May 30 - June 05, 2008
Tarek Fatah's lonely crusade
Khalid Hasan
The Friday Times, Pakistan
http://www.thefridaytimes.com/
Tarek Fatah, the enfant terrible of secular Islam and a permanent thorn in the side of the salafi establishment that is so firmly entrenched in the United States and Canada, has now put together in a book what he has been writing in newspapers, saying at public gatherings and declaiming in television and radio appearances - namely that Islam needs to be rescued from its self-proclaimed defenders and advocates who want to take the world's billion plus Muslims back to a mythical past, instead of propelling them forward into the 21st century.
The book – Chasing a Mirage: The tragic Illusion of an Islamic State – has been praised by reviewers, and castigated by those who see the author as one who should be placed at the business end of a canon and fired into the stratosphere. Tarek Fatah, a Marxist during his student days in Pakistan when he saw the inside of some of Pakistan's least hospitable jails, has never lacked courage. Founder of the liberal and forward-looking Muslim Canadian Council of Toronto, he has never been afraid to take on the mullah establishment that controls the vast mosque and madrassa network that decades of Saudi munificence has fathered, not only in North America but almost everywhere else in the world. Those dragon's teeth are now a rich and lethal harvest, poisoning the soil out of which they were made to grow, and infecting those who live on that soil and around it. The fight liberal Muslims are fighting today is an unequal fight, but it is fight for the soul of Islam. And it must be won.
Fatah writes, "My book is also aimed at the ordinary, well-meaning, yet naive non-Muslims of Europe and North America, who are bewildered as they face a community that seemingly refuses to integrate or assimilate as part of Western society, yet wishes to stay in their midst. Liberal and left-leaning Europeans and North Americans may be troubled with the in-your-face defiance of radical Islamist youth, but it seems they are infatuated by the apparently anti-establishment stance. This book may help these liberals understand that the anti-Americanism of the radical Islamists has little to do with anti-imperialism. In fact, the anti-Americanism of the Islamist is not about the United States, but reflects their contempt for the liberal social democratic society we have built and its emphasis on liberty and freedom of the individual itself."
Fatah says he hopes to reach the neo-conservative proponents of the so-called war on terrorism and make them realise that their warmongering has been the best thing that has happened to the Islamist proponents of a worldwide jihad. "The invasion of Iraq was manna from heaven for Al Qaeda. Bin Laden could not have asked for anything more. I hope that the conservative Republicans in the United States and their neo-conservative allies in the West will realise that in the battle of ideas, dropping bombs helps the foe, not the friend." He wants non-Muslims to understand that deep inside the soul of all Muslims lives a Rumi, an Averroes, and a Muhammad Ali. Equity and social justice run through every fibre and gene of the Muslim psyche. Poetry, song, and dance are as much a part of Muslim culture as piety, modesty and charity. Challenging authority has been part of the Muslim heritage.
Fatah does not mince his words. He wants Muslims to end the catastrophic lack of honesty that many of them have become accustomed to. He writes, "If all our theology is structured around the Sunni notion that one tribe and one race is superior to everyone else, and the Shia notion is that the family of the descendants of the Prophet (pbuh) have a divine right to be at the top, then our entire history is seen through this prism. And by choosing sides, they're buying into the mythologies." He finds the sermons of most mosques in the West to be politicised and concerned with only one agenda: that Western society is a satanic pagan one and that it is the obligation of every young Muslim to fight the pagan in jihad. "As for Muslims," he told an interviewer, "we are being used as frontline troops by those who seek medievalism and are upset by any semblance of joy and modernity. We have to take sides. In the end, Muslims will be the losers if they don't wake up."
