Courage and Conviction

The US created the monster of jihadis to fight the Left in the Muslim world and now it finds the chickens coming home to roost

By Zubair Masood

Tarek Fatah is a secular Muslim, a writer and a political activist, based in Canada. He has been a vocal critic of pan-Islamist movement. Because of his iconoclastic and radical views on the deplorable condition of Muslim communities worldwide, he has often invited anger and even death threats, but he is a courageous man and never flinches at saying what he believes in.

Fatah was born in Karachi in 1949 to parents who had migrated to Pakistan from Bombay (now Mumbai) after the subcontinent's partition. He had his schooling in Karachi. In the late 1960s, he was a left-wing student leader. Because of his revolutionary ideas on equity and social justice, the then military governments jailed him twice. He started his journalistic career in 1970 with the now defunct Karachi newspaper the Sun and later worked with the Pakistan Television (PTV). After Ziaul Haq's military coup in 1977, he moved to Saudi Arabia, where he worked in the advertising field for 10 years.

Fatah finally migrated to Canada in 1987, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. He has written numerous columns for mainstream Canadian publications; and in addition to appearances in many TV programmes, he has hosted Vision TV's programme Muslim Chronicle. In 2001, he founded the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC), an organisation of liberal Muslims in Canada. This organisation, which espouses secularism and gender equality, has proved to be an effective countervailing force against Islamist organisations active in North America.

More recently, Fatah has authored a phenomenal book, titled Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State. The book argues that radical Islamists have hijacked the religion by falsely invoking the Holy Quran and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) for advancing their political agendas. It urges Muslims to give up on the Islamic state and strive for the spiritual state of Islam. In this book, which has generated a healthy debate, Fatah invites his brothers-in-faith to end political violence that militates against core Islamic values of grace and peace. The News on Sunday interviewed Tarek Fatah recently in Toronto. Excerpts follow:

The News on Sunday: Would you like to tell us something about your schooling and college days in Karachi?

Tarek Fatah: My first school was St Andrews, very close to the Karachi Race Club and next door to the mansion of Joe d'Souza, who was to die in Montreal many moons later. From 1955 to 1965, I went to St Lawrence's Boys School, near Soldier's Bazaar, at one time the tiniest of Karachi's lush neighbourhoods, and home to its large Ismaili community. When I did my Matriculation in 1965, two things happened that shaped my life: the 1965 war with India and my first days in Adamjee Science College, where I saw the face of the 'other' Karachi, the people who came from the shantytowns, known then as the 'Jhuggie Colonies' -- the city's vast Urdu speaking working class and its brimming left-wing activists.

For the first time, I met Marxists and poets who would speak as if it were a bait baazi (poetry recital) competition. The war against India and the new ideologies I ran across in the college changed me profoundly, from what people referred to as an English-medium-kid to the real world of bhook nang (poverty). The rest is a 40-year-long struggle for social justice, against Islamist politics that keeps Muslims from moving forward as they are asked to look in their mythical past to reach for the future.

TNS: You spent your early years in Karachi. Would you like to tell us something about the Karachi of those days?

TF: Karachi in those days was a very different city. Zoroastrians, Hindus and Christians, as well as Balochs and Sindhis, framed the city's multi-cultural ethos as a modern metropolis. Today, it seems that the founding fathers of the city have simply evaporated; leaving no trace of Mayor Jamshed Nusservanjee or the JS d'Souza & Co, who graced Victoria Road where Dawoodi Bohras and Anglo-Indians chatted with Aga Khanis and the occasional Jew from the synagogue known as the 'Israeli Masjid'. If this sounds too foreign to you, then that is how much my city of birth has changed in the past 50 years. Many of those who abandoned Karachi are now living in Canada!

TNS: Why did you establish the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC)?

TF: After 9/11, we realised that if Muslims did not rise against the forces of radical Islam, our future generations in the West would suffer immensely, as they would be labelled as terrorists. We also realised the Islamic leadership was practising gender apartheid, and mixing religion with politics. That inspired us to set up the MCC, to promote the idea of real equality between Muslim men and women, and to demand the separation of religion and the state in all matters of public policy.

TNS: What do you understand by secular Islam?

