Which U.S. municipalities elected their first Muslim mayors before 2021, and what were the election years?
Executive summary
A clear national milestone predates the 2021 wave: Mohammed Hameeduddin’s election as mayor of Teaneck, New Jersey, in 2010 is documented as one of the first municipal breakthroughs for Muslim Americans in mayoral office [1]. Reporting then highlights a separate, concentrated set of “firsts” that occurred in Michigan in the November 2021 elections — Dearborn, Hamtramck and Dearborn Heights — but the sources do not supply a comprehensive, independently verified roster of all U.S. municipalities that elected their first Muslim mayors prior to 2021 [2] [3] [4].
1. The confirmed pre-2021 municipal first: Teaneck
The clearest, sourced example of a municipality electing its first Muslim mayor before 2021 is Teaneck, New Jersey, where Mohammed Hameeduddin won the mayoralty in 2010; that fact is cited in multiple outlets noting his 2010 election and his place in the chronology of Muslim mayoral firsts in the U.S. [1]. This election has been referenced subsequently as a precedent when later local and national outlets discussed Muslim Americans’ growing municipal representation [1].
2. The 2021 Michigan surge — why it matters and why it’s not “before 2021”
A distinct and widely reported turning point came in November 2021 when voters in three Detroit-area municipalities elected Muslim mayors for the first time in those cities: Abdullah Hammoud in Dearborn, Amer Ghalib in Hamtramck, and Bill Bazzi in Dearborn Heights (the latter having been appointed earlier in 2021 and then elected) — events covered by PBS, CAIR-Michigan and regional reporting [2] [3] [4]. These 2021 wins are often lumped in stories describing a new wave of Muslim and Arab American local leadership, but they fall after the cutoff the question specifies and therefore do not qualify as “before 2021” [2] [3].
3. What the sources do not allow — gaps in a national tally
Available reporting compiled here does not provide a comprehensive, source-cited list of every U.S. municipality that elected its first Muslim mayor prior to 2021; beyond Teaneck’s 2010 milestone, outlets point to New Jersey as a state that “led the way” with multiple Muslim mayors but without giving verified election years for each municipality in the excerpts provided [5]. CAIR’s directory documents many Muslim elected officials and notes Michigan’s concentration of Muslim mayors, but it is framed as a snapshot of officeholders rather than an authoritative historical timeline of firsts nationwide [6].
4. Alternative interpretations and implicit agendas in coverage
Coverage often frames municipal firsts as either isolated breakthroughs (Teaneck 2010) or as part of political waves (Michigan 2021); those frames serve different narratives — one emphasizing pioneering individuals, the other emphasizing demographic and political shifts in particular regions — and some sources (local advocacy groups and CAIR) have an implicit agenda of highlighting representation gains, which can prioritize certain wins for community visibility over exhaustive historical accounting [1] [3] [2] [6]. National summaries written after 2021 sometimes retroactively foreground more recent high-profile wins (for example, in 2025 for New York City), which can obscure earlier, smaller-scale firsts unless careful records are kept [7] [8].
5. Bottom line and reporting limitation
Based on the provided reporting, the verifiable answer to “Which U.S. municipalities elected their first Muslim mayors before 2021, and what were the election years?” is narrowly anchored by Teaneck, New Jersey — Mohammed Hameeduddin, elected in 2010 — with additional notable firsts occurring in November 2021 in Michigan municipalities (Dearborn, Hamtramck, Dearborn Heights) that do not meet the “before 2021” criterion [1] [2] [3] [4]. The sources do not supply a comprehensive pre-2021 list beyond Teaneck, and they do not provide election years for other New Jersey municipalities mentioned as having Muslim mayors, so a full national roster of pre-2021 municipal “firsts” cannot be confidently produced from the material provided [5] [6].