Tarek Fatah (Punjabi: ; [t̪aɾɪk fətah] / [fəteh] 20 November 1949 – 24 April 2023) was a Pakistani-Canadian journalist and author.An Indian born in Pakistan: Meet and chat with Tarek Fatah at Firstpost Salon this Thursday, Firstpost, 23 November 2015. He was a Punjabi born into Islam and was a vocal critic of the Pakistani religious and political establishment, and the partition of India.
Early life Fatah was born on 20 November 1949 in Karachi, Pakistan into a Punjabi 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. He stated that he eventually renounced his Pakistani citizenship due in part to the government's discrimination against Ahmadiyya.
Of himself, Fatah asserted:
Political activity Fatah 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 believed would open the way for religious fundamentalists to enter the party.Tarek Fatah, "Faith no more—How the NDP's flirtation with religion pushed me out of the party," Now Magazine, 20–26 July 2006 However, after Rae's defeat by Stéphane Dion, Fatah condemned similar racial and religious organization 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."Tarek Fatah, "Race and religion at the Liberal Party convention" The Globe and Mail, 6 December 2006. . "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 said that Islamists in the NDP have pursued a campaign to instill a sense of victimhood among Muslim youth.The Islamist elephant in the room no politicians will acknowledge by Barbara Kay, National Post, 2 October 2008.
In early 2011, Fatah said that he received a threat via Twitter. He contacted Toronto Police Service and later met with two police officers from 51 Division. Fatah said that police intelligence officers, one a Muslim officer who had shut down a previous investigation into a death threat, shut down the investigation and claimed that there was no threat.Tarek Fatah: Some death threats don't count by Tarek Fatah, National Post, 4 March 2011.Tarek Fatah's threatening tweet By Joe Warmington, Toronto Sun, 8 March 2011. Fatah criticized the Toronto Police over the incident.
In a 2015 Toronto Sun column, Fatah wrote that he would be voting for Conservative leader Stephen Harper in the 2015 federal elections, while still calling himself a social democrat.
Fatah favoured both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders for the United States presidential race in 2016. He said that many Muslim groups, and he himself, have recommended curbs on immigration from countries that harbour Islamist sympathisers, similar to policies promised by Trump.
Media activity From 1996 until 2006 Fatah hosted Muslim Chronicle, a weekly Toronto-based current affairs discussion show on CTS and VisionTV, which focused on the Muslim community.
In February 2011, he 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.Tarek Fatah & Imam Sheharyar Shaikh – ISIS & Islamic imperialism Sun News Prime Time 17 November 2014 (retrieved 12 May 2015)
From 2009 to 2015, Fatah 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 a 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 was a regular host of "What The Fatah" which was hosted by New Delhi Times on their YouTube channel. The talk show mainly focused on the current international political trends.
Views
Fatah was a critic of Pakistan. He had questioned the legitimacy of the state and had advocated support for Baloch separatists. He believed that if Balochistan won independence, the remainder of Pakistan would reunify with India. In February 2013, after the website of the Toronto Sun was blocked in Pakistan; Fateh claimed credit. He rejected antisemitism as incompatible with Islam and had supported Israel's right to exist and Zionist projects; he had 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.Tarek Fatah, "Thanks, but no thanks: Irshad Manji's book is for Muslim-haters, not Muslims" Archived copy at the Library of Congress (21 March 2006). (Fatah's criticism of Irshad Manji), Globe and Mail, 23 November 2003. Republished at Muslim WakeUp! last viewed 11 December 2006. See also Irshad Manji, "The trouble with à la carte critics" (Manji's response to Fatah), Globe and Mail, 2 December 2003. Republished at muslim-refusenik.com (Irshad Manji's official website), last viewed 11 December 2006. Manji replied saying that he told her in front of witnesses that "This book was written by the Jews for the Jews!""The trouble with à la carte critics" by Irshad Manji, Globe and Mail, 2 December 2003 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 he overlooked in his rush to judge it.
Fatah has criticized the partition of India on the basis that it created the state of Pakistan and resulted in "the entire population of Punjab’s indigenous Sikhs and Hindus in Pakistan was either slaughtered or driven out by raging mobs of Muslim fanatics." In a 2012 article he wrote for the Toronto Sun, Fatah argued that Pakistan partially owes its existence to the desire of the British and later American governments to combat the Soviet Union's influence in the region.
Fatah was a critic of Sharia law. In a discussion hosted by The Globe and Mail in 2007, Fatah claimed that "most of the Islamic radicalism that you see today stems from the empowering of Saudi based Jihad groups that were funded and backed by the U.S. and the CIA throughout the Afghan war against the Soviet Union."
In response to the 2017 Quebec City mosque shooting, Fatah endorsed the discredited conspiracy theory that Muslims had participated as perpetrators in the attack that killed six people.
According to the National Post he had also said "Islam is riddled with termites ... and if we don't cleanse ourselves with truth, the stench of our lies will drive us mad", and that there are "hateful sermons in almost every mosque" in CanadaFatah himself never attended a mosque and encouraged Muslim parents to keep their children out of mosques because they have become, in his view, schools for fanaticism.
In November 2011, 60 Muslim groups and two dozen imams endorsed a statement that called for action against domestic violence, condemned honour killing as a notion that had absolutely nothing to do with Islam. Fatah refused to endorse the statement, according to the National Post, arguing that the statement did not address gender inequality and that honour killing has roots in Islam. According to Fatah, Islam deems the relationship of an unmarried woman as "adultery" and imams must distance themselves from punishing such actions by death.
In April 2008, the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) dismissed a complaint about allegedly Islamophobic articles in Maclean's magazine. However, the commission criticized the newsweekly for publishing articles that were inconsistent with the spirit of the Ontario Human Rights Code, and doing serious harm to Canadian society by promoting societal intolerance and disseminating destructive, xenophobic opinions. Fatah said that for the Commission to refer to Maclean's magazine and journalists as contributing to racism is bullshit, if you can use that word and that the commission has unfairly taken sides against freedom of speech in a dispute within the Canadian Muslim community between moderates and fundamentalists.
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.".Macleans 50 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 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.