland expected the home in Detroit owned by him and his wife, Dr. Michele Morgan, a psychiatrist working in Phoenix, to bring $200,000. A similar home nearby sold for $90,000.
Dr. Michele Morgan migrated last fall from Detroit to Phoenix, taking a job as a psychiatrist. She expected her husband, Sam Kirkland, to soon join her, since he was accepting an early retirement package from his employer, General Motors. But he cannot move, he says, because he has not been able to sell the four-bedroom family home.
“As things now stand,” said Mr. Kirkland, who is 51 and intends to seek work in Phoenix, if he ever gets there, “my wife might decide to give up her job in Phoenix and come back to Detroit for a while, until we can sell the house.”
The rapid decline in housing prices is distorting the normal workings of the American labor market. Mobility opens up job opportunities, allowing workers to go where they are most needed. When housing is not an obstacle, more than five million men and women, nearly 4 percent of the nation’s work force, move annually from one place to another — to a new job after a layoff, or to higher-paying work, or to the next rung in a career, often the goal of a corporate transfer. Or people seek, as in Dr. Morgan’s case, an escape from harsh northern winters.
Now that mobility is increasingly restricted. Unable to sell their homes easily and move on, tens of thousands of people like Mr. Kirkland and Dr. Morgan are making the labor force less flexible just as a weakening economy puts pressure on workers to move to wherever companies are still hiring.
Signaling an incipient recession, nearly 85,000 jobs disappeared in the United States from December through February, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to announce on Friday that March failed to produce a turnaround in hiring.
“You hear a lot about foreclosure and the thousands of families who are being forced out,” said Joseph S. Tracy, director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “But that is swamped by the number of people who want to sell their homes and can’t.”
No government agency counts those who move for a job, either across state lines or just from one town to another in the same state. The Census Bureau, however, calculates how many people move across state lines for all reasons, and that number fell by a startling 27 percent last year, after climbing by almost that percentage for each of the previous three years.
With homes changing hands easily in a booming market, interstate migration reached 2.2 million people in 2006, excluding the effects of Hurricane Katrina. As the economy and home prices began to unravel in 2007, however, interstate migration plunged to 1.6 million people.
“That is still a historically high number,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “It reflects the relatively strong economy until midyear. But given what’s happening now, I would be surprised if domestic migration isn’t at a record low in 2008.”
Worker mobility — or rather immobility — is making a big contribution to this decline, Mr. Zandi and other economists say. Retirees are similarly stuck in their homes. In normal times, they frequently sell so they can move to condos in Florida or assisted-living facilities or smaller quarters near adult children.
“These older people spent all of their lives earning the money to buy their homes,” said Robert J. Shiller, a Yale economist who is an expert on housing, “and now they resist selling for less than they believe their homes are worth.”
Corporate transfers contribute significantly to worker mobility, and employers often cover at least some of the cost of selling a home in the old location and buying one in the new. That practice can backfire, says Richard Shaw, a vice president of Applied Industrial Technologies, which sells gears, motors, bearings and other industrial parts from 337 centers around the country.
Out of 3,500 employees in the United States, Applied normally transfers 25 to 30 each year from one center to another, or to the headquarters in Cleveland. Almost all are career people rising in the ranks. Despite the opportunity, transfers have fallen by half, Mr. Shaw said. That is mainly because transferred employees too often find themselves owning two homes — one in the old location and one in the new — and paying two mortgages.
Applied tries to minimize the problem by paying one of the two mortgages for up to six months, the expectation being that the old home will sell by then. Increasingly, that does not happen, not with inventories of homes across the country at an 18-year high, according to the National Association of Realtors. That makes employees reluctant to move, even for a raise and a promotion, Mr. Shaw said.
He tells of one transferred executive “who ended up owning two homes for more than six months and, finding himself paying two mortgages, opted to move back to his original city, surrendering his new house to the bank.”
Mr. Kirkland is determined to sell before he moves. But that might take months, he acknowledges. A house that he thought would bring $200,000 — its appraised price three years ago — in fact might bring only $90,000 if he were to sell it today. That was the selling price for a similar 2,500-square-foot home on the next block, and Mr. Kirkland wants more than the $125,000 in debt that he and his wife still have on their house.
“When I stop working at G.M., I am going to devote myself to the house, making it look as pristine as possible,” Mr. Kirkland said.
He is also trying to make a major career transition. After 30 years as a G.M. employee — most recently at a parts warehouse in Pontiac, Mich., serving as a full-time union official of his United Automobile Workers local — he accepted one of the early retirement packages that the company is offering to shrink its work force. Taking courses by mail, he is studying for a master’s degree in organization and development. His goal is to get work in that field in Phoenix, perhaps with a community organization. His wife, who is 47, relocated in October, in time to escape the Michigan winter, and his two daughters are away at college.
But getting to Phoenix is now problematic. He will not leave the house, afraid that if it sits empty, it will be a target for vandals. “I might have to spend so much time living at the house and working on it,” Mr. Kirkland said, “that my wife will say, ‘I can always have a job as a psychiatrist here in Phoenix, but I might have to go back to Detroit for a while.’ ”
Gayle Newton, in a somewhat similar fashion, delayed her departure from Taylorsville, N.C., for two years while she tried to sell her two-bedroom home, on a large parcel of land, for $89,000. She finally gave up, rented the house last September and moved in with her daughter and son-in-law in Baltimore, quickly landing a job there for $15 an hour in the accounts payable department of a granite quarry. Until she left Taylorsville, Ms. Newton, who is 53, did similar work for a furniture company at $9 an hour.
She had put her home on the market in 2006, not long after her husband died and she found herself alone in Taylorsville in a job that did not pay enough to keep her there. She decided to live near her daughter, to find higher-paying work and to apply the proceeds from selling her home toward another one in Baltimore.
“That seemed like a good year, 2006,” Ms. Newton said, “but the downturn in housing had already started in our area. I didn’t realize it. I never imagined that a house on seven acres would not sell. I thought at $89,000 it would be a steal and I could move on to Baltimore much sooner than I did. My daughter finally came and insisted. She could not stand my whining any longer.”
The house in Taylorsville is still unsold.
US Muslims and Mormons share deepening ties
LA TIMES
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-morlims2apr02,0,1545287.story
From the Los Angeles Times
U.S. Muslims and Mormons share deepening ties
The connection is based not on theology but on shared values and a sense of isolation from mainstream America.
By David Haldane
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 2, 2008
Friends
Email Picture
Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times
Steve Gilliland, a Mormon, left, listens as Maher Hathout, a Muslim, talks about the Koran in Hathout's home. Although of different religions, the two are close friends.
The Mormon Church has to be among the most outgoing on earth; in recent years its leaders have reached out to, among others, Latinos, Koreans, Catholics and Jews.
One of the most enthusiastic responses, however, has come from what some might consider a surprising source: U.S. Muslims.
