Frontpage Interview's guest today is Tarek Fatah, host of the weekly Canadian TV show, the Muslim Chronicle, and a frequent contributor to the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and the National Post. A lifelong critic of Islamic extremism, Fatah has earned the ire of Islamists. For his work and perseverance as a writer and broadcaster, despite numerous death threats and intimidation, the National Press Club of Canada awarded Fatah the 2007 Press Freedom Award. Earlier, MacLean’s magazine named Fatah as one of 50 people it described as “Canada’s most well known and respected personalities." In 2002, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal for his work in the community.
In the aftermath of 9/11, Fatah founded the Muslim Canadian Congress, a secular Muslim organization dedicated to the separation of religion and state, opposition to Islamic extremism, and an end to what it describes as "gender apartheid" that is practised in many parts of the Muslim community. He is the author of the new book, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic illusion of an Islamic State. He can be contacted at tarekfatah@rogers.com.
FP: Tarek Fatah, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Fatah: It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
FP: What inspired you to write this book?
Fatah: It was a culmination of many factors. I was witnessing the unimpeded rise of the Islamist ideology among young Muslim men and women and the timid policy of appeasing them rather than challenging their fascist and supremacist doctrine. My religion was been used by extremists as a political tool and I felt I had to challenge them.
Decades before the West awoke to the threat posed to human civilization by the likes of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban; I had tasted the thuggery of the Islamofascists in the late 1960s in Pakistan.
The Islamists and Jihadis were partly a product of the West. They were born as a result of artificial insemination of Saudi Wahhabism into Pakistan and Afghanistan's more pluralistic societies. And when the Islamists had served their purposes, the US discarded them like used condoms.
On the campuses of Pakistan’s universities, these supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood had a single purpose. Attack and beat up anyone with a liberal or secular frame of mind, label them as "communist" and, surprising as it may sound today, sing the praises of the USA. Two stints in jail as a political prisoner of pro-American military regimes in 1968 and 1970, allowed me time to understand the threat of the Islamist ideology that wanted to establish its goal of a world-wide Islamic caliphate governed by Sharia law as interpreted by Egyptians Syed Qutb and Hassan al-Banna as well as their Pakistani counterpart Syed Maudoodi whose works I had the chance to read in jail. These men had no problem using the structure and tactics of the communist party model, the U.S. as their strategic ally and rely on military regimes that at times protected them.
So while these termites worked their way inside every aspect of society, both in Islamic countries as well as in the U.S., few people noticed. Those that did dismissed the Islamist enterprise as insignificant. Then came the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the world has never been the same again. The West has never really understood its predicament. caught between Iran as an enemy and Saudi Arabia as a supposed ally, the West has ended up paying heavily for its inconsistencies while the Islamists are consolidating with their eyes set not just on the Islamic world, but on the U.S. and Western civilization itself.
After 9/11, what shocked me was the naivety with which the U.S. confronted the challenge. While claiming to fight the so-called war on terrorism, the U.S. made allies with the country most culpable and with the dirtiest hands in 9/11 -- Saudi Arabia.
First, the U.S. allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape when it sub-contracted the war in Afghanistan to private warlords who sold out to the highest bidder. Then it propped up General Musharraf in Pakistan who used the Taliban presence to extract billions from the U.S., and if all was not lost to Al-Qaeda, George Bush invaded Iraq instead of focusing on Afghanistan. The errors continue to mount.
As if these blunders were not enough, lately, in an attempt to appease American Islamists during an election year, the U.S. government is insisting that words like "Islamists”“,jihad," and "Islamofacism" not be used. This is insane. Someone has to call a spade a spade and my book does just that.
I am going into these details to share with you the climate within which I made the decision to write Chasing a Mirage. All around me in late 2005 I saw a flurry of books on Islam, most critical of my faith, many hurtful and insulting to my Prophet and others simply to make a fortune in sales to whet the appetite of the market.
It seemed no one was addressing the core issue that the West needs to understand if it wishes to tackle the challenge: the distinction between the Islamist and the Muslim; the difference between Islam and Islamism and finally the tussle between those Muslims who work towards an "Islamic state" and those who merely wish to live in a "state of Islam," a struggle that has continued unabated since the seventh century.
