Muslim

Britain’s post colonial reckoning can be summed up in a single sentence delivered last June at the Glastonbury music festival when rapper duo Bob Vylan shouted “You want your country back? You’re not getting it back!” to an overwhelmingly white, middle-class audience roaring its approval. The message was unmistakable: Britain has been colonized – and its dominant culture not only accepts, but celebrates, it. Britain’s transformation has been driven not by invasion, but by invitation. The country’s population, political culture and national cohesion has been radically reshaped by immigration – one wave in the 1950s, driven by post-World War Two labor shortages, and another following Brexit.

Last week, the Dearborn Heights Police Department revealed the nation’s first-ever officer uniform patch featuring Arabic script. It was designed by a policewoman named Emily Murdoch, and on first glance it might look like a gesture of inclusivity. But is this really progress – or it it, in fact, a sign of cultural fragmentation?As an Iraqi-American Muslim, I feel compelled to answer. I came to the United States after Iraq was swallowed by Iranian-backed militias and sectarian violence. I know exactly what happens when identity politics becomes the organizing principle of civic life. And the last thing I ever wanted to see in America is the export of that same toxic culture – one that thrives on division, preferential treatment and symbolic displays of power.

Zohran Mamdani is defensive about his faith and has maintained that his culture is “not a costume.” Why then, New Yorkers might wonder, does he not extend this courtesy to others? In December, he shared an Indian dance video about Hanukkah by comedy group the Geeta Brothers who performed behind a menorah, spinning dreidels, while singing Hey Hanukkah. The Punjabi track features lyrics: tera dreidel bara ghummay (your dreidel spins a lot), taazi roti kosher howay (let’s have fresh kosher bread), with a repeated chorus of mombatiyan, which means candles. Mamdani also wished his followers a merry Christmas using a video for the Geeta Brothers’ Jingle Bells track where the group woos a woman.