Tarek Fatah's Chasing a Mirage

And then he really surprises (still in the preface) by saying that "Of all the ingredients that make up my complex identiry, being Canadian has had the most profound effect on my thinking. It isCanada that propels me to swim upstream to imitate with humility the giants who have ventured into uncharted waters before me. Men like Louis-Joseph Panineau,Tommy Douglas, Pierre Trudeau, and Norman Bethune; women like Agnes Pacphail, Rosemany Brown and Nellie McClung. For it is only here in Canada that I can speak out against the hijacking of my faith and the encroaching spectre of a new Islamic-fascism."

Who knew?

At least, I didn't know much about the history of Islam, ancient and recent,  which is laid out in this work. Sure hope someone out there with a more complete knowledge has read  Chasing a Mirage and can point to any shortcomings. Right now I'm in his hands.

Trust me, the slaughter of Tarek Fatah should begin sooner than you expect. Rabble has many Islamists who pose as if they are left-0f-centre and will slam his book without having read it.

As a Sikh, I was profoundly touched by how he chose to end the Preface by quoting from the founder of my faith, Guru Nanak. His chapter on Pakistan is deeply moving as he talks about a Punjab ripped into two by the departing British.

I am missing the reference in your sarcasm, unionist...care to explain?

I assumed he was refering to the historical partition of Bengal into eat and west components, which was an extremely bloody undertaking, along religious lines.

Fatah says he's written "an appeal to those of my co-religionists who are chasing the mirage of an Islamic State (who he hopes) stand up to the merchants of segregation who have fed us with myths and got us addicted to a forced sense of victimhood. "

We have " all but given up on the future, labelling  modernity itself as the enemy."

he "hope(s) that, after reading this book, the conservative Republicans in the United States and their neo-conservative allies in the West will realize that in the battle of ideas, dropping bombs helps the foe, not the friend."

Fatah goes on in the preface to point to the themes of "poetry, song, and dance (that) are as much a part of our culture as piety, modesty and charity. Challenging authority, even the existence of God himself, has been part of our heritage, and some Muslims have even lived to tell that tale.

"For instance, take these lines from 19th-century India's giant Muslim poet Mirza Ghalib (in today's Islamic world he would be in hiding: 'Of course I know there is no such thing as Paradise, but, To fool oneself, one needs such pleasant thoughts Ghalib'."

He has laid out the book in three parts...the politics behind the Islamic State; "Islamic history from the power struggle that developed immediately after the death of the Prophet,through the four caliphates that followed and defined Islam in medieval times; "contemporary Islamic issues, including hihad, hijab, sharia law, and the agenda of Islamists in the West."

I am quite taken with his style and have needed the history...but I look forward to seeing real discussion on "contemporary Islamic issues."

Pure slander. Hopefully you will not be here long enough to repeat it.

Don't enlist me in an anti-religious rant, Unionist. I called him on slander. That's it.

I stand pretty comfortably in the religious tradition of the United Church, and of the Social Gospel. Childish though you think me and those like me.

Goes a little farther afield than I was going, but of course I agree in general. I find nothing wrong, mind you, with differences being made clear: I'll go after those who claims to speak for christianity and attack women or homosexuals under that aegis; they're wrong.

But my point was that this has all the smell of trollery and slander of babblers, and that is something that i think we can unite together to oppose.

Unionist and Coyote,

I have long given up on organized religion, but being a Sikh is not just a religious identity; it is cultural as well as geographical. This is why I have opposed the Sikh crazies who fought and died for a Sikh state of Khalistan.

Fatah's book is the first by a Muslim that shows empathy towards Sikhs, Hindus and Jews. He is a product of the Catholic school system and thanks his school and its 'Fathers' for helping him understand his faith and history.

My concern is with his co-religionists who slam him and his book without reading it. How can Sanizadeh pass judgement on Fatah and comment on his book while confessing she has not read and has no intention of reading it.

