A Cancelled Eid, A Governor’s Threat, and An Open Letter From The Pakistani Community To Syed Javaid Anwar
By Raja Zahid Akhtar Khanzada
In a Texas city called Grand Prairie, a simple thing was about to happen. A small Eid al-Adha celebration. A water park rented for an afternoon. The quiet joy of six hundred Muslim families who only wanted what every American family wants on a holiday, a few hours of laughter, a few hours of belonging, a few hours when the children could run barefoot on warm tile and shout the way children are meant to shout. And then, in the span of a single Wednesday evening, the full weight of state power descended upon this small thing and crushed it, and in the silence that followed, an old and painful question rose once again before the American Muslim community of Texas, the question that always rises at moments like these, the question of where our own people stand when power changes its face and arrives at our door.
Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark, owned by the city of Grand Prairie near Dallas County and funded by a quarter-cent sales tax that the voters themselves approved, was scheduled to host the DFW Epic Eid celebration on the first of June. This would have been the third such gathering. Last year, more than six hundred souls gathered there in joy. Dr. Aminah Knight, an educator and a mother of six children, had rented the park privately, paid her fees in full, and was simply preparing to give her community a dignified afternoon of celebration. Then an old flyer began to circulate on social media bearing the words “Muslim Only,” and that single image was enough to turn a private gathering into a state controversy. Without verifying anything, without picking up the phone, without giving the woman a chance to explain that she had already changed the language, Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Wednesday evening sent a formal letter to Mayor Ron Jensen threatening that if the city did not cancel the event by the eleventh of May, the state would withdraw five hundred and thirty thousand dollars in public safety grants. He called the gathering “religious discrimination” and “unconstitutional,” and he invoked HB 4211, the law he had himself signed, the law that prohibits what he calls “Muslim-only no-go zones.” His argument was that just as a “Whites Only” event at a publicly funded venue would violate the Constitution, so too would a “Muslims Only” event. Within hours, that very same Wednesday evening, the city folded. It cancelled the celebration with a quiet announcement, saying only that “after further review and in the best interest of the City of Grand Prairie, the June 1 Eid event has been cancelled.”
Dr. Aminah Knight had already, days earlier, changed the flyer. She had replaced “Muslim Only” with “Modest Dress Only.” She had announced that people of every faith were welcome. She had explained, with the patience of a woman who has spent her life teaching children, that her aim was never to exclude anyone, only to create a space where Muslim families could celebrate Eid in modesty and grace. After the cancellation, she told FOX 4 in a voice heavy with sadness, “I am sad. I started receiving emails and phone calls in which I was being threatened, in which I was being told to leave America.” In her press conversations she said quietly that her faith was not a thing to be feared. Meanwhile, on the other side of the state, more than forty members of the Texas State Legislature wrote a letter to the Governor in the strongest terms condemning his threat. They wrote that the Governor’s office was using the financial power of the state to manufacture an accusation of discrimination, and to single out Muslim Texans for treatment that no other faith community has been forced to endure.
After this incident, several respected members of our community reached out to me. They shared their pain with me. They drew my attention toward a question that now hums quietly through the conscience of the entire Pakistani-American community of Texas, like a deep note that will not stop ringing. And it is here that the real story begins, the story that travels far beyond a single news headline and reaches into the deepest chambers of who we are as a community, and this is the story I wish to place today, with all the respect and love and adab that a younger man owes to an elder, before a friend, a guide, and a leader of our community. He is the well-known oil businessman Syed Javaid Anwar, and his name appears in this column not by accident, but at the gentle insistence of those very members of the community who, in the wake of this incident, felt with great urgency that in such a moment a man of his stature, his voice, his presence, and his guidance would be the community’s greatest need.
The largest individual donor to Governor Greg Abbott is not, as one might expect, some traditional white oil baron of Texas. He is Syed Javaid Anwar Sahib, born in Karachi, Pakistan, an immigrant who became an American, the pride of our community, a son of our Karachi, a luminous lamp of our Texas, and a man who occupies a singular place among the Pakistani-American businessmen of this country. I bring his name forward in this essay not as a complaint, but with the same hope that a younger brother carries when he turns toward his elder brother, with the trust a community places in its elder, with the faith a family places in its patriarch.
Syed Javaid Anwar Sahib’s story is our story. He himself tells it with a quiet pride, that a single mother raised him in Karachi on the modest wages of a telephone operator, that his grandparents helped pay his school fees, that he came to America on a one-way ticket, that he earned his degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Wyoming, that he labored in the Texas oilfields, that in 1984 he started his own company, and that with the blessings of the Permian Basin he built Midland Energy Inc. into a small empire. This is the classic immigrant story, and it is a story that deserves all our pride. But his true greatness has never been his commercial success. His true greatness lies in his heart, in that generous heart which on the very morning Hurricane Harvey struck wrote a fifty thousand dollar check to the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, that heart which every year hosts one of the largest Ramadan iftar dinners in Houston, that heart which quietly funds Pakistani and Muslim institutions, that heart which keeps its door open for every newly arrived Pakistani student in Texas, that heart which honors friendships, which nurtures relationships, which extends a generous hand to every soul in need.
