MINNEAPOLIS — The months after Sept. 11, 2001, were not easy ones for Muslims in Minnesota.
The state was thrust into the spotlight as the home of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person prosecuted in the U.S. for the attacks. Federal authorities closed down a Muslim-owned money transfer agency with alleged ties to Al Qaeda. And Minneapolis police fatally shot a mentally ill Muslim man from Somalia.
"The community was shell-shocked," said Hussein Samatar, a businessman who moved to Minnesota from Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1994.
Yet five years later, Minnesota may elect the first Muslim member of Congress.
State Rep. Keith Ellison, a black attorney from Detroit who converted to Islam as a college student, is not a member of the burgeoning Somalian community in Minneapolis. But his journey to the brink of political history reflects how immigration is transforming politics even on the nation's northern edge.
Ellison, 43, won the Democratic primary in the state's 5th Congressional District last month in part by bringing new Muslim voters into a coalition that drew, in part, on Minneapolis' black, Jewish, and gay and lesbian communities. He celebrated his primary victory at an East African restaurant in a Somalian neighborhood.
Favored to win in the heavily Democratic district, Ellison has courted Muslim support not just in Minnesota but nationwide. Last weekend, he flew to Florida for a fundraiser hosted by one of that state's Muslim leaders.
His candidacy is a "huge victory for both Muslim Americans and America," said Agha Saeed, chairman of the American Muslim Taskforce, a California-based coalition working to elect Muslims to public office. It "has eradicated two stereotypes: one against Muslims, that they cannot work and succeed in a democratic setup, and the other against the United States, that it is not a tolerant society."
A generation ago, Minnesota would have been an improbable place for Ellison's success.
Though the state has nurtured a progressive strain in its politics for generations, its diversity was usually defined in terms of Swedes, Norwegians and Finns.
Today, immigrants still make up a relatively small percentage of the state's population. According to the latest census estimates, 6% of Minnesota residents are foreign-born, compared with 27% in California. (In Minneapolis, the proportion is 16% -- higher than the nation's 12% but lower than Los Angeles' 40%.)
