Tarek Fatah was a Pakistani-Canadian journalist and author. Fatah advocated LGBT rights, a separation of religion and state, opposition to sharia law, and advocacy for a liberal, progressive form of Islam. He called himself "an Indian born in Pakistan" and "a Punjabi born into Islam" and was a vocal critic of the Pakistani religious and political establishment. To this end, Fatah had criticized the partition of India.

Life

Fatah was born on November 20, 1949 in Karachi, Pakistan into a Punjabi Muslim family which had migrated from Bombay to Karachi following the Partition of India in 1947. Fatah graduated with a degree in biochemistry from the University of Karachi but entered into journalism as a reporter for the Karachi Sun in 1970, before becoming an investigative journalist for Pakistan Television. He was a leftist student leader in the 1960s and 1970s and was imprisoned twice by military regimes. In 1977, he was charged with sedition and barred from journalism by the Zia-ul Haq regime.

Fatah left Pakistan and settled in Saudi Arabia, before emigrating to Canada in 1987.

Of himself, Fatah asserts:

“I am an Indian born in Pakistan, a Punjabi born in Islam; an immigrant in Canada with a Muslim consciousness, grounded in a Marxist youth. I am one of Salman Rushdie’s many Midnight’s Children: we were snatched from the cradle of a great civilization and made permanent refugees, sent in search of an oasis that turned out to be a mirage.”

Fatah died of cancer on April 24, 2023, at the age of 73.

Political activity

Tarek was a long-time member of the Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP) and ran unsuccessfully in the 1995 provincial elections as the party's candidate in Scarborough North. He subsequently worked for Ontario NDP leader, Howard Hampton.

In July 2006, he left the NDP to support Bob Rae's candidacy for the Liberal Party of Canada's leadership. Rae, a former Ontario NDP leader and Premier of Ontario, had himself left the NDP several years earlier. In an opinion piece published in Toronto's Now Magazine, Fatah wrote that he decided to leave the NDP because of the establishment of a faith caucus which he believes will open the way for religious fundamentalists to enter the party. However, after Rae's defeat by Stéphane Dion, Fatah condemned similar racial and religious organizing activity in the Liberal Party, arguing in a Globe and Mail editorial that Tamil, Sikh, Kurdish and Islamist Muslim leaders had engaged in "blatant efforts to wield political muscle," "bargaining the price of their cadre of delegates" and creating a “political process that feeds on racial and religious exploitation.”and "I respect the diversity of Canada," he wrote, “but I want to celebrate what unites us, not what divides us into tiny tribes that can be manipulated by leaders who sell us to the highest bidder.”

At a press conference on 2 October 2008, Fatah sharply criticized the federal New Democratic Party (NDP). He stated that he was a lifetime social democrat who had supported the NDP for 17 years but that he could no longer be affiliated with that party. He claimed that the NDP began opening its doors to Islamists under Alexa McDonough and that, under Jack Layton, he had seen them flood into the party. Fatah stated that Islamists in the NDP have pursued a campaign to instill a sense of victimhood in Muslim youth.

Media Activity

From 1996 until 2006 he hosted Muslim Chronicle, a weekly Toronto-based current affairs discussion show on CTS and VisionTV, which focused on the Muslim community.

In February, 2011, Fatah was scheduled to have a debate with Sheharyar Shaikh of the North American Muslim Foundation (NAMF), after Shaikh issued an open challenge to Fatah to debate him. Fatah cancelled at the last minute and failed to show up. Shaikh, who had defended polygamy and opposed secular education for Muslims, was a critic of Fatah's views. Fatah stated that he had cancelled his appearance because the moderator was changed shortly before the event was to begin, and because the audience was hostile. Fatah also claimed that he was warned by police of threats to his safety. Fatah and Shaikh later appeared together in an interview for Sun News debating the role of Islam in ISIS.

From 2009 to 2015, he was a broadcaster on Toronto radio station CFRB Newstalk 1010. As well as appearing as a regular contributor on the John Moore Morning Show, Fatah was co-host of the nightly Friendly Fire with Ryan Doyle and Tarek Fatah from 2009 to 2011 and from 2011 to 2015 he hosted The Tarek Fatah Show on Sunday afternoons.

From 2012 to 2023, Fatah has written a regular column for the Toronto Sun and was a frequent commentator on the now-defunct Sun News Network.