TF: There is no such thing as secular Islam. There, however, is something known as the 'secular Muslim'. The best way I can describe such a person is to refer to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Maulana Hasrat Mohani. The two were practising Muslims and scholars, but they kept their faith as a moral compass and did not work towards establishing Shariah in the public domain. Today, scholar Abdullahi An-Na'im, who teaches Law at Emory University in Atlanta, is one such person. The late Muhammad Mahmoud Taha, who was an Islamic scholar but still campaigned against the introduction of Shariah in Sudan, was another example. He headed the Republican Brothers in Sudan and the government hanged him based on a fatwa (edict) obtained by the Muslim Brotherhood.

TNS: You founded the MCC, which is an organisation with a Muslim group-identity. Do you find it compatible with your commitment to secularism?

TF: I do not see any contradiction. We are Muslim Canadians, who believe that the future of our communities in the country and the rest of the world lies in how we proceed with real universal laws that apply to all citizens irrespective of race or religion. This is our secular goal. Whether one is a Hindu in Pakistan or a Christian in Egypt or a Jew in Saudi Arabia, the state should not have different levels of citizenship based on one's faith or race.

TNS: Some political analysts believe that America's so-called 'war on terror' has given a new lease of life to jihad. Do you agree?

TF: They are right, but why should we be surprised? The United States created the monster of jihadis to fight the Left in the Muslim world and now it finds the chickens coming home to roost. The only hope is that an Obama presidency will reverse the deep slide into mediocrity that has become increasingly synonymous with the US.

TNS: Most analysts view radical Islam as a reaction against the West's imperialistic policies. Do you agree with this perception?

TF: That is nonsense. Radical jihadis have no problem with Western imperialism; they just do not want to be its victims. Where were they when US imperialism was showing its horrors in Vietnam? When Reagan ordered the invasion of Grenada, did any of the US-based Islamist groups protest? No. As long as the US hit other people, including the Yugoslavians, the Islamists and their jihadi offshoots were pleased. In fact, jihadis would be more than happy if the US were to bomb Israel or the United Kingdom. You would see the same mullahs dancing on the streets and distributing gulab jamans if the US F-16s dropped concussion bombs on Tel Aviv. Therefore, these people are not against US imperialism. What they want is that the US trains its guns on some other hapless victim, so they can get back on the CIA gravy train.

TNS: Does modernisation necessarily involve Westernisation? Can Muslims modernise without Westernisation?

TF: If Muslims cannot manufacture some of the most basic tools of the post-industrial society and if a billion people together cannot come up with ideas that could rival those of the Wright Brothers, Rousseau or the inventors of insulin, then it would be foolish to imagine that we could modernise without becoming part of the global community. And this community, whether we like it or not, is led by what is emerging in Europe and North America.

TNS: Why do most Muslims fail to integrate with the Western society?

TF: Well, many do and do it quite well. Whether it is Canada or the UK, many Muslims are members of parliament. They head major corporations and trade unions, and are active in the arts and the anti-war movement. However, the Muslims who have integrated somehow do not fit the stereotypical image of a Muslim -- the man with a beard in flowing gowns and the woman in a tight, skin-wrapped scarf imported straight from the streets of Cairo.

TNS: Should Muslim stop wearing hijab?

TF: No, they should have the right to wear whatever they desire. Similarly, nobody should have the right to label those women who do not wear hijab as lesser Muslims or suggest that the women who do not cover their heads are bad Muslims.

TNS: What is your precise definition of an Islamist?

TF: An Islamist is a Muslim who uses Islam as a political tool to conduct his or her politics and believes that parliament should not be the maker of a nation's law. In comparison, a Muslim is one who believes in the five pillars of Islam, none of which requires the presence of an Islamic state.

TNS: Islamists are flourishing in the West, yet they hold it in contempt. How do you explain this contradiction?

TF: They are like parasites that live off the host plant and destroy it as they feed themselves.

TNS: Do Islamists pose a genuine threat to the West?

TF: Yes, they do. The Islamist jihadis are a death cult, hell bent on their suicide mission to destroy what they feel is a challenge to God. It is not the US they hate; it is their aversion to joy itself. Their contempt for modernity dates back to the Renaissance, which Syed Abul Ala Maudoodi described as the "pernicious tree" in his book entitled Sick Nations of the Modern Age.

TNS: In your youth, you were a Marxist student leader in Pakistan. Is Marxism still relevant in the post-Cold War world?

TF: Of course, Marxism is relevant, more so today than a decade ago. The contradiction between labour and capital still exists, and manifests itself in a different way compared with the old coalminers organising for a five-day, 40-hour working week. Today the nature of capital has changed, as has the nature of labour, and Marxists have to adapt Uncle Karl's theories to the reality of a new world economic order.

Courtesy: The News Pakistan