As I grappled the challenge, I was asked by the now Pakistani Ambassador to the US, Prof. Husain Haqqani to put my thoughts in the form of a book. He almost said: "Build it and they will come". And sure enough. When word got out that I had resigned from the Muslim Canadian Congress after a spate of death threats, and that I was planning to write a book, John Wiley & Sons called me to say they were interested in reading my proposal. They had come even before I had built it.
In my book I suggest to my fellow Muslims that their quest for an Islamic State is like chasing a mirage that has eluded Muslims for well over a millennium. I have outlined in detail the failed nature of the three countries that claim to be Islamic states, namely, Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia and how the mullahs, military and monarchy in these societies crush the human spirit and oppress fellow Muslim in the name of Islam and only to cling on to power in the name of Allah. I have also demonstrated that the dynasties many Muslims look up to as their models for the future, the Abbasids of Baghdad (8th to 13th century), the Ummayads of Damascus (7th and 8th century) as well as the glorious civilization of Spanish Muslims, was nowhere close to being Islamic and were at best merely enlightened monarchies and at worst an unending power struggle.
FP: Well my friend, we can't debate everything here today. But there is an argument to be made that far from being the West's children, al Qaeda and the Taliban were the children of the Soviet empire, which triggered a fanatical Islamic backlash to its ruthless imperialism in Afghanistan. It might also be very possible that al Qaeda and the Taliban are the children of Islamic theology and teachings, since that is what they point to as the sanctioning and inspiration of their vicious totalitarian journeys. It is also a myth that the U.S. created Osama and al Qaeda. The U.S. supported the Afghan resistance against the Soviets, but it did not fund the "Afghan Arabs" and other Muslims who came to fight in Afghanistan.
Far from being the children of the West, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were born from the Muslim Brotherhood and from the ideology of political Islam that made the Brotherhood an international movement. And the Brotherhood's appeal within the Islamic world is a revivalist as well as a traditionalist one.
Overall, there is no doubt that American policy vis-à-vis Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Taliban has been shortsighted on certain realms. But this shortsightedness, unfortunately, may very well consist precisely of overlooking the broad and deep appeal of the jihad ideology among Muslims, such that it underestimated the pitfalls of working with jihadist groups and the difficulty of dislodging them from power.
Also, the options the U.S. had after 9/11 vis-à-vis Pakistan were extremely limited and the alternatives to Musharraf have always involved potential greater dangers. Furthermore, in terms of Iraq, there are many legitimate arguments to be made that it is a necessary war and that it bolsters, rather than detracts from, the war against terror, which involves the battle in Afghanistan.
Fatah: You are right to a certain degree and I don't mean to sound like those who blame the U.S. for every ill in Muslim societies. It is true that had the Soviet Union not invaded Afghanistan the Taliban, its precursor the Mujaheddin and the Al-Qaeda would most probably never have been born, but it is also true that the U.S. government and the CIA did everything possible to arm these warriors and ease the arrival of tens of thousands of Arabs into Pakistan. The CIA -ISI nexus facilitated these Arab Afghans to ride roughshod over Pakistan. America’s blue-eyed boy in Islamabad, General Ziaul Haq was instrumental not only in making Pakistan a safe haven for every Arab Islamist and his uncle, he worked hard to Saudize the entire country and its institutions.
The US may not be directly implicated in what General Zia did, but they certainly did not stop him nor cared for the long-term consequences of his actions. So close was the U.S. tied to Pakistan’s Islamist regime that when General Zia was assassinated, the U.S. Ambassador died with him in the plane crash.
As far as Iraq is concerned, its invasion was the greatest foreign policy blunder the U.S. has committed in its history. It has allowed for Iran to flex its muscle, its ruling ayatollahs continue to oppress the Iranian people while the Islamists, from hardcore terrorist to soft jihadis have strengthened their grip on the Muslim narrative.
FP: During the Cold War the U.S. faced the Soviet Union, one of the most evil regimes in history that posed a hazardous threat to freedom everywhere. The U.S. engaged in many means to defeat this Evil Empire and thank God that it did. It is somewhat questionable, on many realms, to criticize the U.S. in hindsight in this context.