The book was shortlisted for the Donner Prize and has been reviewed by dozens of people. The least Sanizadeh should do is borrow it from the local library and pass judgement later instead of suggesting other authors.

i have had these disagreements within the church, Unionist, and I agree with you. I am very happy to have had a hand in several strong actions and statements on Israel/Palestine from my congregation(s) over time, and my Presbetry(s). I will certainly write him under my own name; I will let you know when and if I hear anything back.

Thank you.

And bhagat, I join Coyote in asking you to withdraw your slanderous comment. If sanizadeh is your example of an "Islamist", then it will take more than a dictionary to set you right. Sanizadeh is one of our most serious, respected, and careful posters. If he calls Tarek Fatah less-than-the-most-qualified to critique Islam, I would pay attention.

Tarek has been a lot of things. Flavour of the month. Cashing in on being a Muslim dissident is his latest trick.

George, Fatah is not some "scholar" or academic whose "work" one must "read". He's a politician, in public view. First he was a noisy propagandist for the Muslim Canadian Congress (whose public statements were way too close to Islamophobic and pro-imperialist for my personal taste). He was also an NDP militant. He publicly quit both at different times, and joined the Liberals (if memory serves). You don't need to read the written ravings of Stephen Harper to condemn that sordid excuse for a human being, I trust you'll agree. Likewise, whatever one thinks of Fatah, one can reach that conclusion without going to the library.

Where would you go to evaluate what he has written, not what he has done, u?

Hell, man, I'd just like to know if his "history" is revisionist. And if he is being unfair to the folk who interpret Islam in a way that allows them to practise some rather nasty things on other folks in the name of Allah (long may he ... whatever).

Of course he's not a scholar. Scholars would never cover so much cultural ground so quickly. It's a work for popular consumption. But let's not suggest a symbolic book burning.

Do you seriously expect me to condemn everything in this book because he's a political dilettante?

I'd have to read the National Post to read him, remind? Not a good sign.

But does he actually get published, there? Reviwed favourably by the Right?

Yes George he publishes all the time in the NP, and yes he does, just read Barbara Kay's article on his Saturday's article, today.

Seems like my  reading the book will give me a one-sided take on "the faith". AT least, I will move forward from near total ignorance, and will try to keep these warnings in mind. And perhaps some other poster will offer up critical articles to further my knowledge of his critics' take on faith and politics.

I sure as shucks would not expect that kind of book promotion from you, u.  And of course have not invited you to do so. Have no idea what would prompt my to come to you for that kind of instruction or encouragement on that subject. Goes against your grain, so to speak.  You appeared, unannounced and uninvited. Now back to that novel. 

Thank you for suggesting Soroush, Sanizadeh. Google has directed me to look for Abdolkarim Soroush, an "Iranian religious reformer."

Not sure if the library (system) will be up to providing his work, but I'll give it a try.

And bhagat, I hope that I will be able to read works that you recommend.  Like you, I was taken with Fatah's professed interest in an ecumenical understanding among the faiths. Perhaps we can find pursue that line of thinking.

I need to find out these things, and try to understand what sort of world is developing for my grandaughter.

Fatah says that the late Polish-born Muhammad Asad (birth name Leopold Weiss) "remains one of the Muslim world's most respected scholars, with works that include commentaries on the Quran and the notion of the Islamic State. When Pakistan was created in 1947, it was this grandson of a Jewish rabbi who was invited to assist in the writing of Pakistan's constitution. The fact that his efforts failed suggest that while the theories and romantic notions about the Islamic State make for interesting academic discourse, in practice they fall short."

Really like to know  if this is why Asad's efforts failed, etc. etc.

We'll really have to watch the syntax, but then, interpreting the Quran (or any other work based on faith) seems to demand that. Heck, posting here demands  concern for nuances of meaning, eh?

I get this clown's e-mails everyday practically. Here is his lateste headline:

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

Muslim Silence over the Ugly Face of Jihad

Unless Muslim leaders and Islamic organizations distance themselves from the doctrine of jihad as pronounced by the Muslim Brotherhood, their position that "jihad means peace" will be seen as propaganda.