"We are very aware of the history of Mormons as a group that was chastised in America," says Maher Hathout, a senior advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles. "They can be a good model for any group that feels alienated."
Which perhaps explains an open-mosque day held last fall at the Islamic Center of Irvine. More than half the guests were Mormons.
"A Mormon living in an Islamic society would be very comfortable," said Steve Young, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints attending the event.
The sentiment is echoed by Muslims. "When I go to a Mormon church I feel at ease," said Haitham Bundakji, former chairman of the Islamic Society of Orange County. "When I heard the president [of LDS] speak a few years ago, if I'd closed my eyes I'd have thought he was an imam."
Though the relationship has raised eyebrows and provided ammunition for critics of both religions, Mormons and Muslims have deepening ties in the United States.
What binds them has little to do with theology: Mormons venerate Jesus as interpreted by founder Joseph Smith, while Muslims view Muhammad as god's prophet. Based on shared values and a sense of isolation from mainstream America, the connection was intensified by 9/11 and cemented by the Southeast Asia tsunami. It is especially evident in Southern California, with large Mormons and Muslim populations.
The Mormon Church has become the biggest contributor to Buena Park-based Islamic Relief, touted by its administrators as the West's largest Muslim-based charity. Relief officials say the church has donated $20 million in goods and services since the 2004 tsunami, equal to about 20% of the charity's annual budget.
Brigham Young University in Utah, the church's major institution of higher learning, features what is thought to be one of the world's best programs for translating classic Islamic works from Arabic to English. Though created primarily for academic purposes, the results have impressed Muslims flattered by the close attention.
"It shows they have a keen interest in the Muslim world," said Levent Akbarut, a member of the Islamic Congregation of La Cañada-Flintridge.
And Mormons and Muslims say they often are co-hosts of educational and social programs at which, though some may be angling for long-term doctrinal influence, very little open proselytizing of each other seems to take place. "We have a very close and friendly relationship," said Keith Atkinson, West Coast LDS spokesman.Mormons "explain our faith to anyone who will listen" and "treat Muslims like anybody else," said Elder Dallin H. Oaks, a member of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, one of the church's top governing bodies in Salt Lake City. But Oaks added that "we don't preach to people who would be disenfranchised" or likely offended by the effort.
Arnold H. Green, a history professor at BYU, has traced how early Mormons in the 19th century were hounded by accusations that church founder Smith was the American Muhammad. The first Mormons angrily denied any connection to the Muslim prophet but gradually accepted some comparisons, particularly that both religions were founded by post-Christian prophets with strong sectarian views. "As the church grew into a global faith," Green wrote in a 2001 essay, "its posture toward Islam became . . . more positive" until, today, "the two faiths have become associated in several ways, including Mormonism's being called the Islam of America."
Both religions strongly emphasize family. They tend toward patriarchy, believing in feminine modesty, chastity and virtue. And although Islam discourages dancing involving both sexes, Mormons report that church-sponsored "modesty proms" commonly draw Islamic youths.
Both faiths adhere to religion-based health codes, including prohibitions against alcohol, but Mormons and Muslims share something more: membership in quickly growing minority religions that many other Americans have sometimes viewed with suspicion and scorn.
"We both come from traditions where there has been persecution in the past and continues to be prejudice," said Steve Gilliland, LDS director of Muslim relations for Southern California. "That helps us Mormons identify with Muslims."
A recent national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that although a thin majority of those polled expressed positive opinions of Muslims and Mormons, the number was significantly less than those favoring Roman Catholics or Jews.
More than half the respondents said they had little or no awareness of the precepts and practices of either faith. But 45% saw Islam as more likely than other religions to encourage violence, and 31% said that Mormons weren't Christian.
Armand L. Mauss, a Mormon and professor emeritus of sociology at Washington State University specializing in religious movements, said that unlike mainstream Christians and Jews, Muslims and Mormons "tend to make fairly stringent demands for religious conformity on their members." These practices, he said, include discouraging marriage outside the religion and observing dietary laws, such as the Mormon prohibition against tobacco, alcohol and caffeine.
But the clincher, according to Mauss, is that both communities "have been stung in recent years by the recurrence of scandals over which they have no control." For Muslims, the obvious example is 9/11.
For Mormons, Mauss says, the problem is polygamy, which, though rejected by the mainstream church more than a century ago, is still the first thing that occurs to many Americans when they think about the religion.
The relationship between the two religions has sometimes drawn ire.
Scattered throughout the Internet are numerous tracts, many by evangelical Christians, comparing the two religions in less-than-complimentary terms. "Modern Mohammedanism has its Mecca in Salt Lake," reads one. "Clearly the Koran was Joseph Smith's model, so closely followed as to exclude even the poor pretension of originality in his foul 'revelations.' "
In Southern California, the relationship between the two religions became closer after the Los Angeles riots in 1992, when the Mormon Church, hoping to promote diversity, invited several ethnic and religious groups to attend the opening of its new temple in San Diego. Muslims responded in higher numbers and with greater enthusiasm than most others.
The church later feted prominent Muslims in Salt Lake City.
"We were treated as dignitaries," said Shabbir Mansuri, founding director of the Muslim-based Institute on Religion and Civic Values in Fountain Valley, which encourages tolerance through research and education. "I met with the president of LDS and the governor of Utah. We were sitting in the front row of the Tabernacle. Mormons would give their right arms to be there."
The relationship deepened on Sept. 11, 2001. The first call Mansuri received that day came from Elder Oaks. "He was concerned and wanted to send us a very clear message that we were in their prayers," Mansuri recalls. "It was like having someone who loves and cares for you; not so much a Mormon reaching out to me as a fellow believer reaching out."
Oaks said he was primarily motivated by friendship. "I consider Shabbir Mansuri a brother," he said. "He's a good man who's doing good work. We try to be friendly to all people, and in the days after 9/11, lots of Muslims felt rejected."
In the months that followed, Mormons nationwide opened their churches to Islamic worshipers fearful of reprisals in their mosques. When Muslims needed a cannery to process the Bosnia-bound beef slaughtered for the annual Eid al-Adha observance, the Mormons offered theirs in Utah.
Following the tsunami that devastated many Islamic communities, the Mormon church, which has a history of contributing to a wide range of charities, began working closely with Islamic Relief. Though LDS had helped Muslims before -- providing 195 tons of powdered milk, hygiene kits, medical supplies and other provisions -- it had never previously worked with this major Islamic agency, or on such a scale.
And though the church continues to aid non-Muslim causes, only two of the six major disaster assistance efforts listed on its website since 2004 -- Hurricane Katrina and Africa measles vaccination campaigns -- did not primarily affect Islamic nations.
