OPINION: Tarek Fatah was a 'voice of the down-trodden'

Eminent Pakistani-Canadian journalist Tarek Fatah is no more. He died this Monday after a prolonged battle with cancer. In his death, the free world has lost a great voice of, in the words of his daughter Natasha Fatah, "the down-trodden, underdogs and the oppressed."

Sources closely known to Fatah say he was a true defender of democracy, freedom and pluralism as against jihadism and Islamism. He promoted the cause of moderate Islam and encouraged other moderates to speak out against Islamists' abuses of their religion. He advocated an advanced status for women in Muslim-majority environments.

Fatah was a Leftist activist in his college days. He joined 'Karachi Sun' as a reporter in 1970. Later, he became an investigative reporter with Pakistan's State-broadcaster 'Pakistan Television' (PTV). Ideologically, Fatah questioned the Pakistani military's influence over the government. He suffered a lot on account of his progressive ideas and beliefs in Pakistan.

In 1977, the Zia-ul Haq government charged him with sedition. But Fatah never gave in. He migrated to Saudi Arabia and finally settled in Canada in 1987. In Canada, he joined Toronto radio station 'CFRB Newstalk 1010' as a broadcaster and later became a columnist for 'Toronto Sun'.

In Canada, he founded the Muslim Canadian Congress, a group committed to fighting Islamism and promoting the separation between religion and State. In 2012, he launched an online campaign that had a major role in Malala Yousafzai winning the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to educate girls in Pakistan.

Fatah told fellow Muslims to think rationally and follow the scientific-humanitarian essentials of Islam. In his 'Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State' (John Wiley & Sons, 2008), Fatah encouraged fellow Muslims to return to Islam's universal principles that had been abandoned by Muslim elites in the centuries after Muhammad's death. In his 'The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism' (McClelland & Stewart, 2010), Fatah said, "We have a choice. Either we allow ourselves to be consumed by hatred, or we approach Jews as fellow human beings, at worst as adversaries in a political dispute, not as monsters destined to be our enemy for all time."

Fatah urged the Muslims to live responsibly with the social mainstream and share their concerns in the advanced nations. Fatah would not spare anyone if he found them missing on this civil front. In a piece published in 'Toronto Sun' in 2015, Fatah condemned North American Muslim advocacy groups for their refusal to condemn jihadism in the wake of an attack in San Bernadino, California, that resulted in the deaths of fourteen people.

Fatah exposed the connections between American President Barack Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood. He declared that Obama was infatuated with orthodox ultra-conservative Islam.

Fatah was a fearless opponent of political correctness on the part of the US political leadership. He argued in 2015 that government officials should interview and debrief every adult male arriving alone from Arab countries, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Somalia - irrespective of religion, colour, or nationality. He called on officials to tell every mosque in North America to drop all derogatory references to "kufr" (Christians, Jews, Hindus and atheists) in its ritual prayers, or lose its charitable status. He also called on the governments to ban overseas donations from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab sources to mosques in North America.

In Fatah's death, India has lost a great friend. Fatah was born in Karachi on November 20, 1949. As his parents had migrated from Bombay to Karachi, he always called himself an "Indian born in Pakistan." Fatah lamented the Partition of India. In the heart of his heart, he admired the essentials of Hinduism, for they imparted to the world a message of peaceful co-existence for the all-inclusive development of the entire humanity.

He warned New Delhi against showing undue warmth towards Islamabad, for the latter had always been hostile to India. He told a gathering during the 'India Ideas Conclave 2016', "India has no business to have any relations with the country (Pakistan) that has chopped off its limbs... The day you develop dignity to say we don't want to talk to you, we don't want trade with you... we don't want to have 'aman ki asha', that's the day they will learn a lesson."

(Jagdish N. Singh is a senior journalist based in New Delhi. He is also Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, New York)

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