(Time) When Abdullah Hammoud was elected mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, last year, he became the city’s first ever Muslim and Arab American leader. This week, he is making history once again — this time, by making Dearborn the first U.S. city to offer Eid al-Fitr, one of Islam’s major holidays that marks the end of Ramadan, as a paid holiday for city employees.
Hammoud, whose family hails from Lebanon, tells TIME that he didn’t set out for Dearborn to be the first. In fact, he says it wasn’t until after the news was announced that he realized that the city was even setting a precedent. (Representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a U.S.-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, confirmed that Dearborn is the first U.S. city to do this.)
