An Interview with Tarek Fatah on Personal and National Trajectory (Part One)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/06/01

Abstract 

Tarek Fatah is a Columnist for the Toronto Sun and the Founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. He discusses: personal background; national trajectory; walking on eggshells; examples of some religious rhetoric in prayers; mixed ordering of the surahs; contextualization of religious stances; and building bonds and creating secular and progressive changes.

Keywords: Canada, Islam, Karachi, Pakistan, religion, Tarek Fatah.

An Interview with Tarek Fatah on Personal and National Trajectory: Columnist, Toronto Sun & Founder, Muslim Canadian Congress (Part One)[1]^,[2]

*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*

1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was personal background?

Tarek Fatah: I was born in Karachi, which is now Pakistan. It used to be the capital of the part of British India. I grew up there. I went to a Catholic School. I went to college over there. I went to prison over there. I got thrown out from Pakistan television in 1979.

It was a charge of sedition or treason, but formally “sedition.” I spent about 10 years in Saudi Arabia doing advertising. I have spent 30 years now in Canada, living one day at a time, watching things go down the drain.

2. Jacobsen: Over those 30 years, in reflection, based on the phrase, “Going down the drain,” can you unpack that for us, please?

Fatah: When I came here in 1987, you had leaders like Jean Chretien, Brian Mulroney, Joe Clark, the Quebec Separatists, the BQ. Everything was discussed was political in nature, whether the Oka Crisis or otherwise.

It was about ideas across social, political, and economic issues. Mr. Broadbent from Oshawa had one aspect. Mr. Mulroney had a different one. Mr. Clark had a different one. The British Columbians had a viewpoint. Over the last 30 years, it has descended into a very low standard of leadership, where ethnic vote banks have risen.

There always used to be. The Orange Order would determine who ran Toronto. The Catholics must live North of a certain street in Toronto [Laughing]. I used to get bashed by the Orange Order. The Jews got beaten up in a very famous place, a park in Toronto.

All that aside, most were small. It came down to the idea of this as a battle of ideas. All the concepts settled down into a balance, then came the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, the ideas do not matter anymore.

The background matters more, “I am proud to be from Latvia.” What does that mean?!

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Fatah: Everyone is proud to be a Lithuanian. How does it matter between Bolivian, and an Ecuadorian, or an Indian and a Pakistani? But the crafty manner, the dumbest of political activists manipulated the nominated system of the political party candidates.

To be very honest, a white person cannot get nominated from any part of Mississauga or Brampton. White people do not have tribes anymore. So, the Sikhs can get anyone elected, even anyone as right-wing as Jagmeet Singh.

By “right-wing,” his thinks in terms of religion. It means he is medieval rather than right-wing and can pose as a left-wing activist. He can afford to say, “Who said what to whom about white supremacy?”

Now, it is the latest. He can become the leader of the NDP. In 1988, can you imagine Broadbent stepping down and being replaced by Jagmeet Singh or Brian Mulroney being replaced by Mr. Scheer who has no personality?

Or the Conservative Party leader who has become a leader in Brampton. You simply must have props with you, to look more exotic. People like me are like circus animals. We need to stand behind politicians. You are younger than me.

You would not know that there was never a time to stand behind politicians as props and not look someone in the face and cheering him. That is the norm today! You have been selected to sit or stand at the back of the person speaking without watching their face and getting enamoured. That is dumb! – Capital D.

That’s where we are today. The mayor of the City of Toronto does not know about the major issue of the Saudi woman landing in her city. He does not know which vote bank to get. It is hilarious.

You can do the Oka Crisis today. You would not know who to deal with. It is like the pipeline. The band councils think it is fine. Then you find out about the other issue o the heritage treaties. No one is interested in factual issues.

It is how you cajole how you were born. The disgrace has been that ideas went away for my DNA. It means a person cannot speak, cannot have ideas. We have dropped that way in 30 years before my eyes.

I ran for politics on the NDP ticket. I voted NDP most of my life. I cannot imagine voting for someone who thinks hair is the most important thing to them in a turban. I cannot say that. What I would be, anti-Sikh?

A high percentage of the Sikhs do not wear turbans. Similarly, I cannot be taken as a Muslim because I am not ugly enough to be considered Muslim so far. To be a Muslim, I must have a beard, no moustaches.

The moment I do that. I will have MPs standing next to me. I can put on a guttural accent. We cannot even stand up and say that a burqa is a disgrace on the face of women. We cannot say that. I can say that. Nobody else can say that.

The layers of the burqa. Someone asked me if it was a choice. I said, “Next time some drug addict walks into a train. You say, ‘Oh, he made a choice. It is a democracy!'” When someone wants to commit suicide, back in Toronto, they made a choice.

A person who disguises a persona, not showing their face, is being tolerated. Because otherwise, you would be called a racist. Nobody wants to be a racist. This is what we are facing as crises.

3. Jacobsen: You could get Regis Philbin for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? but Who Wants to Be a Racist? People could be duelling up [Laughing].

Fatah: It could be a popular game [Laughing].

Jacobsen: If we are looking at the growth of arguments dependent on identity, something that someone was not merited with; they were born with it. It is congenital rather than acquired in this sense. 

With this, it makes conversations more difficult, more fraught, and, in the phrase, as if one is ‘walking on eggshells.’ How does this prevent, as you are noting and getting at, more serious political conversations and social dialogues?