From 2018 to 2023, Fatah has been a regular host of "What The Fatah" which is hosted by New Delhi Times on their YouTube channel. The talk show mainly focuses on the current International Political trends.

Views

Fatah was a critic of Pakistan. He has questioned the legitimacy of the state and has advocated support for Baloch separatists. He believes that after Balochistan wins independence, the remainder of Pakistan will reunify with India. In February 2013, after the website of the Toronto Sun was blocked in Pakistan; Fateh claimed credit. He rejects anti-semitism as incompatible with Islam and has supported Israel's right to exist and Zionist projects; he has however called for an end to the "illegal and immoral" Israeli occupation of Palestine and anti-Arabism.

In 2003, Fatah broke with Irshad Manji in an article in the Globe and Mail in which he repudiated the thanks she gave him in the acknowledgment section of her book The Trouble with Islam. Fatah wrote of Manji's book that it is not addressed to Muslims; it is aimed at making Muslim-haters feel secure in their thinking. Manji replied saying that he told her in front of witnesses that “This book was written by the Jews for the Jews!” Fatah was subsequently quoted as indicating that he regrets his remarks and that he was unfair in slamming Manji's book. He said that she was right about the systematic racism in the Muslim world and that there were many redeeming points in her memoir, which I overlooked in my rush to judge it.

Fatah has criticized the partition of India, calling the division of the country tragic and lamenting that his homeland of Punjab was sliced in two by the departing British to create the new state of Pakistan. He states that the British partitioned India so that they might be able to combat Soviet influence through the establishment of British military installations in what was then northwestern colonial India (now Pakistan).

Reception

Michael Coren, a critic of Islam, has praised Fatah for being brave enough to admit the faults and failings of Islam. Wael Haddara, president of the Muslim Association of Canada, said that he respect[s] Fatah for his passion but that it was hard, if not downright impossible, to find something positive that he has ever said about Muslims. As a result, Haddara argues, Muslims are no longer listening to Fatah. Syed Soharwardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, noted Fatah's views to be valuable but rejected his stereotyping of Islam by extrapolating from the behavior of a few extremists. In February 2007, Fatah was included by Maclean's magazine on a list of 50 Canadians described as "Canada’s most well known and respected personalities.". In December 2008, the Toronto Star suggested that Prime Minister Stephen Harper appoint Fatah to one of the vacant seats in the Canadian Senate. Toronto Star's senior editor Bob Hepburn wrote that Fatah is “A prominent spokesperson for secular and progressive Muslim issues who would bring a much-needed unique perspective to the Senate.”

‘Fatah ka Fatwa’ was well received by the masses; radical Islamist organisations have protested against the show and urged for his assassination.

Tarek Fatah was criticised for spreading "fake news" on multiple occasions. Amid the Delhi Assembly Election in 2020, he tweeted an old communally-charged video, and claimed it to be from Delhi. In Jan 2020, he tweeted another video of Burqa-clad persons dancing to a Bollywood number, hinting that the video is from Shaheen Bagh CAA-NRC protest, whereas, it was found that Fatah had tweeted the same video twice in the past. Because of his continued pattern of spreading "fake news" on Twitter, especially in "sectarian lines", some critics have argued that he is an external agent who wants to create "communal disturbances" in India. Writing about his targeting of Indian Muslims, AltNews.in accused him of blurring the lines between rational scepticism and contempt toward the Muslim community.

Assassination plot

In 2017, Indian police arrested two men who were hired by Chhota Shakeel to assassinate Fatah.

Books

Chasing a Mirage

The Toronto Star reviewer John Goddard said that book was a “richly layered work of stark realities.” Emran Qureshi in the Globe and Mail said that Fatah had provided a "substantial contribution to the critique of the Islamic state and the state of Islam, especially in Canada" but criticized the book for its "gratuitous polemics" and sloppy fact-checking. The book was praised by the Mackenzie Institute, as a direct challenge to the far-Islamist fanatics which deriving from the original texts of Islam, successfully argued about how the pursuit of a global Islamic state violated Mohammed's tenets. On 31 March 2009, the conservative Donner Canadian Foundation shortlisted the book for their $35,000 Donner Prize, awarded to non-fiction texts covering public policy.

The Jew Is Not My Enemy

Published by McClelland & Stewart in October 2010, it won the 2010 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Book Award in Politics and History, by the Koffler Centre of the Arts.