I am myself a witness to this, as are dozens of members of the Texas Pakistani community who all share one common testimony, that Syed Javaid Anwar Sahib’s personal character stands above all suspicion. He is one of those rare men who, having earned wealth in America, did not take that wealth and walk away from his community but instead drew closer to it. This is a rare virtue and it must be honored. According to a Texas Tribune investigation, he stands at the top of Governor Greg Abbott’s list of largest individual donors. He shares with the Governor a deep personal friendship. Over the past several years he has contributed more than six and a half million dollars in support. In 2015, the Governor appointed him to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, where he will serve until 2027. This is not an accusation. This is a fact, and this fact, at this very moment, holds within it the possibility of becoming a great blessing.
And it is from this very point that my appeal begins.
Syed Javaid Anwar Sahib, you are a major donor in the Republican Party, but your friendship with the Governor is more than a political relationship. It is a bridge. And in this hour, that bridge is perhaps the most precious asset our community possesses. The mother of Grand Prairie, Dr. Aminah Knight, is your sister. Those six hundred souls who would have gathered at Epic Waters are your brothers and sisters and your children. Some of them are Pakistani, some Arab, some African, some South Asian, but every one of them is your community. And those children who will not enter that pool on the first of June, they are like your own grandchildren. Today, when their hearts have been wounded, they all are turning toward their elders. And in the list of community elders, your name stands first.
There can be no two opinions about it, that in our hour of grief we look toward our own, and in this moment the community is looking toward you. It is your gift that you can walk into the Governor’s office in a way that none of us can, that he is only a phone call away from you, while we have neither the door nor the voice. You can carry into his ear the words that no press release of ours and no protest of ours can ever carry. You can sit with him over chai or coffee and you can say, Governor, Dr. Aminah Knight is no threat, she is the mother of six children. Those six hundred people are not a sharia project, they are your Texan citizens, they are your taxpayers, they are your voters, they are your doctors and engineers and teachers. Their dress is their culture, it is no danger. Their Eid celebration is no unconstitutional act. It is only a simple joy, the same joy you witness on Christmas at the homes of your Christian friends, the same joy you witness on Hanukkah at the homes of your Jewish colleagues. We ask only for that much space. We ask only for that much recognition.
I have known, not just from today but from many years past, that you are capable of doing this, because I know you personally. I also know those who know you personally, and we are all in agreement, that you are a man not merely rich in wealth but also rich in heart, a man who keeps his friendships. With your success in Texas, you have built a bridge, and that bridge is now waiting to be used for a sacred purpose. This purpose is not a denial of your character, it is the highest expression of your character. You have spent your entire life giving. You have provided millions of dollars in funding not only to your ancestral homeland of Pakistan but also to the universities of Texas, year after year. And this moment is a new kind of giving moment. It is the giving of something larger than money. It is the giving of voice. It is the giving of presence. It is the giving of your community a place to stand on its weakest day.
James Baldwin once wrote that we are responsible for our relationships, and that we cannot separate ourselves from our people, no matter how high we rise. Your height is part of the air our community breathes. Your success is our success. Your influence is our influence. But influence remains influence only when it is used at the moment of need. That moment is now. This week. This month. A single phone call from you, a single meeting, a single private message into the Governor’s office, perhaps it cannot change the spirit of HB 4211, perhaps it cannot reverse the EPIC City decision, perhaps it cannot undo the designation of CAIR as a terrorist organization. But it can open a door. It can establish a boundary. It can remind the Governor that with your dollars there comes also a condition, the condition that comes with every true friendship, the condition that a friend does not strike his friend’s community.
I have been a journalist for many decades, and I have learned that the real work of politics is not done on the ballot paper but in the delicacy of relationship. You stand among the closest friends of the Governor, and I know personally that he is no further than a phone call from you. This relationship is also a sacred trust. Trusts are not given only to be received. They are given to be carried forward. You have given much, and you have asked nothing in return. But now is the moment of carrying forward. The voice of our community, the pain of our community, the simple plea of our community that our children be allowed a few hours in a swimming pool, all of this is now in your hands as a sacred trust. You can carry it to the Governor’s table the way no one else can.
This is no political bargain. This is no condition. This is a work of love, and works of love are always the highest of all works. You have done thousands of quiet works of love in your life, and we have all seen them, the iftar dinners in Houston, the funding of the Islamic Society, the educational support of Pakistani students, the guidance of new arrivals to Texas, and countless other acts that stand to your credit and remain the pride of our community. Today we are asking from you another quiet work of love. Speak to the Governor. Place our face before him. Remind him that the Muslims of Texas are his own people, that they are his taxpayers, that among them are families of doctors and engineers and teachers, and that the cancellation of their Eid al-Adha event is not the glory of Texas, it is the shame of Texas.
Dr. Aminah Knight, after the cancellation, said something beautiful. She invoked the Quranic vision that with every hardship there comes ease. And so she has announced an interfaith gathering for the fourth of July, calling it “The Great American Cookout,” where people of every faith will gather as American citizens. This is her greatness. This is not her retreat, this is her advance. She is saying that we too are part of this American family. But her solitary advance is not enough. She needs the support of her community behind her, and the community needs the support of its elders. You stand at the head of those elders.
