Mamdani, Khan, Nenshi
Zohran Mamdani1, who recently took office as Mayor of New York City is a very exceptional individual. But he's not all that unique.
For example there's Sadiq Khan2, who's been Mayor of London in the UK for more than 9 years, and Naheed Nenshi3 who served as Mayor of Calgary in Canada for 11.
Now all three of these come from different communities and have different life experiences but they are all or have been South Asian origin left leaning mayors of large cities in Anglophone countries, and they're all Muslim.
And I want to focus on how they have been effective leaders as Muslims. Mamdani is just starting this time in office of course but he ran a historic campaign while Nenshi and Khan are incredibly popular and won re-election multiple times.
There's a quote out there goes "Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do." and when we're talking about Islam as a faith and how it informs these three as Muslims there's a lot of different aspects that we can focus on.
For example there's
- the Theology and doctrines of Islam
- there's what the faith says about Personal behaviour
- There's the teachings on Justice and Welfare
and I think the most important takeaway I have is that all three of these leaders have decided NOT to focus on the theology and personal behaviour aspects of their faith. And that decision is what allows them to organize and galvanize people to focus on issues of justice and welfare on which Islam, for these three Muslims at least, seems to be very lefty, progressive... and unifying across communities.
By not focusing on theology and doctrine they are able to work with people of a diversity of faiths and philosophies on welfare issues for everyone.
By not policing and demanding others follow their own codes of personal behaviour they are able to organize with groups of people that might have different ones on common matters of justice, most visibly the pride community.
This is a lesson for the rest of us as Muslims in being effective on the most important matters facing us.
The more we focus on fighting each over differences in theologies the less we are able to work together on the welfare of our communities. Khan is Sunni, Nenshi is Ismaili Shia, and Mamdani is Twelver Shia, and they have made sure that this doesn't matter by not making this a focus of theirs.
The more that we police each other's behaviours the less we are able to work with each other and with non Muslims on matters of justice which should be front and center in everything we do nowadays with how many Muslims are suffering from oppression and terror in so many parts of the World. This is why we are so disjointed and disunited when our brothers and sisters in Palestine and Sudan and so many other parts of the world need us to be unified in purpose and action.
I think this is why the novel that I wrote "Under the Full and Crescent Moon", available everywhere books are sold, appreciate the support, describes a fairly utopian society as the Muslim woman who leads it is neutral on doctrinal issues such as different schools of law and on behaviour choices such as the hijab, and she focuses on the justice and welfare of the city that she leads.
I'm not saying that theology and personal life choices are not important and we should never discuss them but these discussions should be done with respect and can never be allowed to turn into heated arguments and worse that cripple our ability to work together in these dire times. Know that if you are going to engage in sectarian bickering and demanding people behave in certain ways, you are choosing to weaken our unity on fighting for justice and frankly doing exactly what our oppressors want you to be doing.
All opinions my own, in the end only god knows best.