A city in Michigan is apparently the first in the nation to elect an all-Muslim city council, reflecting a more racially diverse landscape in local governance.

Three candidates — Khalil Refai, Amanda Jaczkowski and Adam Albarmaki — won election to the City Council in Hamtramck last week and will be joining three current members. All six identify as Muslim. Hamtramck, part of the greater Detroit area, also elected its first Muslim mayor, Amer Ghalib, to round out the city’s government.

The Muslim Public Affairs Counsel, a national American Muslim advocacy and public policy organization, said it is the first and only city that they are aware of that has a full Muslim city council and mayor.

The newly elected council members will begin their term in January, and the members say religion will not be a factor in how they govern, reported The Detroit Free Press.

About half of the city’s nearly 29,000 residents is estimated to be Muslim, according to census ancestry data, with many being of Arab and South Asian ethnicity. The city was originally a hub for Polish American immigrants and later became a haven to other immigrants as well, said M. Baqir Mohie El-Deen, policy program manager at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, or MPAC, who is also Michigan native.

Five of the council members are immigrants, and one is a convert to Islam, reported the Free Press.

Source: NBC News