We would disagree on your criticism of the Iraq liberation. The U.S. liberated 25 million people from a fascist tyranny and is today winning the war against jihadi terrorists in what al Qaeda itself calls the front of the terror war.
But this debate will have to occur in another time and place. Let’s continue.
What do you think you as a person with your own background and experience brings to a work like Chasing a Mirage?
Fatah: Most people who have tackled Islamic extremism have had a political upbringing on the Right of the political rainbow. I come from the Left. Most critics of the Islamists are either non-Muslims or those who have walked away from the faith. I am a Muslim, faithful to my Prophet Muhammad who I believe was a revolutionary man who I admire as my Leader and who provides me with my moral compass. So I critique Islamodom with empathy, not derision. I have not written the book to launch myself into the speaker's circuit, but rather to awaken Muslims to their own follies and to educate the West to understand that the problem is not with Islam, but with those who wish to mix Islam with politics. I have worked with Islamists, I have seen their brutality and their fascist approach and supremacist ideology. For 40 years I have confronted them and I know their strategy and tactics; their devious methods and their art of deception with which they have fooled people like Tony Blair and even George Bush or our former Canadian Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin and our very own Canadian leader of the New Democratic Party, Jack Layton.
FP: Earlier you mentioned that there have been works that are “hurtful and insulting” to your Prophet. But how do you, as a Muslim, deal with the historical Muhammad? For instance, I have done interviews with scholars such as Bill Warner and Abul Kasem who have outlined the historical record of Muhammed’s life that is based on Muslim sources. Robert Spencer has also documented Mohammed's life in his book – which is also based on Islamic sources. Can you take a look at these interviews that I link to? Help us to understand how you interpret these things as a Muslim. Do you deny this history of Muhammad that is recorded by Muslims themselves? Are these things simply not true? Explain your own vision and faith to us in this context please. I think this is a vital conversation and that matters like this must be discussed rather than swept under the ground.
Fatah: I would be dishonest if I denied that Prophet Muhammad engaged in battle, both with his words as well as his weapons, as did David and Solomon and many prophets before them. Of course there are aspects of Islamic history that greatly trouble me. For example, I have never truly reconciled with the collective punishment accorded to the Jewish tribes of Arabia, that resulted in the killing of all Jewish male adults and the enslavement of women and children.
As far as what Muslims have written about the times of the Prophet, yes, I have read what is written as the Hadith and by medieval Muslim historians. Some accounts embarrass me, but for better or worse, these accounts are part of my Muslim heritage and I have to live with it. There are verses in the Quran as well as parts of the Old Testament that reflect the times these texts were written in.
Prophet Muhammad earns the unquestionable love and affection of the world's billion plus Muslims. They adore him more than their own parents. When writers engage in depicting Muhammad as a child molester or a warlord, it causes deep anguish and hurt among Muslims whether they are suffering in the refugee camps of Darfur or sitting in the ivory towers of Wall Street. This man is our hero. Attacking him can only satiate the critic's own appetite, not resolve the challenges we all face as humanity where we have to fight the challenge of jihadis, who today are governed by the ideology of Syed Qutb and Maudoodi more than the teachings of Prophet Muhammad. All I am saying is, save your derision for the 20th century monsters and focus your attention on supporting the Muslims who alone can defeat the Islamists. Attacking Prophet Muhammad or mocking Islam will get us nowhere.
FP: Well this isn’t about attacking anyone. It is about telling the truth. And the historical record is the historical record -- and to sweep the truths of history under the rug for the sake of not hurting peoples’ feelings I am afraid may very cause more problems than it solves.
And so here is the problem: this isn’t about attacking Muhammad. It is about the fact that ignoring the truth about Muhammad and how Muslims regard him might make matters worse.
What I am getting at is that you state that jihadis are today governed by the ideology of Syed Qutb and Maudoodi more than the teachings of Prophet Muhammad. But upon whose teachings did the ideology of Syed Qutb and Maudoodi rely? If the Prophet Muhammad categorically rejected violence and jihad by word and deed would Syed Qutb and Maudoodi have been able to construct their ideology?
Are we sure that our problem is going to go away if we are not honest about the fact that jihadis get their inspiration and sanctioning for violence precisely from Muhammad and that is why they invoke Muhammad's example to justify acts of violence and terrorism?
