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Yet another task for Ellison: The congressman-elect can do more than be a voice for fellow Muslims One of my dumbest moves as an editorial writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press about 20 years ago was provoked by a surge of news stories about how a handful of bigots were making ugly noises in southern Minnesota. Someone else on the page was charged with writing the obligatory condemnatory editorial, but I urged him to include a paragraph about how Minnesota's leading Republican politicians ought to rail against them, too. Let's just say my unsolicited and clumsy advice didn't work out as planned, as the offensive implication left in the piece was that since the bigots were "right wingers," and since Republicans flap from that half of the continuum, ergo, the two groups had something in common -- when they had nothing in common whatsoever. I continue to take full and cringing responsibility for the slander. What does any of this, you may ask, have to do with Congressman-elect Keith Ellison? In the same way ordinary men and women on the right inhabit a different universe from crackpots on the (supposed) right, the great majority of Muslims, both in the United States and around the world, inhabit a different universe from Muslims who crave to kill us. Or, more to the pertinent point, Keith Ellison, as a Muslim-American, inhabits a different universe from our most mortal enemies. I don't want to be misunderstood on the distinction in the smallest way. Nevertheless, a major and unique burden has fallen on his newly elected shoulders. Better put, a major and unique opportunity is before him for the seizing. One of the main arguments for electing larger numbers of minorities to public office is that such men and women are best equipped, not just to represent, but to explain and interpret their brethren to others. Matters are generally not framed this way, in language that may sound patronizing or worse. But explaining and interpreting to wider audiences, say, the highest hopes and deepest fears in a discrete community's heart, is a legitimate part of what it means to represent and advocate on behalf of a people. So it would be perfectly appropriate for Ellison -- in addition to representing every single diverse soul in the Fifth District to the best of his ability -- to also see it as his job to be a special voice in the name of his co-religionists. He is, after all, the first and only Muslim ever elected to Congress. But as the first and only member of his faith ever elected to Congress, I hope he also sees it as his job not just to interpret Muslim sensibilities to Americans who worship differently, but also the reverse. Getting to the hard marrow, Keith Ellison would seem to be better equipped than any other member of Congress to be a voice of accurate information about the United States to millions around the world who view our country in anything but accurate, much less decent terms. This second job promises to be tougher than the first, for no other reason than many of the bravest people in the world in coming decades will be Muslims who challenge extremists. Good people risking their lives, and those of their families, opposing other Muslims intent on slaughtering Christians and Jews, among others. Is this uninvited suggestion particularly fair to Ellison as he starts a new career? No way. Am I singling him out just because of his religion? Yes, clearly. Is there something uncomfortable and maybe even distasteful in all of it? Yes, again. Yet public service means not only serving to the best of one's God-given talents, but also in ways commanded by circumstance and fate. This would seem to be especially true in times of war.
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