Voters in Gwinnett County are sending a new state senator to the Capitol, and he’s not like anybody else in any Georgia legislative chamber, ever. Sheikh Rahman (pronounced ‘shake ra-MAHN’) is an immigrant from Bangladesh and is believed to be the first Muslim ever elected to the legislature.
Georgia Senate District 5 is in Gwinnett County, stretching from the DeKalb County line, up along I-85 to Lawrenceville. And it’s one of the most ethnically diverse legislative districts in America.
Rahman grew up in Bangladesh, moved to the US in early 1981 – and says he learned some rough lessons about being an immigrant.
“In the height of the Iran hostage crisis, I was in Newton North Carolina. Somebody threw a beer can and said ‘hey raghead, go home’. And I wasn’t even Middle Eastern,” Rahman said in an interview Friday.
When he ran for the state senate this year, he did so in a district that’s home to Immigrants from everywhere in the world – though very few of them are from Bangladesh. Rahman says it turned out that detail didn’t matter so much.
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