State's First Muslim Mayor

SOUTH WINDSOR — A couple of days after M. Saud Anwar was sworn in as the state's first Muslim mayor, his Facebook page lit up with comments from friends and well-wishers scattered throughout the world.

"Congratulations; may Allah be your help. We need more Muslims in public service like this,'' wrote one well-wisher.

"Hats off dude,'' wrote another.

Despite his history-making selection as South Windsor's mayor, Anwar's religion was scarcely noted during a campaign dominated by taxes, sewer charges and all the typical meat-and-potatoes matters that generally shape municipal elections.

"Our community has been a very accepting community,'' said Anwar, a Yale-educated physician who moved to town in 1999. "We live in an embracing town where people are respected for who they are and for what they do rather than what they look like or what their belief is ... that's one of the things that makes you fall in love with South Windsor.''

The election marked a major milestone for the Islamic community in Connecticut, where there are just 375 Muslim adherents per 100,000 people, according to a 2010 study of religion in the U.S. by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies.

But the low-key reaction it drew was just as significant, said Ibrahim Hooper, a national spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

Hooper called it "a good sign for the normalization of Muslims in the American political process.''

Just seven years after Keith Ellison of Minnesota became the first Muslim elected to Congress, the political clout of American Muslims has grown, Hooper said.

"We're seeing more and more Muslim public officials around the country,'' Hooper said. "The first of any kind of civic participation is newsworthy, but as more enter the political process, it becomes less newsworthy."

In South Windsor, the mayor is elected not directly by the voters but by the political party that holds a majority on the council. And it's a part-time position; the community's day-to-day business is handled by the town manager.

Yet Anwar views his new title as a powerful symbol that conveys a message of hope. "It takes away the oxygen from people who attack America,'' he said. "When they say that we as a country do not respect certain citizens, this tells them that's not true. We are a country of immigrants and we are also a country of people of all different faiths.''

Anwar, who is married and the father of two teenage boys, has been involved in local civic affairs for about six years. He served on the town's human relations commission and has been a member of the town council for three years.

A native of Karachi, Pakistan, Anwar, 46, came to the U.S. in 1991, settling first in Illinois, where his grandmother lived, before moving to Connecticut to attend Yale University, where he received a master's degree in public health and did his training in pulmonary medicine.

And although his religion, his heritage and his status as an immigrant certainly shape his world view, so, too, does his profession.

"As a physician, every single day you are identifying a problem and creating a mechanism to prevent it or identifying a way of treating it,'' Anwar said.

He draws a parallel between the health of the human body and the health of a community. "In the ICU when I walk in, I look at my patient and I see the respiratory organ system, the gastrointestinal organ system, the cardiovascular organ system,'' he said, settling into a chair at his medical office in Vernon one morning this week. "You can look at a town as one single, large patient and you can see the public works organ system, the police and safety organ system, the financial organ system ... all of those organ systems need to work collaboratively to make a healthy patient and a healthy town.''

Anwar said he never imagined that he would be active in politics. "But I knew I was going to try and solve problems," he said. He cited his role as part of a group of local physicians who have traveled to Haiti each year since the 2010 earthquake to treat victims and help the nation rebuild.

"I'm more interested in identifying what's wrong in the community, in society,'' he said. "Then you can see what role you can play to help make it better."