A letter to Mayor Mamdani and Senator-elect El-Sayed

详细摘要

Drawing on stories of Jesus, Moses and the Prophet Muhammad, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed can teach about three candid reminders: guard the public trust, welcome scrutiny and govern for the marginalized.

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Drawing on stories of Jesus, Moses and the Prophet Muhammad, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed can teach about three candid reminders: guard the public trust, welcome scrutiny and govern for the marginalized.

reetings from Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy, where many of us have been cheering you on from across the ocean. Zohran Mamdani is nearly through his first year running New York City, and Abdul El-Sayed is about to walk into the United States Senate as its first elected Muslim member.

Many Indonesians have followed your journeys closely. Not only because you’re Muslims who won in America, but because your public lives may show the world what Islam looks like when it carries public responsibility.

Allow me, as an elder brother in faith and an admirer from afar, to live up to that reputation and share four hopes.

First, be leaders for everyone. Many people voted for you, and many did not. Your office now belongs to all of them. And “everyone” means more than people of different religions. It also includes the poor and the homeless, the migrant, the disabled, the elderly who live alone and those whose identities and ways of life are mocked or pushed aside by society, even when their lives are different from your own.

Here, Jesus, whom we honor as a great prophet, is the best teacher. He was often criticized for the company he kept. He sat at the table with people that respectable society had cast out, and he touched the sick whom others would not go near.

He did not first ask whether they deserved his kindness. He simply gave it. A leader’s heart is measured by how he treats those who can do nothing for him in return.

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文章开头，摘自The Jakarta Post。如需阅读全文，请前往媒体网站。