Locally, LDS helped the Islamic Society of Orange County's Al-Rahman Mosque in Garden Grove develop its library with a $15,000 donation. "Their beliefs are similar to ours," Robert Bremmer, a Mormon bishop, said at that facility's open-mosque day in 2005. "They have modest dress, and so do we. They believe in all the [Old Testament] prophets, as do we."
During Al-Rahman's most recent open house in August, attended by many Mormon elders and dignitaries, a tribute was paid to a deceased LDS official supportive of the mosque.
The effects of Muslim-Mormon interaction are showing in subtle ways too. Spending time with Mormons, Bundakji says, has inspired him to stop drinking coffee. "I thought they had a good idea," he says. "Now I don't drink caffeine and I don't have headaches anymore."
david.haldane@latimes.com
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-esposito2apr02,0,5220274.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Muslim true/false
What you think you know about them is likely wrong -- and that's dangerous.
By John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed
April 2, 2008
Winning hearts and minds -- the Bush administration, foreign policy wonks, even the U.S. military agree that this is the key to any victory over global terrorism. Yet our public diplomacy program has made little progress on improving America's image. Few seem to recognize that American ignorance of Islam and Muslims has been the fatal flaw.
How much do Americans know about the views and beliefs of Muslims around the world? According to polls, not much. Perhaps not surprising, the majority of Americans (66%) admit to having at least some prejudice against Muslims; one in five say they have "a great deal" of prejudice. Almost half do not believe American Muslims are "loyal" to this country, and one in four do not want a Muslim as a neighbor.
Why should such anti-Muslim bias concern us? First, it undermines the war on terrorism: Situations are misdiagnosed, root causes are misidentified and bad prescriptions do more harm than good. Second, it makes our public diplomacy sound like double-talk. U.S. diplomats are trying to convince Muslims around the world that the United States respects them and that the war on terrorism is not out to destroy Islam. Their task is made infinitely more difficult by the frequent airing of anti-Muslim sentiment on right-wing call-in radio, which is then heard around the world on the Internet.
Finally, public ignorance weakens our democracy at election time. Instead of a well-informed citizenry choosing our representatives, we are rendered vulnerable to manipulative fear tactics. We need look no further than the political attacks on Barack Obama. Any implied connection to Islam -- attending a Muslim school in Indonesia, the middle name Hussein -- is wielded to suggest that he is unfit for the presidency and used as fuel for baseless rumors.
Anti-Muslim sentiment fuels misinformation, and is fueled by it -- misinformation that is squarely contradicted by evidence.
Starting in 2001, the research firm Gallup embarked on the largest, most comprehensive survey of its kind, spending more than six years polling a population that represented more than 90% of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims. The results showed plainly that much of the conventional wisdom about Muslims -- views touted by U.S. policymakers and pundits and accepted by voters -- is simply false.
For instance, Gallup found that 72% of Americans disagreed with this statement: "The majority of those living in Muslim countries thought men and women should have equal rights." In fact, majorities in even some of the most conservative Muslim societies directly refute this assessment: 73% of Saudis, 89% of Iranians and 94% of Indonesians say that men and women should have equal legal rights. Majorities of Muslim men and women in dozens of countries around the world also believe that a woman should have the right to work outside the home at any job for which she is qualified (88% in Indonesia, 72% in Egypt and even 78% in Saudi Arabia), and to vote without interference from family members (87% in Indonesia, 91% in Egypt, 98% in Lebanon).
What about Muslim sympathy for terrorism? Many charge that Islam encourages violence more than other faiths, but studies show that Muslims around the world are at least as likely as Americans to condemn attacks on civilians. Polls show that 6% of the American public thinks attacks in which civilians are targets are "completely justified." In Saudi Arabia, this figure is 4%. In Lebanon and Iran, it's 2%.
Moreover, it's politics, not piety, that drives the small minority -- just 7% -- of Muslims to anti-Americanism at the level of condoning the attacks of 9/11. Looking across majority-Muslim countries, Gallup found no statistical difference in self-reported religiosity between those who sympathized with the attackers and those who did not. When respondents in select countries were asked in an open-ended question to explain their views of 9/11, those who condemned it cited humanitarian as well as religious reasons. For example, 20% of Kuwaitis who called the attacks "completely unjustified" explained this position by saying that terrorism was against the teachings of Islam. A respondent in Indonesia went so far as to quote a direct verse from the Koran prohibiting killing innocents. On the other hand, not a single respondent who condoned the attacks used the Koran as justification. Instead, they relied on political rationalizations, calling the U.S. an imperialist power or accusing it of wanting to control the world.
If most Muslims truly reject terrorism, why does it continue to flourish in Muslim lands? What these results indicate is that terrorism is much like other violent crime. Violent crimes occur throughout U.S. cities, but that is no indication of Americans' general acceptance of murder or assault. Likewise, continued terrorist violence is not proof that Muslims tolerate it. Indeed, they are its primary victims.
Still, the typical American cannot be blamed for these misperceptions. Media-content analyses show that the majority of U.S. TV news coverage of Islam is sharply negative. Americans are bombarded every day with news stories about Muslims and majority-Muslim countries in which vocal extremists, not evidence, drive perceptions.
Rather than allow extremists on either side to dictate how we discuss Islam and the West, we need to listen carefully to the voices of ordinary people. Our victory in the war on terrorism depends on it.
John L. Esposito is an Islamic studies professor at Georgetown University. Dalia Mogahed is executive director of the Center for Muslim Studies at Gallup. They co-wrote "Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think."
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Hamtramck, Michigan
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Hamtramck, Michigan
Location in Wayne County and the state of Michigan
Location in Wayne County and the state of Michigan
Coordinates: [show location on an interactive map] 42°23′52″N 83°3′26″W / 42.39778, -83.05722
Country
United States
State
Michigan
County
Wayne
Organized (township)
1798
Incorporated (village)
1901
Incorporated (city)
1922
Government
- Type
Council-Manager
- Mayor
Karen Majewski
- City Manager
Donald Crawford
Area
- Total
2.1 sq mi (5.4 km²)
- Land
2.1 sq mi (5.5 km²)
- Water
0.0 sq mi (0.0 km²)
Elevation
623 ft (192 m)
Population (2000)
- Total
22,976
- Density
10,900.5/sq mi (4,208.7/km²)
Time zone
EST (UTC-5)
- Summer (DST)
EDT (UTC-4)
ZIP codes
48211-48212
Area code(s)
313
FIPS code
26-36280[1]
GNIS feature ID
0627707[2]
Website: http://www.hamtramck.us/
Hamtramck (pronounced /hæmˈtɹæmɪk/) is a city in Wayne County of the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 22,976. Hamtramck is surrounded by the city of Detroit except for a small portion of the western border that touches the similarly surrounded city of Highland Park. Hamtramck is named for the soldier Jean François Hamtramck who was the first American commander of Fort Shelby, the fortification at Detroit.