Fatah has also had the courage to question racism in the Arab world. He has lived in Saudi Arabia for 10 years and says he has witnessed Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims live like slaves in some Arab countries. Also, he is critical of the assumed superiority of the Quraysh Meccan Arabs over other Arabs, and that of Arab Muslims over Persian, Indian and African Muslims. It is no wonder, he writes, that Ibn Khaldun refers to Africans as "dumb animals." Extremist clerics and their followers are chasing a mirage, he says. They are chasing the false dream of an Islamic state that was never contemplated in the Qur'an or by the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). True Muslims, he maintains, prefer to cultivate "a state of Islam." They prefer to internalise Islamic spiritual values to help guide personal deeds and actions. For that, no special political state is needed. He points out that 95 per cent of Mecca's heritage buildings have been destroyed in the last two decades, mostly to build lucrative high-rises overlooking the Ka'aba. Lost structures include the house of the Hazrat Khadijah, demolished to make way for public toilets; and the house of Hazrat Abu-Bakr, torn down for a Hilton Hotel. Even the old home of the Prophet (pbuh) is under threat from a project known as the Jabal Omar Scheme, which includes seven apartment towers and two 50-storey hotels. He finds it ironic that unlike the widespread protests at Danish caricatures, there has not been a whimper out of any Muslim at these sacrilegious acts.
Fatah's message is best summed up in the following passage from his book: "My book is an appeal to those of my co-religionists who are chasing the mirage of an Islamic State. I hope they can reflect on the futility of their endeavour and instead focus on achieving the state of Islam. Islamists working for the establishment of an Islamic State are headed in the wrong direction. I hope to convince my fellow Muslims that clinging to mythologies of the past is the formula for a fiasco. I would hope they stand up to the merchants of segregation who have fed us with myths and got us addicted to a forced sense of victimhood. Conventional wisdom in the Muslim world dictates that to move forward, we need to link to our past. Fair enough, but in doing so, we have all but given up on the future, labelling modernity itself as the enemy. "Tarek Fatah's is the voice Muslims need to hear, as opposed to the siren call of those who will only lead them to their destruction.
– This is a regular column by TFT's Washington correspondent. He can be reached at khasan2@cox. net
Tarek Fatah's lonely crusade
Khalid Hasan
The Friday Times, Pakistan
http://www.thefridaytimes.com/
Tarek Fatah, the enfant terrible of secular Islam and a permanent thorn in the side of the salafi establishment that is so firmly entrenched in the United States and Canada, has now put together in a book what he has been writing in newspapers, saying at public gatherings and declaiming in television and radio appearances - namely that Islam needs to be rescued from its self-proclaimed defenders and advocates who want to take the world's billion plus Muslims back to a mythical past, instead of propelling them forward into the 21st century.
The book – Chasing a Mirage: The tragic Illusion of an Islamic State – has been praised by reviewers, and castigated by those who see the author as one who should be placed at the business end of a canon and fired into the stratosphere. Tarek Fatah, a Marxist during his student days in Pakistan when he saw the inside of some of Pakistan's least hospitable jails, has never lacked courage. Founder of the liberal and forward-looking Muslim Canadian Council of Toronto, he has never been afraid to take on the mullah establishment that controls the vast mosque and madrassa network that decades of Saudi munificence has fathered, not only in North America but almost everywhere else in the world. Those dragon's teeth are now a rich and lethal harvest, poisoning the soil out of which they were made to grow, and infecting those who live on that soil and around it. The fight liberal Muslims are fighting today is an unequal fight, but it is fight for the soul of Islam. And it must be won.
Fatah writes, "My book is also aimed at the ordinary, well-meaning, yet naive non-Muslims of Europe and North America, who are bewildered as they face a community that seemingly refuses to integrate or assimilate as part of Western society, yet wishes to stay in their midst. Liberal and left-leaning Europeans and North Americans may be troubled with the in-your-face defiance of radical Islamist youth, but it seems they are infatuated by the apparently anti-establishment stance. This book may help these liberals understand that the anti-Americanism of the radical Islamists has little to do with anti-imperialism. In fact, the anti-Americanism of the Islamist is not about the United States, but reflects their contempt for the liberal social democratic society we have built and its emphasis on liberty and freedom of the individual itself."