Muslim Canadians must lead the attack on jihadi Islamists. They need to stop vying for a gold medal in the Olympics of victimhood. They should say clearly in their mosques that the days of jihad are over. In the world of nation states, the UN, multilateral pacts and international law, there is no room for the doctrine of armed jihad.

Otherwise, the day is not far when jihadis will strike inside Canada.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Funny how no other group is told to "stand up" for the ills committed by a few. Can you imagine headlines like this:

Christian Silence over Pedophile Priests, or Jews Silent over Israel's Actions.

Yeah not going tp happen. Funny how this man seems to have no problem with US Imperialism, but comdemns Mulsilms with every post. Class act that guy.

At first blush, a balanced review.

I had hoped it was possible.

Thank you, contrarians.  Looking forward to reading the book and the review in detail.

There's apparently "good" and "bad" to be found in it.  Sorta human.

Another bad day for you, Cue?

How do you determine an opinion is balanced? What makes it so. Hey, I used to like Tarek. He was a good aquaintance of mine. Everything I say is based on personal experience. He is a grandstanding media hound, who will say whatever is needed to get him published. He loves being the native informant, denouncing everything from within. He says he is on the "left" and denounces leftist routinely, he says he is a Muslim, and does nothing but denounce Islam.

His entire history is of one of personal and political betrayal. I know this. I have seen it in action. He used to work with the NDP, and you will not find a single person who will speak well of him. Likewise, all the credible people who formed the MCC with him have little or nothing to do with him, except the hand chosen few who stuck around after the organization was gutted by Tarek outlandish antics and divisive tactics.

He resigned, saying he wanted to get out of the media spotlight because his views and activities with the MCC were progating death threats against him, and his family. A lie. Obviously because the next thing he did was quit the NDP and dramatically joined Bob Rae's Liberal leadership drive and even founded yet another "progresive" Muslim lobby group, writing profusely for various Canadian rags, and otherwise drawing attention to himself.

Odd behaviour for one who is heading in the Rushdiesque seculsion for his personal safety? What is the real story. The real story was that Tarek knew that he had nothing to fear from rampaging "Islamists" and was really just using the death threat story to get anothe by line in the Toronto Star, and enhance is reputation as a Muslim "dissident".

He is full of shit.

Thanks for expanding on your standard epithet of "bullshit", Cue. Your critique is now understandable. His is not a "balanced" position.

I did wonder at the catalogue of Canadian "progressives" that he listed as inspiring in the preface. I don't doubt he is capable of some gratuitous excesses beyond that. But I knew non of this because my newspapers, the Globe and the Record, are not given to printing his stuff.

My chief concern at this point is to discover whether the development of extremist positions within the Muslim religion in any way depends on the ideological figures that he presents to us - as well, of course, as the assault, physical and cultural, on the attempts by middle eastern Arab progressives to construct the societies that could grow the responsible, democratic structures that have been systematically destroyed since Mohammad Mossadegh's time (when the opening strokes of the Cold War set back all...) The two go hand in hand, the destruction of nascent democratic forces  leaving a people open to believe any spiritual offering.

If Fatah lopsidedly ignores the impact of our own oil-driven (SUV-lovin') obsession with "the good life" and our impact on some of the most vulnerable people one can imagine, that wiill be noted. As long as my fellow babblers are willing to allow one to come to an understanding through the rational process of comparing views - I am not in danger of being taken in by propaganda from any quarter (Mossadegh's destruction was roundly condemned at my family's dinner table discussions more than a half century back I can recall it) - all should be well in this temple of learning.

Matter of fact, I am going to look for ANY reference to the CIA-driven plot against Mossadegh to see if there is ANY recognition of that historical event, which has always been, for me, the reference point for my  understanding the monster that  we, as a greedy, materialist culture, have managed to create. This will not be the position of some, whose ideas of "Imperialism" are all about a topdown rule by the forces of capitalism and militarism (my take on our failure is a bottom-up process from ignorance of the - wait for it - Great Unread). But I hope this explanation of my abiding political interest is at least reassuring to some, hereabouts.