Hamtramck was originally settled by German farmers, but Polish immigrants flooded into the area when the Dodge Brothers plant opened in 1914. Poles still make up a large proportion of the population. It is sometimes confused with Poletown, a traditional Polish neighborhood, which lies mostly in the city of Detroit and includes a small part of Hamtramck. As of the 2000 census, over 22% of Hamtramck's population is of Polish origin; in 1970, it was 90% Polish.
Over the past thirty years, a large number of immigrants from the Middle East (especially Yemen) and South Asia (especially Bangladesh) have moved to the city. As of the 2000 census, the city's foreign born population stood at 41.1%[1], making it Michigan's most internationally diverse city (see more at Demographics below).
Contents
[hide]
* 1 History
* 2 Government
* 3 Geography
* 4 Demographics
* 5 Culture
* 6 Economy
* 7 Education
* 8 Hamtramck Festivals
* 8.1 Pączki Day
* 8.2 Hamtramck Blowout
* 8.3 St. Florian Strawberry Festival
* 8.4 Hamtramck Labor Day Festival
* 8.5 Planet Ant Film & Video Festival in Hamtramck
* 9 Famous People From Hamtramck
* 10 See also
* 11 External links
* 12 References
[edit] History
Historical populations
Census
Pop.
%±
1910
3,559
—
1920
48,615
1266.0%
1930
56,268
15.7%
1940
49,839
-11.4%
1950
43,555
-12.6%
1960
34,137
-21.6%
1970
26,783
-21.5%
1980
21,300
-20.5%
1990
18,372
-13.7%
2000
22,976
25.1%
Est. 2006
21,615
-5.9%
* 1796 - Colonel Jean Francois Hamtramck took possession of Detroit after British troops evacuated.
* 1798 - The Township of Hamtramck was established.
* 1901 - Hamtramck was established as a village.
* 1908 - Saint Florian's parish is the first Catholic church in Hamtramck
* 1910 - Dodge Brothers Motor Car Company break ground for an automotive plant in Hamtramck; rapid influx of European immigrants begins.
* 1914 - Dodge Brothers plant begins operations.
* 1922 - Hamtramck is incorporated as a city to protect itself from annexation by Detroit; Peter C. Jezewski is the first mayor.
* 1926 - St. Florian's present church edifice is built.
* 1959 - Won Little League World Series of Baseball.
* 1960 - Phillip Kwik was born
* 1996 - Ordinanace to Preserve Park Land passed by voters.
* 2000 - Hamtramck goes into state receivership after running million dollar deficits and political in-fighting.
* 2006 - Hamtramck is out of state receivership after the resignation of state-appointed Emergency Financial Manager Louis Schimmel
[edit] Government
Hamtramck is governed under a council-manager form of government in which the elected mayor of the city is the chief executive officer. The city council hires a city manager, who becomes the city's chief administrative officer. The city manager has the vested powers and responsibility to appoint and remove all city employees and department heads, prepare the city's budget, and other city functions.[3]
The city council consists of six seats. The mayor is elected separately, and votes only in the case of a tie and on ordinances and contracts. The council elects its own mayor pro tem, who serves in the mayor's absence.
As of the November 2007 city elections, the current mayor of the city is Karen Majewski, Hamtramck's first female mayor[4]. The current City Council members are mayor pro tem Scott Klein, Shahab Ahmed, Abdul Al-Ghazali, Cathy Gordon, Alan Shulgon, and Catrina Stackpoole.
[edit] Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.1 sq mi(5.5 km² ), all land.
Hamtramck is mostly surrounded by Detroit except a small common border with the city of Highland Park. Hamtramck lies about five miles (8 km) from the center of Detroit. The I-75 Freeway roughly runs along this city's western border and I-94 runs near its southern border.
[edit] Demographics
As of the census² of 2000, there were 22,976 people, 8,033 households, and 4,851 families residing in the city. The population density was 10,900.5 per square mile (4,204.3/km²). There were 8,894 housing units at an average density of 4,219.6/sq mi (1,627.5/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 60.96% white (which includes people of Middle Eastern ancestry), 15.12% African American, 0.43% Native American, 10.37% Asian, 0.10% Pacific Islander, 1.14% from other races, and 11.89% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.31% of the population.
As of the 2000 Census, major ancestry groups reported by Hamtramck residents include:
· Polish - 22.9% · Black or African American - 15.1% · Yugoslavian - Albanians 10.5% · Arab (Excluding Iraqi and Lebanese) - 8.2% · Asian Indian - 5.4% · Ukrainian - 3.2% · German - 2.9% · Albanian - 2.8% · Bangladeshi - 2.7% · Irish - 2.2% · Italian - 1.8% · Russian - 1.4% · English - 1.1% · French (except Basque) - 0.8% · Lebanese - 0.7% · Scottish - 0.7% · Mexican - 0.6% · Pakistani - 0.6% · Macedonian - 0.5% · Iraqi - 0.5%
3.1% of Hamtramck's population reported Albanian ancestry. This made it the second most Albanian place in the United States by percentage of the population, second only to Fairview, North Carolina.[5]
There were 8,033 households out of which 33.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.3% were married couples living together, 16.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 39.6% were non-families. 32.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.74 and the average family size was 3.59.
In the city the population was spread out with 27.8% under the age of 18, 10.8% from 18 to 24, 31.9% from 25 to 44, 17.7% from 45 to 64, and 11.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females there were 110.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 109.6 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $26,616, and the median income for a family was $30,496. Males had a median income of $29,368 versus $22,346 for females. The per capita income for the city was $12,691. About 24.1% of families and 27.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.9% of those under age 18 and 18.1% of those age 65 or over.
[edit] Culture
Hamtramck flourished from 1910 to 1920 as thousands of European immigrants, particularly Polish, were attracted by the growing automobile industry. The city has grown increasingly ethnically diverse but still bears many reminders of its Polish ancestry in family names, street names and businesses. A recent survey found 26 native languages spoken by Hamtramck schoolchildren. The city's motto was "A League of Nations".
At the time of the 2000 census, Hamtramck was again experiencing considerable growth, with over 8,000 households and a population of almost 23,000.
In 1997, the Utne Reader named Hamtramck one of "the 15 hippest neighborhoods in the U.S. and Canada" in part for its punk and alternative music scene, its Buddhist temple, its cultural diversity, and its laid back blue-collar neighborhoods. And in May of 2003, Maxim Blender selected Hamtramck as the second "Most Rock N' Roll City" in the U.S., behind Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York City. Hamtramck is home of several of Michigan's most distinguished music venues.
In January 2004, members of the Al-Islah Islamic Center requested permission to use loudspeakers for the purpose of broadcasting the Islamic call to prayer. This request set off a contentious debate in the city, ostensibly about the noise that would be caused by the call to prayer, eventually garnering national attention. Ultimately, Hamtramck amended its noise ordinance in July 2004 regulating the volume level of all religious sounds.