For example, check out the below:
(*) On September 5, 2003, Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris invoked Muhammad’s battles when speaking of the Iraq war in another sermon broadcast by the Palestinian Authority, though his memory of the Battle of Tabuk was a bit faulty: “If we go back in the time tunnel 1400 years, we will find that history repeats itself…. Byzantium represents America in the west…. America will collapse, as Byzantium collapsed in the west….The Prophet [Muhammad] could, by means of unbroken ranks, conquer Byzantium, the greatest power compared to today’s America -- and this without a single martyr falling from among the Muslims…. The Prophet could, by means of the unity of the Muslim ranks and its awakening, defeat the America of that time….America is our No. 1 enemy, and we see it as our No. 1 enemy as long as we learn from the lessons of the Battle of Tabouk [which took place in October 630 AD]: ‘Make ready for them whatever you can of armed strength and of mounted pickets’ [Koran 8:60]. We are prepared and ready, but victory is from Allah….” (Steven Stalinsky, “Palestinian Authority Sermons 2000-2003,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Report No. 24, December 26, 2003.)
(*) On November 21, 2003, Muslims poured out of the Maiduguri Road Central Mosque after Friday prayers in the Nigerian city of Kaduna, demanding the implementation of Sharia law and distributing flyers stating: “The only solution is Jihad, the type of jihad put into practise by Prophet Muhammed and exemplified by Shehu Usman Dan Fodio and the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. We Muslims should unite and embrace this concept of jihad that will undoubtedly empower us to destroy oppression and oppressors, and in its place establish Islam.” (Adeyeye Joseph and Agaju Madugba, “Bomb Scare in Lagos,” This Day, November 22, 2003.)
(*) As late as November 2003, the website of the Islamic Affairs Department (IAD) of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, D.C. contained exhortations to Muslims to wage violent jihad in emulation of Muhammad: “The Muslims are required to raise the banner of Jihad in order to make the Word of Allah supreme in this world, to remove all forms of injustice and oppression, and to defend the Muslims. If Muslims do not take up the sword, the evil tyrants of this earth will be able to continue oppressing the weak and [the] helpless….” It quotes Muhammad delivering Allah’s words: “Whoever of My slaves comes out to fight in My way seeking My pleasure, I guarantee him that I will compensate his suffering with reward and booty (during his lifetime) and if he dies, I would forgive him, have mercy on him and let him enter Paradise.” (Steven Stalinsky, “The ‘Islamic Affairs Department’ of the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C.,” Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) Special Dispatch No. 23, November 26, 2003.)
As you are well aware Mr. Fatah, the list goes on and on. But look, on the one hand, even this debate makes your point to a certain degree. There are many Muslims, and obviously you included, who may not like this particular conversation and let us say these points about Muhammad. And Muslims like you want to defeat the Muslim extremists just as much as people like me do. So why go at each other and even divide ourselves from one another when we should be fighting the main enemy? Yes, true.
Having said that, there is a reality about Muhammad. And many jihadis see him as their inspiration and legitimation for violent jihad. Will ignoring this phenomenon really make things better? Isn’t a more realistic approach for Muslims worldwide to honestly come to terms with the violence that Muhammad practised in word and deed and to renounce it, reinterpret it and understand it in new ways?
Or is that even possible? Because what will it mean for Islam?
But in any case, denial will surely not make the problem go away.
Fatah: Muslims are their own worst enemies. Some Islamists invoke the memory and teachings of Prophet Muhammad to validate their own bloodlust. They do a terrible disservice to Islam, Muhammad and above all, ordinary Muslims.
Let me share with you what Mahatma Gandhi wrote about Muhammad.
"I wanted to know the best of one who holds todays undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind....I became more than convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for his pledges, his intense devotion to this friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle."
Gandhi is not alone in making an objective comment on the life and legacy of the Prophet. Perhaps the best description of Prophet Muhammad came from the American Episcopal bishop Bosworth Smith, who in his book Mohammad and Mohammadism (1874) wrote:
"...he was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without Pope's pretensions, Caesar without the legions of Caesar: without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Mohammed, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports."
Of course you are right that Islamic extremists and many Wahabbi Imams have a different view of Muhammad and they reduce him to mirror their own hateful personalities. In their quest to justify suicide bombings and the spread of terror, they mention Muhammad, but trust me, their intellectual sustenance comes from Syed Qutb and Syed Maudoodi, both 20th century characters who have reduced Islam to nothing more than one endless Jihad to conquer the world. We will not let them succeed.
FP: Well, the different positions on this issue I think have been made clear in our discussion. Overall, let us hope that Muslim such as yourselves will not let the jihadis succeed in what you have said above.
What is your book about overall? What is the main argument?
Fatah: As I said earlier, Chasing a Mirage is an attempt to do two things; one is to urge Muslims to understand their own history and to study it as such and not mistake history for theology. It's an attempt to bring to my fellow Muslims aspects of our heritage that has so far been considered taboo. The main argument I make is that there is a huge difference between the "Islamic State" and the "State of Islam ". One requires the politicization of my faith while the other provides a moral compass for humanity. It's an attempt to help non-Muslims distinguish between the ordinary Muslim, who has nothing to do with the worldwide terror blitz by Jihadis, and the Islamists who are using Islam as a political tool inflicting tremendous harm on fellow Muslims.
FP: What kind of Muslim are you? How would you describe and label yourself?
Fatah: I am an ordinary Muslim, the typical 9-to-5 working class guy with a family and a mortgage who likes ice-cream, soccer, an occasional ball game, loves music and dance, CSI and X-files and who occasionally prays to God for forgiveness and strength, though I feel the good Lord is on a long leave of absence paying attention to another galaxy. But seriously speaking, my parents were Sunni Muslim, I am married to a Shia, I have done the Hajj--twice--and am drawn to Islam by my fascination with Prophet Muhammad who within two decades turned a locust-eating primitive people to change the course of human history, demolishing the very clergy that is today holding the faith of Islam and one billion Muslims hostage. If you are asking for a label, then I am comfortable being known as a 'liberal Muslim' or a 'secular Muslim' or even a 'progressive' one. You take a pick. I am fighting to keep Islam and politics separate and this is what has kept me going for the last 40 years.
FP: How do you think the Left is handling itself in our confrontation with Islamofascism?
Fatah: The Left has betrayed its own principles of universal human rights and equality when it has put its lot with that of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian Ayatollahs and their bagmen in Hamas and Hezbullah. The Left should know these goons. They hunted us down and killed many of us secular and leftwing Muslims. Now a demoralized and intellectually bankrupt Left has thrown in the towel and it seems it has accepted the defeat of socialism and kept its addiction to politics by marching under the flag of Qaradawi, Bin Laden and Nasrallah. How on earth this came about is still a puzzle to me.
The Left should have learnt its lessons in 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini slaughtered almost 50,000 Iranian comrades of various left factions ranging from communist to social democrats. They were wiped out. Next door in Afghanistan , the Taliban massacred the cadre of leftwing political parties--fellow Muslims--yet today the stalwarts of the Left who choose to live in the comfortable West that they hate, march in solidarity with the despotic Ahmedinejad and the Islamofacsist Nasrallah of Hezbollah.
All I can say is that the Left will be the first to be killed if the Islamists gain absolute power in the Muslim world. What a pity. The movement whose strength lay in its appeal for a more enlightened and equal world has surrendered to those who are misogynists and homophobes, institutionalizing the second class status of women and the disabled while spreading hate against Hindus, Sikhs, Jews and Christians while indulging in suicide bombings of fellow Muslims of different sects. Barbarism should never have had appeal for the Left, but it seems in its current people-starved existence, some in the Left have made allies with the devil. God bless them.
FP: We absolutely agree on the Left's behaviour in this terror war. Where we would disagree is that this behaviour, which you appear to see as a new departure, I would argue is simply a normal continuation of a sacred tradition of the Left. I have difficulty understanding your point that "barbarism should never have had an appeal for the Left," since the monstrosity of the communist experiments in the 20th Century was made possible by leftist ideals. And that is why the Left supported and excused many of the horrifying earthly incarnations of socialism in the 20th Century.