George,

I suggest you jump to the chapter on Iran and it will show you that the attacks on fatah are totally unwarranted and come from people who have a personal beef with him because he spares nothing to expose the Islamist agenda in Canada. He even defines the difference between "Islamism" and "Islam" as well as the difference between "Muslim" and "Islamist."

Justin Podur's review is just one and he too reveals that it was Fatah who asked him to critique his work. From the Daily Times in Pakistan to the Huffington Post and Ha'aretz, the book was won rave reviews.

The fact that some rightwing nuts have found his opposition to Iran and Saudi Arabia worthy of praise, but that should not be held against Fatah. After all, is it not odd that Hugo Chavez finds himself in the same league as Ayatullah Khamenie?

Do you have a better term to use when we want to talk about "faithful Muslims who also have a political agenda" - particularly when that includes opposition to any separation between church and state and wanting to establish theocratic states where everyone has to live according to Sharia law etc...? If we aren't allowed to call such people "Islamists" then what would be a more "politically correct" term to use?

I guess no one wants to answer my question.

There is nothing "particullarly" about it. It is a sweeping non-indiginous identification that includes any and all militant Muslim people, reagrdless if they believe in instituting Sharia law, or not, or what brand of Sharia they advocate. There is pratically no continuity between the political views of revolutionary Muslim groups, Hamas is not the Taliban, Hexboallah is not Hamas. For example Hamas ran a female candidates who opposed enforcement of Hijab laws, when another said something which might be construed as advocating for the enforcement of Hijab laws, she quickly backtracked and clarified that such should be strictly voluntary. That doesn't sound like Sharia as proposed by the Iranian state. Yet, westerners love to lump in Sunni-salafists who practice Pasthtun-Wali, such as the Taliban, with Shia theorcracy in Iran, and Hamas, even though there are obvious distinctions to be made between them, just as there are obvious distinctions to be made between the state of Egypt, which proclaims that its laws are based in Sharia, as does the state of Iran.

Hosni Mubarak is an "Islamist" because he is the president of a state where all laws must conform to Sunni Sharia laws?

It's doubtful that the Taliban are universally ideologically embedded in Pashtunwali. Yet, western propagandists love the term, because it can be used to make a blanket condemnation of any and all of its opponents among Muslim people by aligning them all with the most obnoxious and backward elements in Muslim societies.

Where are the Islamist parties then? Why is Hamas called Hamas, and not the Islamist Liberation Front of Palestine. Why? Because it has no meaning outside of the context of western orientalist propaganda.

One merely has to go look at the writings of the people who invented the term to understand how it is embedded in explicitly bigotted tropes about Islam, asserting that Islam is fundamentally antithetical to democracy and tollerance, in a way that the Judeao-Christian cultural nexus is not, as is done repeatedly. The "Islamism" accusation is not just made against Islamic militants, but intrinsically impugns every single Muslim person, regardless, if they are militants or not, because according to those who coined the term, being of the Isalmic faith makes one intollerant and anti-democratic.

Sure, if you want to align with the Right wing Christian Babtist nut cases, who believe Christianity is fundamentally superior to Islam, be my guest.

The title does not say it all. The term first appears in France and appears in the OED as early as 1747.

Al-Afghani, and Pan-Islamism

In other words, the term "Islamism" was the taken up in the late Ottoman by Muslims scholars to identify a movement that wanted to make Islam conform to the norms of secular nations states, not to bring about the retrenchment of Sharia. The themes of this reform were modernization and secularization, and even the creation of an Ottoman constitutional monarchy, based in rationalism. Quite the opposite of the term as it has reemerged in the west in the 1980's, as defined by western scholars.

