It looks like Imam Yahya Hendi has his first(?) Muslim Mayor.   If you recall last week we wrote that Hendi, speaking to an audience in Saudi Arabia, predicted that the US would have 30 Muslim Mayors by the year 2015.   Yesterday I received this news from Always on Watch who directed me to the Neocon Command Center for this story.

MACON, Ga. — Some Macon residents have called for demonstrations and boycotts after the mayor of the central Georgia city formally reached out to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez with a declaration of solidarity.

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He (the mayor) announced in February that he had converted to Islam and was working to legally change his name to Hakim Mansour Ellis. Ellis, who was raised Christian, said he became a Sunni Muslim during a December ceremony in the west African nation of Senegal.

I went back and checked my stats on how many refugees have been resettled in Georgia since 1983.    Georgia has a substantial refugee population.  Now, I’m not saying this got Mayor Ellis elected but it’s something to think about.    From 1983 to 2004,  48,817  refugees have been resettled there,  9,365 of those are from 5 primarily Muslim countries of Africa.    Also, it came to our attention in Hagerstown that at least  one of our Somali refugees moved to Georgia to be with her kind of folks.   Others of our Somalis moved to the Pacific Northwest where other Somalis are congregating.

You know this brings me to something I’ve been pondering.   Why is it that no one would ever call the Somalis racist for moving to where lots of other Somalis are (and away from us folks who are a differant color and religion)?  However, if we said we wanted to live with people who have our American culture, we would be racist, xenophobic, bigoted and unenlightened hate mongers.

Anyway, I  am getting away from my story.    According to Heidi Boas* in her lengthy 2007 paper entitled, “The New Face of America’s Refugees:  African Refugee Resettlement to the United States:” 

….several of the individuals interviewed for this paper identified the Congressional Black Caucus as one of the most influential groups advocating over the past decade for increased African refugee resettlement to the United States.

I guess what I’m getting around to is that refugee resettlement is more than giving some downtrodden folks a better life, it’s about politics and getting the votes and changing our communities.   It’s about changing America.

*I don’t have this paper on-line but if you are interested, please e-mail us at refugeeresettlementwatch@vigilantfreedom.com 

Can any of you direct me to another city with a Muslim Mayor?   We could keep a running tally and see how well Hendi does with his predictions!