"F" is for Feud

I keep humming the theme song to "The Facts of Life" as I read the Chron's reporting on the Pakistani feud that goes on around my parts (and Slampo's) of Houston. "You take the good" ... meaning that at least there's some coverage of it going on. "You take the bad" ... meaning there's not a great deal of detail in the reporting. Were there more than two or three phone calls made for this story?

The jist is this: that the Pakistani Association of Greater Houston is a rather raucus caucus hereabouts. Councilman MJ Khan is a former President of the group and one good bit covered in the reporting is that there's a fissure over where to build a Pakistan Community Center. I'd dare to speculate that the difference is more of opinions over where two or more groups within the PAGH seem to desire such a center, though.

The reason this gets interesting is because Houston's District F encompasses a good deal of minority communities. The local Indian and Pakistani communities have been mutually supportive on many races (for the most part, at least). There are others that can give you a better recap of the state of local Indian & Pakistani community relations, but suffice it to say that it's much cozier than what goes on at the other side of the globe. For my own sake, I think it ranks as a lasting memory to see some of the signs of patriotism and outright anger over the Muslim religion being hijacked by terrorists in the wake of 9/11.

But since the PAGH has a few folks with a political itch, the internal bickering of the organization seems to spill over to a wider audience. Slampo references how this ties into the race between MJ Khan and KA Khan in the last city election. In the end, the challenger (KA) was just too much the late starter, too much the novice, and too incoherently defined politically to ever have a prayer. But $60,000 for a challenger against a first term councilman is still a lot of money.

Of course, MJ is of no help in his own quote over the feud:

Kahn concedes the feud exists, but says he doesn't understand it. "I wish I knew what it is," the city councilman said.

*sigh*

MJ, of course, is famously amorphous with his words. This is, after all, a man who couldn't bring himself to answer a direct question on whether he was running for re-election to his current seat or for an At Large seat the day after he dropped mail for a re-election fundraiser with the Mayor to a group of Sharpstown Democrats.

I don't have a doubt in my mind that MJ knows the exact reason for all of this and is just keeping in character. But the reporting is rather empty when it comes to identifying how and where the split between a bankrupt restauranteur and a City Councilman occurs. Here's about all we get:

Dispute with councilman

His financial problems have fanned a simmering feud in the Pakistani community that pits him against City Councilman M.J. Khan. Critics of Bombaywala make frequent reference to his bankruptcy, and they allege that his business practices reflect the way he runs the Pakistani-American Association of Greater Houston, of which he serves as president.

The feud has not drawn attention outside the community, because much of it involves insider parliamentary issues around the management of PAGH. Bombaywala says that only a "small group" of Pakistanis have disagreed with him, and he dismisses their claims as mostly personal.

"I think our people enjoy all this rowdiness," he said of the ongoing feud. "We are very opinionated people."

But others say the feud has begun to have serious, lasting implications. The differences run so deep that the community could not come together to work on relief efforts after the recent earthquake in northern Pakistan and Kashmir. Bombaywala and Khan worked on separate efforts.

So ... um ... what's the dispute? Just simple rowdiness? Did anyone flat-out ask MJ why it was that there were two different earthquake relief efforts? ... why he couldn't work with Bombaywala? I mean, that sure would strike me as a relevant question. And even if MJ did his anticipated dodge and weave around it, such information would at least be more illuminating than his dodge and weave around the much more softball question of why a feud exists in the first place.

But what do I know ... I'm just a blogger.

(hat tip to Kev at bH)