Fatah says that the Islamists who "follow the doctrine of Wahhabism (from the 18th-century Islamic fanatic Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab) or Salafi Islam (Salafism...is a generic term for Sunni Muslims who view the lives of the first three generations ofMuhammad's companiions from the 7th and 8th centuries as examples of how Islam should be practiced in the 21st)_. or even the ruling ayatollahs of Iran, a country can be labelled an Islamic State only if it is governed by the laws of sharia.

"Thus, neither Turkey or Indonesia is an Islamic State in the eyes of the Islamists."

Fatah argues that those in this century who interpret the Quran as supportive of an "Islamic State", a goal central to the Muslim world since the time of the first Caliphate in the 7th century, are wrong. Nowhere iin the Quran, says Fatah, does God "ask or authorize the creation of an Islamic State."

The "abolition of the caliphate system (1925) by Turkey's founding president, secular modernist Mustafa Kemal Ataturk",  meant that for the first time since 632 CE, the Muslim world had no central political authority." And the Muslim world by that time "was largely living under French, British and Dutch occupation."

He quotes Ataturk as saying "Our prophet has instructed his disciples to convert the nations of the world to Islam, he has not ordered for them to provide for the government of these nations. Never did such an idea pass through his mind. Caliphate means government and administration...The notiion of a single Caliph exercising suprreme religious authority over all the Muslim people is one which has come out of the books, not reality."

"The movement to restore the Ottoman caliphate was strong in India" in Mahatma Gandhi's time, even though some pointed out that the caliphate "had long become a symbol of Muslim statehood in name only, as not even the next-door Iranians accepted the sovereignty of the Ottomans."

(I can't find any fundamental fault with Fatah's basic explanation of Muslim history from the creation of that vacuum of belief on the collapse of the caliphate and the dominance of European Imperialism over governments. The pursuit of a Muslim "state" was deemed necessary by some in opposition to Western cultural and political domination, and it gave rise to the the "politics and theology of Islamic States," the title he gives to Chapter 1.)

Fatah goes into detailed explanation of the rise of various religious inerpretations of authority across the Arab states, but says the "extreme case of domination of religious principles is found in the Iranian Constitution.

"The Islamic Republic is a system based on belief(s)" and Fatah quotes the Consitituion in detail, showing, finally, the "leadership of the holy persons, posessing necessary qualifications, exercised on the basis of the Quran and the Sunna, upon all of whom be peace."

And "in the same spirit," says Fatah, "the majority of the Arab constitutions declare the sharia as the basis of legislation, ar at least consider it as a main source of legislation."

He goes on to say that it is that position which "prevents most the the countries that pretend to be Islamic States from living up to the standards set by the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights."

(Fatah's central critique of human rights failure follows from this, and will be entered here, the spirit willing, on Aug. 1st.) :-)

Read him Cue. Don't be silly, of course he does not leave out the original Schism in the faith. It is the appearance and rise of the particularly bloody-minded that he is trying to explain.

Unfortunately, I cannot  quote the book in its entirety, so  you'll have lots of opportunity to add scholarly one-liners in the days ahead...Allah willing or unwilling.

Tarek Fatah thinks Jason Kenney is a great immigration minister:

"What is different with him is, with previous [Conservative] immigration ministers, both have been pussycats; this guy is a tiger," says Tarek Fatah, an author, prominent Liberal supporter and founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. "He's standing up for Canadian values. I would like every politician to stand up for this country the way Jason Kenney has."

Tarek Fatah's MCC blamed Hamas for "provoking" the genocidal Israeli assault on Gaza

How could he claim then that Islam had a central political authority that was done away with by Kemal Ataturk, since there was no central political authority, when we actually know there were several caliphates, even in Sunni Islam, competing with each other after 632 CE. His statement is simply wrong. Even the Ottomans failed to extend the authority of their empire beyond the borders of Iran.

Its just a stupid grand-eloquent statement.

Let's at least get these facts straight. The Caliph is a title bestowed upon a secular leader. He is not a religious leader.  There was not a central political authority among Muslims at all after the death of Mohammed.