The Left's devotion to tyrannies throughout the 20th century has been documented by, among others, Paul Hollander in Political Pilgrims and Anti-Americanism. When Michael Moore, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, George Galloway, Naomi Klein and other leftists reach out in solidarity to the Islamofascists, this is nothing new; it is simply an extention of the traditional leftist romance with communist mass murderers, despots and terrorists in the 20th Century. Let's not forget, for instance, the fellow travelers, the venerators of tyranny, such as George Bernard Shaw, Anne Louise Strong, Jean Paul Sartre, Simon de Beauvoir, Susan Sontag, Mary McCarthy, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Chomsky etc., who represented the Left well in terms of how Western progressives reached out in solidarity to the West's despotic enemies.
Fatah: Call me naive in this respect, but I was drawn to the Left as an answer to the horrible conditions of the poor that I saw all around me. The suffering of the teeming millions who faced horrible working conditions as their employers--my family included-- lived in a bubble of prosperity that would be the envy of the rich in the West.
For me the rights of the factory workers and the landless peasants brought me to the Left and made me fight the military dictators who nourished such blatant inequality. You are right about the atrocities committed under communism and history has delivered its verdict. However, seeing the fight for social justice purely through the lens of communism is also not fair. Today when we enjoy a 5-day workweek, annual vacations, a public education system and access to healthcare for all citizens, we have to give credit where it is due. These social rights came as a result of the work of European social democrats and I would say are rooted in the American and the French Revolutions of the 18th century.
FP: We’ll continue this discussion perhaps in another time and place. Suffice it to say, the Left’s position in this terror war is a shameless one and it is nothing new from the way the Left behaved vis-à-vis the communist monsters of the 20th century.
But let’s move on. Why are Muslim countries failures in offering freedom, human rights and equality?
Fatah: There are multiple reasons why Muslim countries have failed to honour their obligations as signatories to the 1948 UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights, or to provide equality, freedom and individual liberty to its citizens.
I risk boring you with a history lesson, but it is worth remembering that at the core of Muslim civilization is the Arab world. The Arabs may not constitute more than 20% of the world's Muslims, but they form the cornerstone of our community. As the Arabs went so did the rest of us. Unfortunately for all of us the death knell delivered to Arab civilization in the 1258 burning of Baghdad and the1452 expulsion from Spain destroyed our intelligentsia and delivered the Arabs into the arms of the ultra orthodox clergy that rejected all learning.
Since then the Arab world has looked at the past for its sustenance, not the future. Of course, there were other Muslim empires like the Ottoman caliphate that took up the baton from the crumbling caliphate of the Abbasids, but they too were suspicious of the sciences and the Renaissance. In the east the Moguls ruled India while Indonesia and the Malays joined Islamdom. This was the time the world witnessed the voyages of the great Chinese Muslim Admiral Zheng as he sailed acorss oceans. However, no one could emulate the era of learning that the Arabs had triggered under the Omayyads of Spain or the Abbasids of Iraq.
It is said the printing press took 200 years to travel 200 miles to reach the Ottoman empire and then too it was rejected as a challenge to Allah and Islam. Without the printing press, Muslims lapsed into stagnation while Europe went through the Renaissance and the Reformation to first knock out the Catholic Church's grip on society and then usher in new thoughts and innovation both in faith and science. The likes of James Watt and Stuart Mills on the other shook up the world while Muslim lands fell one by one to the colonial enterprise.
That was just one aspect of the lack of human rights in Muslim countries. In the 20th century as freedom touched the shores of Muslim countries like Pakistan , Egypt , Indonesia and Iran and Turkey demolished the last vestiges of the moth-eaten caliphate, there was tremendous hope. There was hunger for democracy and modernity. Turkey , Iran , Pakistan , Egypt and Indonesia were led by people who looked to the future, not the past.
However, whether your readers like to read this or not, the USA played the most significant role in destroying the nascent democratic institutions that were starting to show signs of growth with roots deep into the countryside of these largely poor nations.
The Cold War had begun and the US needed to circle the underbelly of the USSR . Who else but the Muslim world was there to be used in this effort. One by one democratically elected governments were either overthrown by CIA help or were undermined by internal coups to install monarchs or military dictators who were willing to fight the communist Russian bear. First the popular elected government of Iran led by Mossadegh was overthrown in a CIA sponsored coup in 1953 and the Shah of Iran was flown in to take over. Next door in Pakistan in 1958 another US backed coup dissolved parliament and installed Field Marshal Ayub Khan.
In Iraq, the CIA spirited Saddam Hussein from Cairo to help overthrow the government in Baghdad. In 1965, in Indonesia a bloodbath took place where Islamists were used by the American backed military coup to hunt down and massacre hundreds of thousands of secular, liberal and left wing Indonesians. Thus, the very people who could have built the democratic institutions in the Muslim world were wiped out. On the other hand the US propped up the medieval kingdom of Saudi Arabia and even today serves as a guarantor to the 5,000 princes and princelings who occupy the Muslim holy lands as surrogates of the Empire.
Today, the people and the institutions that could have introduced democracy, freedom and human rights to the Muslim world, lay in tatters, chased out or killed by regimes that relied on US support. Today the only Iranian group that can provide a challenge to the Iranian Mullahs has been banned by the US and Canada. There are times the West needs to look at itself in the mirror and ask, "Did we create these monsters?" The answer is Yes.
FP: The U.S. confronted a vicious and evil totalitarian enemy in the Soviet Union during the Cold War and it took many different approaches to defeat it, a victory that all people who treasure freedom and liberty, and especially their own, should be grateful for. American behaviour might not have been pristine during this battle with totalitarian evil, and some less than savory regimes and characters might have had to be supported to win this battle against evil. But blaming America for the failure of democracy in the Islamic world fails to take into account the all-encompassing nature of political Islam, no? Surely the Muslim world's lack of human rights has something to do with Islam's teachings. Has not Islam been a political and social system as well as an individual religious faith from the time of Muhammad until the abolition of the caliphate? Doesn't the imperative to impose Sharia have much more to do with the failure of democracy in the Islamic world than American policy?
Fatah: Let me put it this way. If today the Catholic Church was allowed to interfere in the socio-political life of say Quebec, and we went back to the Duplessis era, would you then blame the suffocation inflicted on the Quebecois on Christianity?
Democracy and freedom can only flourish when religion is taken out of the realm of politics and governance of the state. Whether it is Islam or Christianity, as soon as the clerics run the state, and speak as interlocutors between human and God, say goodbye to liberty. Blaming Islam as fundamentally anti-democratic is unfair. What would be more accurate is to say that whenever law making is taken away from elected parliaments and placed in the hands of those who claim to speak directly to the Divine, the absence of human rights will be ubiquitous.
Muslims themselves have to blame for their ills, but the role of the U.S. in propping up Saudi Arabia, the number one source of our problems, and the American appetite for Kings and dictators in the Muslim world throughout the Cold War, cannot be swept under the carpet.
FP: Fair enough, but can the fact that there is no separation of Church and State in Islam be swept under the rug?
Fatah: Well, there was no separation between Church and State in Christianity too. Didn’t we overcome that about 200 years ago? Didn't the Catholic Church have an iron grip on much of Europe? Wasn't it the oppression of the 'official religion' of Britain that led to the 'pilgrims' landing on Plymouth Rock seeking freedom of religion?
It took the father of the American Revolution to trigger the freedoms we all take for granted in the West. It was the French Revolution that knocked the socks off the Church's power in France and the rest of Europe. If this freedom and liberty is good enough for Christians and Europeans and Americans, then why not for Arabs, Iranians, Turks and Pakistanis, specially those who have chosen to move to the US or Canada. We too will throw out the Mullahs just as God fearing Christians told their clergy to keep away from pronouncing laws and selling passports to paradise. Our time has also come. We Muslims deserve better than the joy-hating cranky pretenders of piety who stand as guard dogs in our quest to take ownership of Islam.
FP: Islam has never developed the distinction between religious and secular law because Islam does not allow for it, and Christianity developed it because the principle of the separation is inherent in Christianity (i.e. render to Caesar what is Caesar's etc.)
In any case, let us hope that Muslims reformers like you can succeed in helping to reform Islam in this context -- taking religion out of the realm of politics and governance of the state as you say.
Before we go, let's focus on an essential matter that your work focuses on: the "Islamic State" and "Jihad". Could you talk a bit about that?