[edit] Economy
General Motors' Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly plant, one of the automaker's premiere facilities, produces the Cadillac DTS and the Buick Lucerne. GM will begin manufacturing the new plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt in 2010.
The Polish Art Center, at 9539 Jos. Campau, is a local institution in Hamtramck. There, one can find many Polish art objects, books, foods, and art from other areas of Europe. The center's selection of Communist-era Polish theatrical and operatic posters is extremely unusual.
Kowalski Sausage Co. manufactures meat products at 2270 Holbrook Avenue.
[edit] Education
Hamtramck is served by Hamtramck Public Schools. [2].
[edit] Hamtramck Festivals
[edit] Pączki Day
Polish immigrants, residents of Hamtramck, and southeastern Michigan celebrate "Fat Tuesday" (known locally as Pączki Day) by lining up at the city's numerous Polish bakeries to purchase pączki. On Pączki Day, several local bars host parties with live entertainment, some starting as early as 7 A.M..
[edit] Hamtramck Blowout
The Hamtramck Blowout is an annual music festival in Hamtramck. It is said to be the largest festival of its sort in the world. There's usually over 200 bands there and the festival lasts for 4 days all over bars in the neighborhood.
[edit] St. Florian Strawberry Festival
Held annually in the first weekend in May at grounds at St. Florian Church.
[edit] Hamtramck Labor Day Festival
Held Labor Day weekend, ending with the Polish Day Parade on Labor Day. Live music on three stages, carnival area, beer, and food tents line a half mile stretch of Jos. Campau from Caniff to Carpenter.
[edit] Planet Ant Film & Video Festival in Hamtramck
The festival celebrates independent movies and the people who make them, featuring comedies, dramas, documentaries, animation and music videos.
[edit] Famous People From Hamtramck
* Jane "Peaches" Bartkowicz
* Rocky Fisher (USAC driver)
* John Hodiak
* Ed Klewicki
* Gail Kobe
* James Marcinkowski
* Warith Deen Muhammad
* Mitch Ryder, musician known for his "blue-eyed soul" stylings and creative medleys
* Rudy Tomjanovich - Former player and coach for The Houston Rockets. He was born and raised in Hamtramck and is a 1966 graduate of Hamtramck High School.
* Tom Tyler
[edit] See also
* Detroit
* Polish American
[edit] External links
* City of Hamtramck
* Hamtramck Firefighters
* Hamtramck Chamber of Commerce
* Hamtramck Labor Day Festival
* http://www.waynecounty.com/commun/hamtramck.html
* www.rootsweb.com/~miwayne/tour.html
* Preserve Our Parks in Hamtramck website
* Blowout Schedule and band info
* Hamtramck.org
* Hamtramck Star *
[edit] References
1. ^ American FactFinder. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
2. ^ US Board on Geographic Names. United States Geological Survey (2007-10-25). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
3. ^ Hamtramck City Manager Description, Accessed April 17, 2007
4. ^ City of Hamtramck, Department Descriptions, Accessed April 17, 2007
5. ^ http://www.epodunk.com/ancestry/Albanian.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-morlims2apr02,0,1545287.story
From the Los Angeles Times
U.S. Muslims and Mormons share deepening ties
The connection is based not on theology but on shared values and a sense of isolation from mainstream America.
By David Haldane
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 2, 2008
Friends
Email Picture
Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times
Steve Gilliland, a Mormon, left, listens as Maher Hathout, a Muslim, talks about the Koran in Hathout's home. Although of different religions, the two are close friends.
The Mormon Church has to be among the most outgoing on earth; in recent years its leaders have reached out to, among others, Latinos, Koreans, Catholics and Jews.
One of the most enthusiastic responses, however, has come from what some might consider a surprising source: U.S. Muslims.
"We are very aware of the history of Mormons as a group that was chastised in America," says Maher Hathout, a senior advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles. "They can be a good model for any group that feels alienated."
Which perhaps explains an open-mosque day held last fall at the Islamic Center of Irvine. More than half the guests were Mormons.
"A Mormon living in an Islamic society would be very comfortable," said Steve Young, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints attending the event.
The sentiment is echoed by Muslims. "When I go to a Mormon church I feel at ease," said Haitham Bundakji, former chairman of the Islamic Society of Orange County. "When I heard the president [of LDS] speak a few years ago, if I'd closed my eyes I'd have thought he was an imam."
Though the relationship has raised eyebrows and provided ammunition for critics of both religions, Mormons and Muslims have deepening ties in the United States.
What binds them has little to do with theology: Mormons venerate Jesus as interpreted by founder Joseph Smith, while Muslims view Muhammad as god's prophet. Based on shared values and a sense of isolation from mainstream America, the connection was intensified by 9/11 and cemented by the Southeast Asia tsunami. It is especially evident in Southern California, with large Mormons and Muslim populations.
The Mormon Church has become the biggest contributor to Buena Park-based Islamic Relief, touted by its administrators as the West's largest Muslim-based charity. Relief officials say the church has donated $20 million in goods and services since the 2004 tsunami, equal to about 20% of the charity's annual budget.
Brigham Young University in Utah, the church's major institution of higher learning, features what is thought to be one of the world's best programs for translating classic Islamic works from Arabic to English. Though created primarily for academic purposes, the results have impressed Muslims flattered by the close attention.
"It shows they have a keen interest in the Muslim world," said Levent Akbarut, a member of the Islamic Congregation of La Cañada-Flintridge.
And Mormons and Muslims say they often are co-hosts of educational and social programs at which, though some may be angling for long-term doctrinal influence, very little open proselytizing of each other seems to take place. "We have a very close and friendly relationship," said Keith Atkinson, West Coast LDS spokesman.Mormons "explain our faith to anyone who will listen" and "treat Muslims like anybody else," said Elder Dallin H. Oaks, a member of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, one of the church's top governing bodies in Salt Lake City. But Oaks added that "we don't preach to people who would be disenfranchised" or likely offended by the effort.
Arnold H. Green, a history professor at BYU, has traced how early Mormons in the 19th century were hounded by accusations that church founder Smith was the American Muhammad. The first Mormons angrily denied any connection to the Muslim prophet but gradually accepted some comparisons, particularly that both religions were founded by post-Christian prophets with strong sectarian views. "As the church grew into a global faith," Green wrote in a 2001 essay, "its posture toward Islam became . . . more positive" until, today, "the two faiths have become associated in several ways, including Mormonism's being called the Islam of America."
Both religions strongly emphasize family. They tend toward patriarchy, believing in feminine modesty, chastity and virtue. And although Islam discourages dancing involving both sexes, Mormons report that church-sponsored "modesty proms" commonly draw Islamic youths.
Both faiths adhere to religion-based health codes, including prohibitions against alcohol, but Mormons and Muslims share something more: membership in quickly growing minority religions that many other Americans have sometimes viewed with suspicion and scorn.