Thousands, like Tarek Fatah were brought up with a Catholic de-education. There is no explicit hierarchy among the Imams of the Sunni schools, for him to lead. Becoming the Caliph does not make one "the Pope".

In the Ottoman period the Caliph and the Sultan would be one in the same person. Claiming the Caliphacy was a way of asserting the right of conquest over Muslim lands not yet aquired. For example, after the Ottomans conquered Mamluks, they demanded that the Mamluk Sultan surrender the title of Caliph to the Ottoman Sultan, who thereby reinforced his claim to Egypt, the Levant and most of the Berber territories in North Africa, by being Sultan and Caliph.

The Caliph was advised by the Imams, on wether or not his dictates and laws complied with Islam. It is a title more in keeping with Emperor than Pope, as in the HRE where a secular king would be Emperor, and ruler over the Catholics, while the Pope was the final religious authority over the Catholics, except that the Sunni schools were more amorphous in their structure, and did not have totalized leader.

These guys collected titles like trading cards. The Ottoman Sultans, were also known as the Khan of Khans, and Ceasar of the Roman Empire.

That is an interesting link to the Wik, Fidel, and gives me confidence to proceed (as promised/threatened) with Fatah's explanation of the modern face of Muslim extremism - braving the Wrath of Cue.

From the attempt by some, in May, 2008, to discuss Fatah's book when it came on the scene, newly reviewed in the Star, I took the May 9 posting by sanizadeh as a fundamental reason for continuing the discussion...that the current understanding of Islam is, contrary to Fatah's position, "not just the 'perversion of principles' ".

Cue's understanding of history is that the Caliphates were a far more secularized government than Fatah suggests. Like to hear more of his take on Wahabism (or, where the "perversion"/radicalism began). And it will be interesting to see his take on the Wiki bit about Hassan Al-Banna and Abdul ala Maudoodi.  Fatah certainly see them central to a "perversion" and radicalization.

Anyway, somewhere in history, the Quran came to be interpreted in different ways.

And here is Fatah's account of what occurred at the end of the Second World War (still from Chapter 1, Politics and Theology of Islamic States, where he said (above) that in the same spirit as the Iranian Constitution, "the majority of the Arab constitutions declare the sharia as the basis of legislation, or at least consider it as a main source of legislation.

"This prevents most of the countries that pretend to be Islamic States from living up to the standards set by the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights. It also legitimizes the notion of facial and religious superiority, and allows for mltiple levels of citizenship and widespread and systemic discrimination against racial and religious minorities living withing a state's borders. Invariably, the human rights of the weak and dispossessed, the minorities and women, the diabled and the heretics, are trampled upon without the slightest sense of guilt or wrongdoing.

"Men and women are imprisoned, routinely tortured and often killed, while numbed citizens, fearful of offending Islam, unsure about their own rights, insecure about their own identities, allow these violations to continue. By looking the other way, the intelligentsia and middle classes have become complicit in these crimes. They justifytheir inaction as patriotism, where they stand in solidarity with the Islamic State, with the misguided idea that those who fight for universal human rights are somehow working for Westerm imperialism or represent the interests of Judeoo-Christian civilization.

"This rejection of the universality of human rights is not limited to the elites of the world's fifty-six Islamic countries, but is also widespread among the leaders of traditional Muslim organizations."

His case in point: "In December 2006, a Toronto-born Muslim lawyer, who had supported the introduction of sharia law in Ontario's Family Courts, critiqued the UN declaration in Counterpunch magazine suggesting the UN Declaration of Human Rights was a 'western construct,' not truly fit for the Islamic world."

(That should inspire more bellicose entries. And I'm now going to borrow the borrowed book back from a friend and read that chapter on Iran, suggested by bhagat.  Rather topical.)

Fidel,

Brilliant analysis. Thanks for sharing this. Tarek Fatah has made a very similar analysis in his chapter on Pakistan.

BTW, who is Khaled Ahmed? Any URL? 

Khaled Ahmed is a consulting news editor of the Friday Times in Lahore, Pakistan and based in London.

Conversations with History: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley