(Detroit Free Press) In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful, the man reached up and pulled away a scarlet cloth, revealing unto the people a sign.
It was a cold day, late in winter. Maybe a hundred people — almost all of them men — had gathered on a grassy street corner lot in Hamtramck, a city of 2 square miles that sits like an island in the middle of Detroit. Among them were local businessmen, elected officials, religious leaders and a couple of stray hipsters watching tentatively from the back of the crowd as one dignitary after another took their turn at the microphone.
They were here to make history by changing it.
The nation’s first and only all-Muslim city council had just voted to rename Holbrook Avenue — one of Hamtramck’s main arteries — Palestine Avenue, in reaction to the Israel-Hamas war, then in its fourth month.