"We both come from traditions where there has been persecution in the past and continues to be prejudice," said Steve Gilliland, LDS director of Muslim relations for Southern California. "That helps us Mormons identify with Muslims."
A recent national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that although a thin majority of those polled expressed positive opinions of Muslims and Mormons, the number was significantly less than those favoring Roman Catholics or Jews.
More than half the respondents said they had little or no awareness of the precepts and practices of either faith. But 45% saw Islam as more likely than other religions to encourage violence, and 31% said that Mormons weren't Christian.
Armand L. Mauss, a Mormon and professor emeritus of sociology at Washington State University specializing in religious movements, said that unlike mainstream Christians and Jews, Muslims and Mormons "tend to make fairly stringent demands for religious conformity on their members." These practices, he said, include discouraging marriage outside the religion and observing dietary laws, such as the Mormon prohibition against tobacco, alcohol and caffeine.
But the clincher, according to Mauss, is that both communities "have been stung in recent years by the recurrence of scandals over which they have no control." For Muslims, the obvious example is 9/11.
For Mormons, Mauss says, the problem is polygamy, which, though rejected by the mainstream church more than a century ago, is still the first thing that occurs to many Americans when they think about the religion.
The relationship between the two religions has sometimes drawn ire.
Scattered throughout the Internet are numerous tracts, many by evangelical Christians, comparing the two religions in less-than-complimentary terms. "Modern Mohammedanism has its Mecca in Salt Lake," reads one. "Clearly the Koran was Joseph Smith's model, so closely followed as to exclude even the poor pretension of originality in his foul 'revelations.' "
In Southern California, the relationship between the two religions became closer after the Los Angeles riots in 1992, when the Mormon Church, hoping to promote diversity, invited several ethnic and religious groups to attend the opening of its new temple in San Diego. Muslims responded in higher numbers and with greater enthusiasm than most others.
The church later feted prominent Muslims in Salt Lake City.
"We were treated as dignitaries," said Shabbir Mansuri, founding director of the Muslim-based Institute on Religion and Civic Values in Fountain Valley, which encourages tolerance through research and education. "I met with the president of LDS and the governor of Utah. We were sitting in the front row of the Tabernacle. Mormons would give their right arms to be there."
The relationship deepened on Sept. 11, 2001. The first call Mansuri received that day came from Elder Oaks. "He was concerned and wanted to send us a very clear message that we were in their prayers," Mansuri recalls. "It was like having someone who loves and cares for you; not so much a Mormon reaching out to me as a fellow believer reaching out."
Oaks said he was primarily motivated by friendship. "I consider Shabbir Mansuri a brother," he said. "He's a good man who's doing good work. We try to be friendly to all people, and in the days after 9/11, lots of Muslims felt rejected."
In the months that followed, Mormons nationwide opened their churches to Islamic worshipers fearful of reprisals in their mosques. When Muslims needed a cannery to process the Bosnia-bound beef slaughtered for the annual Eid al-Adha observance, the Mormons offered theirs in Utah.
Following the tsunami that devastated many Islamic communities, the Mormon church, which has a history of contributing to a wide range of charities, began working closely with Islamic Relief. Though LDS had helped Muslims before -- providing 195 tons of powdered milk, hygiene kits, medical supplies and other provisions -- it had never previously worked with this major Islamic agency, or on such a scale.
And though the church continues to aid non-Muslim causes, only two of the six major disaster assistance efforts listed on its website since 2004 -- Hurricane Katrina and Africa measles vaccination campaigns -- did not primarily affect Islamic nations.
Locally, LDS helped the Islamic Society of Orange County's Al-Rahman Mosque in Garden Grove develop its library with a $15,000 donation. "Their beliefs are similar to ours," Robert Bremmer, a Mormon bishop, said at that facility's open-mosque day in 2005. "They have modest dress, and so do we. They believe in all the [Old Testament] prophets, as do we."
During Al-Rahman's most recent open house in August, attended by many Mormon elders and dignitaries, a tribute was paid to a deceased LDS official supportive of the mosque.
The effects of Muslim-Mormon interaction are showing in subtle ways too. Spending time with Mormons, Bundakji says, has inspired him to stop drinking coffee. "I thought they had a good idea," he says. "Now I don't drink caffeine and I don't have headaches anymore."
david.haldane@latimes.com
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-esposito2apr02,0,5220274.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Muslim true/false
What you think you know about them is likely wrong -- and that's dangerous.
By John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed
April 2, 2008
Winning hearts and minds -- the Bush administration, foreign policy wonks, even the U.S. military agree that this is the key to any victory over global terrorism. Yet our public diplomacy program has made little progress on improving America's image. Few seem to recognize that American ignorance of Islam and Muslims has been the fatal flaw.
How much do Americans know about the views and beliefs of Muslims around the world? According to polls, not much. Perhaps not surprising, the majority of Americans (66%) admit to having at least some prejudice against Muslims; one in five say they have "a great deal" of prejudice. Almost half do not believe American Muslims are "loyal" to this country, and one in four do not want a Muslim as a neighbor.
Why should such anti-Muslim bias concern us? First, it undermines the war on terrorism: Situations are misdiagnosed, root causes are misidentified and bad prescriptions do more harm than good. Second, it makes our public diplomacy sound like double-talk. U.S. diplomats are trying to convince Muslims around the world that the United States respects them and that the war on terrorism is not out to destroy Islam. Their task is made infinitely more difficult by the frequent airing of anti-Muslim sentiment on right-wing call-in radio, which is then heard around the world on the Internet.
Finally, public ignorance weakens our democracy at election time. Instead of a well-informed citizenry choosing our representatives, we are rendered vulnerable to manipulative fear tactics. We need look no further than the political attacks on Barack Obama. Any implied connection to Islam -- attending a Muslim school in Indonesia, the middle name Hussein -- is wielded to suggest that he is unfit for the presidency and used as fuel for baseless rumors.
Anti-Muslim sentiment fuels misinformation, and is fueled by it -- misinformation that is squarely contradicted by evidence.
Starting in 2001, the research firm Gallup embarked on the largest, most comprehensive survey of its kind, spending more than six years polling a population that represented more than 90% of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims. The results showed plainly that much of the conventional wisdom about Muslims -- views touted by U.S. policymakers and pundits and accepted by voters -- is simply false.
For instance, Gallup found that 72% of Americans disagreed with this statement: "The majority of those living in Muslim countries thought men and women should have equal rights." In fact, majorities in even some of the most conservative Muslim societies directly refute this assessment: 73% of Saudis, 89% of Iranians and 94% of Indonesians say that men and women should have equal legal rights. Majorities of Muslim men and women in dozens of countries around the world also believe that a woman should have the right to work outside the home at any job for which she is qualified (88% in Indonesia, 72% in Egypt and even 78% in Saudi Arabia), and to vote without interference from family members (87% in Indonesia, 91% in Egypt, 98% in Lebanon).