Fatah: As far as the Islamic State is concerned, nowhere in the Quran is it obligatory for Muslims to work towards creating such a political entity. A Muslim is a person who believes in the unity of God, just like the Jews, and who is required to perform daily prayers, give charity, observe a dawn to dusk fast during the month of Ramadan and finally, if he or she can afford it, perform the pilgrimage of Hajj, once in a lifetime.
Nowhere is the creation of an Islamic State an obligation of a Muslim. Whether I live in Mecca or Montreal, I can be a Muslim irrespective of my surroundings. This notion of creating an Islamic State as an act of worship or religiosity has led to countless tragedies and wars with brothers killing brothers, mothers murdering stepsons and Kings brutalizing their subjects, all in the name of creating and maintaining an Islamic State. My book explodes this myth and I challenge the Islamists to debate me anywhere and anytime on this subject.
As far as Jihad is concerned, it has multiple meanings, but trust me, no matter what the Islamists chirp, when they use the word Jihad, they mean "Holy War" against deviant Muslims and the Infidel Christians, Jews and Hindus.
Islam permits such a war, but my contention is that it is an outdated construct that needs to be rejected by all Muslims just as they have rejected the institutions of slavery and concubinage--both of them permitted under sharia law and Islam.
Those Muslims who are unwilling to say that there is no place for the institution of armed Jihad in international relations, have a lot to answer for. On one hand they condemn terrorism committed by jihadis, yet they are reluctant to distance themselves from the doctrine that drives the jihadis--Jihad.
Here again, it is Syed Maudoodi and Syed Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood who have endorsed and urged young Muslims to kill in the name of Islam.
In his book, Understanding Islam, which is available and distributed in Canada and US, Syed Maudoodi exhorts ordinary Muslims to launch jihad, as in armed struggle, against non-Muslims.
"Jihad is part of this overall defense of Islam," he writes. In case the reader is left with any doubt about the meaning of the word "jihad," Mr. Maudoodi clarifies: "In the language of the Divine Law, this word [jihad] is used specifically for the war that is waged solely in the name of God against those who perpetrate oppression as enemies of Islam. This supreme sacrifice is the responsibility of all Muslims."
Maudoodi goes on to label Muslims who refuse the call to armed jihad as apostates:
"Jihad is as much a primary duty as are daily prayers or fasting. One who avoids it is a sinner. His every claim to being a Muslim is doubtful. He is plainly a hypocrite who fails in the test of sincerity and all his acts of worship are a sham, a worthless, hollow show of deception."
In addition, here is what Mr. Qutb, another Egyptian stalwart of the Islamist movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, writes in his classic book Milestones:
"Any place where Islamic Sharia is not enforced and where Islam is not dominant becomes the Home of Hostility (Dar-ul-Harb). ... A Muslim will remain prepared to fight against it, whether it be his birthplace or a place where his relatives reside or where his property or any other material interests are located."
Syed Qutb reduces the message of Islam to the rejection of all laws made by parliaments. He says: "The basis of the message [Islam] is that one should accept the Shariah without any question and reject all other laws in any shape or form. This is Islam."
Well, I have a message for the late Syed Qutb: "This is NOT Islam."
FP: You have bravely stood up against the Islamofascists and they have threatened you many times. But you continue to fight and speak out. From where do you get your courage?
Fatah: Mine is not an act of courage; it is just doing my job. Trying to make sure that non-Muslims realize it is not Muslims who are the problem, it is Islamists they have to worry about. Islam is not a threat to the West; it is the Mullahs who mix Islam and politics who need to be watched. I have had my share of death threats and physical violence, and sometimes I do get scared, but I am a follower of Gandhi and will not be cowed by schoolyard bullies. If they get me, so what. I am 58 and feel I have a good run.
FP: Tarek Fatah, thank you for joining us today.
Fatah: It was pleasure. I hope your readers realize that we are in this together. Muslim and non-Muslim, black and white, young and old, male and female. We have to come together to defeat the hate inspired Islamofascism that is a radical political ideology, not Islam.
FP: Absolutely my friend, we are in this together and we have to do this together. Thank you very much for joining us. It was an honor to speak with you. I would like to remind our readers that anyone who would like to contact Mr Fatah can do so by emailing him at tarekfatah@rogers.com.