| Born American in the wrong country, Arjumand Hashmi rectified the error. Read more about this moderate Muslim at the link. |
[NY Times] Mr. Musharraf may seem an unlikely adviser to the mayor of a Southern town where crickets chirp shrilly and the leafy streets are dominated by places pledging to fix your truck. But even more unlikely is the man he advised: Mayor Arjumand Hashmi, a Pak-born cardiologist who has become one of the United States' most improbable politicians.
He is like the opening line of a joke: "So a Texan, a Mohammedan, a Republican, a doctor and the mayor of Gay Paree are sitting at a bar ..." Except that he is, by himself, all of the people in the joke.
Part of his strategy has been to embrace his newness to the city, where he arrived in 2006 after many years in Tampa, Florida. He says that, because he is an outsider, no one in Gay Paree is his cousin or classmate, and that he is thus free to govern by reason. He says he is trying to save the city from the cronyism that he has seen strangle his own country: "In most of third world countries, yes, there are rules and laws and regulations. But it ends up that related people get things done," he said. He saw that same phenomenon afflicting Gay Paree. "I have lived it personally and seen why it doesn't work," he said.
| One wonders what his knowledge of Pakistan leads him to think about controlling the border... |
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