Fatah says he hopes to reach the neo-conservative proponents of the so-called war on terrorism and make them realise that their warmongering has been the best thing that has happened to the Islamist proponents of a worldwide jihad. "The invasion of Iraq was manna from heaven for Al Qaeda. Bin Laden could not have asked for anything more. I hope that the conservative Republicans in the United States and their neo-conservative allies in the West will realise that in the battle of ideas, dropping bombs helps the foe, not the friend." He wants non-Muslims to understand that deep inside the soul of all Muslims lives a Rumi, an Averroes, and a Muhammad Ali. Equity and social justice run through every fibre and gene of the Muslim psyche. Poetry, song, and dance are as much a part of Muslim culture as piety, modesty and charity. Challenging authority has been part of the Muslim heritage.
Fatah does not mince his words. He wants Muslims to end the catastrophic lack of honesty that many of them have become accustomed to. He writes, "If all our theology is structured around the Sunni notion that one tribe and one race is superior to everyone else, and the Shia notion is that the family of the descendants of the Prophet (pbuh) have a divine right to be at the top, then our entire history is seen through this prism. And by choosing sides, they're buying into the mythologies." He finds the sermons of most mosques in the West to be politicised and concerned with only one agenda: that Western society is a satanic pagan one and that it is the obligation of every young Muslim to fight the pagan in jihad. "As for Muslims," he told an interviewer, "we are being used as frontline troops by those who seek medievalism and are upset by any semblance of joy and modernity. We have to take sides. In the end, Muslims will be the losers if they don't wake up."
Fatah has also had the courage to question racism in the Arab world. He has lived in Saudi Arabia for 10 years and says he has witnessed Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims live like slaves in some Arab countries. Also, he is critical of the assumed superiority of the Quraysh Meccan Arabs over other Arabs, and that of Arab Muslims over Persian, Indian and African Muslims. It is no wonder, he writes, that Ibn Khaldun refers to Africans as "dumb animals." Extremist clerics and their followers are chasing a mirage, he says. They are chasing the false dream of an Islamic state that was never contemplated in the Qur'an or by the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). True Muslims, he maintains, prefer to cultivate "a state of Islam." They prefer to internalise Islamic spiritual values to help guide personal deeds and actions. For that, no special political state is needed. He points out that 95 per cent of Mecca's heritage buildings have been destroyed in the last two decades, mostly to build lucrative high-rises overlooking the Ka'aba. Lost structures include the house of the Hazrat Khadijah, demolished to make way for public toilets; and the house of Hazrat Abu-Bakr, torn down for a Hilton Hotel. Even the old home of the Prophet (pbuh) is under threat from a project known as the Jabal Omar Scheme, which includes seven apartment towers and two 50-storey hotels. He finds it ironic that unlike the widespread protests at Danish caricatures, there has not been a whimper out of any Muslim at these sacrilegious acts.
Fatah's message is best summed up in the following passage from his book: "My book is an appeal to those of my co-religionists who are chasing the mirage of an Islamic State. I hope they can reflect on the futility of their endeavour and instead focus on achieving the state of Islam. Islamists working for the establishment of an Islamic State are headed in the wrong direction. I hope to convince my fellow Muslims that clinging to mythologies of the past is the formula for a fiasco. I would hope they stand up to the merchants of segregation who have fed us with myths and got us addicted to a forced sense of victimhood. Conventional wisdom in the Muslim world dictates that to move forward, we need to link to our past. Fair enough, but in doing so, we have all but given up on the future, labelling modernity itself as the enemy. "Tarek Fatah's is the voice Muslims need to hear, as opposed to the siren call of those who will only lead them to their destruction.
– This is a regular column by TFT's Washington correspondent. He can be reached at khasan2@cox. net
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