What about Muslim sympathy for terrorism? Many charge that Islam encourages violence more than other faiths, but studies show that Muslims around the world are at least as likely as Americans to condemn attacks on civilians. Polls show that 6% of the American public thinks attacks in which civilians are targets are "completely justified." In Saudi Arabia, this figure is 4%. In Lebanon and Iran, it's 2%.
Moreover, it's politics, not piety, that drives the small minority -- just 7% -- of Muslims to anti-Americanism at the level of condoning the attacks of 9/11. Looking across majority-Muslim countries, Gallup found no statistical difference in self-reported religiosity between those who sympathized with the attackers and those who did not. When respondents in select countries were asked in an open-ended question to explain their views of 9/11, those who condemned it cited humanitarian as well as religious reasons. For example, 20% of Kuwaitis who called the attacks "completely unjustified" explained this position by saying that terrorism was against the teachings of Islam. A respondent in Indonesia went so far as to quote a direct verse from the Koran prohibiting killing innocents. On the other hand, not a single respondent who condoned the attacks used the Koran as justification. Instead, they relied on political rationalizations, calling the U.S. an imperialist power or accusing it of wanting to control the world.
If most Muslims truly reject terrorism, why does it continue to flourish in Muslim lands? What these results indicate is that terrorism is much like other violent crime. Violent crimes occur throughout U.S. cities, but that is no indication of Americans' general acceptance of murder or assault. Likewise, continued terrorist violence is not proof that Muslims tolerate it. Indeed, they are its primary victims.
Still, the typical American cannot be blamed for these misperceptions. Media-content analyses show that the majority of U.S. TV news coverage of Islam is sharply negative. Americans are bombarded every day with news stories about Muslims and majority-Muslim countries in which vocal extremists, not evidence, drive perceptions.
Rather than allow extremists on either side to dictate how we discuss Islam and the West, we need to listen carefully to the voices of ordinary people. Our victory in the war on terrorism depends on it.
John L. Esposito is an Islamic studies professor at Georgetown University. Dalia Mogahed is executive director of the Center for Muslim Studies at Gallup. They co-wrote "Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think."
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Hamtramck, Michigan
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Hamtramck, Michigan
Location in Wayne County and the state of Michigan
Location in Wayne County and the state of Michigan
Coordinates: [show location on an interactive map] 42°23′52″N 83°3′26″W / 42.39778, -83.05722
Country
United States
State
Michigan
County
Wayne
Organized (township)
1798
Incorporated (village)
1901
Incorporated (city)
1922
Government
- Type
Council-Manager
- Mayor
Karen Majewski
- City Manager
Donald Crawford
Area
- Total
2.1 sq mi (5.4 km²)
- Land
2.1 sq mi (5.5 km²)
- Water
0.0 sq mi (0.0 km²)
Elevation
623 ft (192 m)
Population (2000)
- Total
22,976
- Density
10,900.5/sq mi (4,208.7/km²)
Time zone
EST (UTC-5)
- Summer (DST)
EDT (UTC-4)
ZIP codes
48211-48212
Area code(s)
313
FIPS code
26-36280[1]
GNIS feature ID
0627707[2]
Website: http://www.hamtramck.us/
Hamtramck (pronounced /hæmˈtɹæmɪk/) is a city in Wayne County of the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 22,976. Hamtramck is surrounded by the city of Detroit except for a small portion of the western border that touches the similarly surrounded city of Highland Park. Hamtramck is named for the soldier Jean François Hamtramck who was the first American commander of Fort Shelby, the fortification at Detroit.
Hamtramck was originally settled by German farmers, but Polish immigrants flooded into the area when the Dodge Brothers plant opened in 1914. Poles still make up a large proportion of the population. It is sometimes confused with Poletown, a traditional Polish neighborhood, which lies mostly in the city of Detroit and includes a small part of Hamtramck. As of the 2000 census, over 22% of Hamtramck's population is of Polish origin; in 1970, it was 90% Polish.
Over the past thirty years, a large number of immigrants from the Middle East (especially Yemen) and South Asia (especially Bangladesh) have moved to the city. As of the 2000 census, the city's foreign born population stood at 41.1%[1], making it Michigan's most internationally diverse city (see more at Demographics below).
Contents
[hide]
* 1 History
* 2 Government
* 3 Geography
* 4 Demographics
* 5 Culture
* 6 Economy
* 7 Education
* 8 Hamtramck Festivals
* 8.1 Pączki Day
* 8.2 Hamtramck Blowout
* 8.3 St. Florian Strawberry Festival
* 8.4 Hamtramck Labor Day Festival
* 8.5 Planet Ant Film & Video Festival in Hamtramck
* 9 Famous People From Hamtramck
* 10 See also
* 11 External links
* 12 References
[edit] History
Historical populations
Census
Pop.
%±
1910
3,559
—
1920
48,615
1266.0%
1930
56,268
15.7%
1940
49,839
-11.4%
1950
43,555
-12.6%
1960
34,137
-21.6%
1970
26,783
-21.5%
1980
21,300
-20.5%
1990
18,372
-13.7%
2000
22,976
25.1%
Est. 2006
21,615
-5.9%
* 1796 - Colonel Jean Francois Hamtramck took possession of Detroit after British troops evacuated.
* 1798 - The Township of Hamtramck was established.
* 1901 - Hamtramck was established as a village.
* 1908 - Saint Florian's parish is the first Catholic church in Hamtramck
* 1910 - Dodge Brothers Motor Car Company break ground for an automotive plant in Hamtramck; rapid influx of European immigrants begins.
* 1914 - Dodge Brothers plant begins operations.
* 1922 - Hamtramck is incorporated as a city to protect itself from annexation by Detroit; Peter C. Jezewski is the first mayor.
* 1926 - St. Florian's present church edifice is built.
* 1959 - Won Little League World Series of Baseball.
* 1960 - Phillip Kwik was born
* 1996 - Ordinanace to Preserve Park Land passed by voters.
* 2000 - Hamtramck goes into state receivership after running million dollar deficits and political in-fighting.
* 2006 - Hamtramck is out of state receivership after the resignation of state-appointed Emergency Financial Manager Louis Schimmel
[edit] Government
Hamtramck is governed under a council-manager form of government in which the elected mayor of the city is the chief executive officer. The city council hires a city manager, who becomes the city's chief administrative officer. The city manager has the vested powers and responsibility to appoint and remove all city employees and department heads, prepare the city's budget, and other city functions.[3]
The city council consists of six seats. The mayor is elected separately, and votes only in the case of a tie and on ordinances and contracts. The council elects its own mayor pro tem, who serves in the mayor's absence.
As of the November 2007 city elections, the current mayor of the city is Karen Majewski, Hamtramck's first female mayor[4]. The current City Council members are mayor pro tem Scott Klein, Shahab Ahmed, Abdul Al-Ghazali, Cathy Gordon, Alan Shulgon, and Catrina Stackpoole.
[edit] Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.1 sq mi(5.5 km² ), all land.
Hamtramck is mostly surrounded by Detroit except a small common border with the city of Highland Park. Hamtramck lies about five miles (8 km) from the center of Detroit. The I-75 Freeway roughly runs along this city's western border and I-94 runs near its southern border.
[edit] Demographics
As of the census² of 2000, there were 22,976 people, 8,033 households, and 4,851 families residing in the city. The population density was 10,900.5 per square mile (4,204.3/km²). There were 8,894 housing units at an average density of 4,219.6/sq mi (1,627.5/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 60.96% white (which includes people of Middle Eastern ancestry), 15.12% African American, 0.43% Native American, 10.37% Asian, 0.10% Pacific Islander, 1.14% from other races, and 11.89% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.31% of the population.
As of the 2000 Census, major ancestry groups reported by Hamtramck residents include:
· Polish - 22.9% · Black or African American - 15.1% · Yugoslavian - Albanians 10.5% · Arab (Excluding Iraqi and Lebanese) - 8.2% · Asian Indian - 5.4% · Ukrainian - 3.2% · German - 2.9% · Albanian - 2.8% · Bangladeshi - 2.7% · Irish - 2.2% · Italian - 1.8% · Russian - 1.4% · English - 1.1% · French (except Basque) - 0.8% · Lebanese - 0.7% · Scottish - 0.7% · Mexican - 0.6% · Pakistani - 0.6% · Macedonian - 0.5% · Iraqi - 0.5%
3.1% of Hamtramck's population reported Albanian ancestry. This made it the second most Albanian place in the United States by percentage of the population, second only to Fairview, North Carolina.[5]
There were 8,033 households out of which 33.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.3% were married couples living together, 16.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 39.6% were non-families. 32.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.74 and the average family size was 3.59.
In the city the population was spread out with 27.8% under the age of 18, 10.8% from 18 to 24, 31.9% from 25 to 44, 17.7% from 45 to 64, and 11.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females there were 110.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 109.6 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $26,616, and the median income for a family was $30,496. Males had a median income of $29,368 versus $22,346 for females. The per capita income for the city was $12,691. About 24.1% of families and 27.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.9% of those under age 18 and 18.1% of those age 65 or over.
[edit] Culture
Hamtramck flourished from 1910 to 1920 as thousands of European immigrants, particularly Polish, were attracted by the growing automobile industry. The city has grown increasingly ethnically diverse but still bears many reminders of its Polish ancestry in family names, street names and businesses. A recent survey found 26 native languages spoken by Hamtramck schoolchildren. The city's motto was "A League of Nations".
At the time of the 2000 census, Hamtramck was again experiencing considerable growth, with over 8,000 households and a population of almost 23,000.
In 1997, the Utne Reader named Hamtramck one of "the 15 hippest neighborhoods in the U.S. and Canada" in part for its punk and alternative music scene, its Buddhist temple, its cultural diversity, and its laid back blue-collar neighborhoods. And in May of 2003, Maxim Blender selected Hamtramck as the second "Most Rock N' Roll City" in the U.S., behind Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York City. Hamtramck is home of several of Michigan's most distinguished music venues.
In January 2004, members of the Al-Islah Islamic Center requested permission to use loudspeakers for the purpose of broadcasting the Islamic call to prayer. This request set off a contentious debate in the city, ostensibly about the noise that would be caused by the call to prayer, eventually garnering national attention. Ultimately, Hamtramck amended its noise ordinance in July 2004 regulating the volume level of all religious sounds.
[edit] Economy
General Motors' Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly plant, one of the automaker's premiere facilities, produces the Cadillac DTS and the Buick Lucerne. GM will begin manufacturing the new plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt in 2010.
The Polish Art Center, at 9539 Jos. Campau, is a local institution in Hamtramck. There, one can find many Polish art objects, books, foods, and art from other areas of Europe. The center's selection of Communist-era Polish theatrical and operatic posters is extremely unusual.
Kowalski Sausage Co. manufactures meat products at 2270 Holbrook Avenue.
[edit] Education
Hamtramck is served by Hamtramck Public Schools. [2].
[edit] Hamtramck Festivals
[edit] Pączki Day
Polish immigrants, residents of Hamtramck, and southeastern Michigan celebrate "Fat Tuesday" (known locally as Pączki Day) by lining up at the city's numerous Polish bakeries to purchase pączki. On Pączki Day, several local bars host parties with live entertainment, some starting as early as 7 A.M..
[edit] Hamtramck Blowout
The Hamtramck Blowout is an annual music festival in Hamtramck. It is said to be the largest festival of its sort in the world. There's usually over 200 bands there and the festival lasts for 4 days all over bars in the neighborhood.
[edit] St. Florian Strawberry Festival
Held annually in the first weekend in May at grounds at St. Florian Church.
[edit] Hamtramck Labor Day Festival
Held Labor Day weekend, ending with the Polish Day Parade on Labor Day. Live music on three stages, carnival area, beer, and food tents line a half mile stretch of Jos. Campau from Caniff to Carpenter.
[edit] Planet Ant Film & Video Festival in Hamtramck
The festival celebrates independent movies and the people who make them, featuring comedies, dramas, documentaries, animation and music videos.
[edit] Famous People From Hamtramck
* Jane "Peaches" Bartkowicz
* Rocky Fisher (USAC driver)
* John Hodiak
* Ed Klewicki
* Gail Kobe
* James Marcinkowski
* Warith Deen Muhammad
* Mitch Ryder, musician known for his "blue-eyed soul" stylings and creative medleys
* Rudy Tomjanovich - Former player and coach for The Houston Rockets. He was born and raised in Hamtramck and is a 1966 graduate of Hamtramck High School.
* Tom Tyler
[edit] See also
* Detroit
* Polish American
[edit] External links
* City of Hamtramck
* Hamtramck Firefighters
* Hamtramck Chamber of Commerce
* Hamtramck Labor Day Festival
* http://www.waynecounty.com/commun/hamtramck.html
* www.rootsweb.com/~miwayne/tour.html
* Preserve Our Parks in Hamtramck website
* Blowout Schedule and band info
* Hamtramck.org
* Hamtramck Star *
[edit] References
1. ^ American FactFinder. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
2. ^ US Board on Geographic Names. United States Geological Survey (2007-10-25). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
3. ^ Hamtramck City Manager Description, Accessed April 17, 2007
4. ^ City of Hamtramck, Department Descriptions, Accessed April 17, 2007
5. ^ http://www.epodunk.com/ancestry/Albanian.html
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