Fatah: We are at war. There is a world war ongoing between international Islamism and secular liberal Western democracy. Effectively, the enemy, which is essentially The Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, or ISIS, there are 50 different bodies that are enemy Muslims within our countries.

They can shut us down. It has become the story. A Muslim woman who is a young student refused to go to the prom but is perfectly happy to become the wife of the jihadis under ISIS. The places like Tunisia have tens of thousands of pregnant women coming back after willingly, accepting, that rape by jihadis as an act of worship.

It is half of a million dead in Syria. They cannot seem to figure out that what we own today has been inherited by those who worked in the far North over 200-300 years ago. They would lay down their workers who did not have central heating.

When people say, “I pay my taxes.” Those assets were invested by people who did not have running water. I lived in a neighbourhood called Cabbagetown in Toronto. It is not a joke there. People over there literally grow cabbages in their front yards.

That is what their food was, Irish, and others. Other than getting beat up by the Orange Order. They made food to make liberal democracy what it is today, especially after the Second World War. The idea of individual liberty got embedded in the United Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This is core to civilization. It is the crystallization of Britain, France, and the United States. Even after Osama Bin Laden comes in a burqa, we say, “Who could that be behind it? Is it a bank robber?” You cannot say it. But that guy wears a leather jacket and rides a motorbike.

Therefore, we better take him down. That is how stupid we are. To sum, we are going downhill. Unless, we recognize the idea that our enemies are in philosophy in a way. The fighting of Nazis before fighting the Nazis.

As with the First World War, how many millions died? We still have not learned. We keep going back to the same thing. 17 times a day, Jews are cursed in Muslim prayer. Every mosque.

4. Jacobsen: Is this in Canada as well?

Fatah: Every mosque around the world. 17 times a day, a Muslim denigrates the Jews.

Jacobsen: What would be an example of this?

Fatah: It is the opening prayer of Islam. Surah Al-Fatiha, “The path of those on whom You have bestowed your grace, not (the way) of those who have earned Your anger, nor of those who went astray.” [Not the one used, I had trouble finding it, and hearing it properly.]

It is the opening thing. Now, if the mullahs say, ‘We denounce the hadiths.” It becomes a different story. Then it becomes, “Well, the short and straight path,” but not the path of the murderer, of the pedophile, of the smuggler. Right?

But when you publicly say one thing when the microphone is on, then someone asks. You say, “Brother, it is the Jews.” Every Muslim knows that this is going on. On Fridays, we literally pray to Allah to give Muslims the better treatment over the kafirun. That is, you, the kafir.

Nobody is coming to speak out against it, and saying, “Don’t spread hate. We will not finance you with taxpayer money.” The cooperation of the government is funding a situation. There are the issues of anti-Semitism in the 1930s. They would rather have that conversation.

We are focusing on the Maple Leafs, the Blue Jays, and so on. Everyone wearing the same hat. The gladiators who are coming home, the BBQ. People are laughing at us. There is nobody in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, who believes 9/11 happened.

There is nobody. I can tell you 90% of Canadian Muslims, in my community, who openly say, “5,000 Jews didn’t die.” As soon as you ask them, “Do you condemn it?” They say, “Yes, it is very bad.” They say one thing in one context and another thing in another context.

The leaders, no one believes anyone unless they are a Saudi style or other dress. They see this as the Islam way. Most of what is Islam has no relation to any Islamic ideology. There were Muslims before the Quran was written.

There were Muslims who did things before fasting, praying, and the like. How did they become Muslims? The Quran is not a chronological order in which it was revealed. But we shall make you memorize it. It makes it hard to learn. The mullah says, “You do not have read the book in Arabic.”

Because many have memorized it. We can not go back. Because the people who have memorized it will fail the test.

Jacobsen: Right [Laughing].

Fatah:​ They have memorized it in an order, which is incorrect. Something fundamental to Islam is no priest class. There is nothing between yourself and the divine. The Pope, the priest, the rabbi, the mullah, this was an attraction; you were free.

The some said, “The Christians have a good thing going. They have a Dome.” This is how this came. There was no Dome in Islam. It was the Eastern Orthodox. The Sikhs took it, too. It is an Eastern Orthodox Church replica from Damascus.

What I am saying, it is historically accurate, but, from the Islamic point of view, blasphemy. To save ourselves from blasphemy, we have been becoming dumber and dumber, day by day.

Jacobsen: By which you mean, more historically illiterate in its development and history.

Fatah:​ I have never met an illiterate radical Muslim. 80% of Muslims still cannot read or write. You will never find a terrorist who cannot read or read. It means all jihadis and others come from the educated class.

When Malala says, “Give me a book, give me a book,” nothing!​ The moment you read the book; you become crazy because you have enemies. You realize, “Th computer, I have nothing to with it. The light, no! The chair, no!” There is no contribution to our community to any invention in the last 200 years.

What do we have? We have the 8th century to look up to. So, should we move forward or put the car in reverse gear? Then we complain. Gear number one should be forward. The Sun does not set in a rule of mud.

It is not fair. I have seen it. Why would I believe in scholars who believe the world was flat? Can some imam ride a bicycle in the 8th century or 9th century? I can; therefore, I am better than him. Just because he had a guttural accent and a long name, a name that never ends.

Who is he? There are 17 diverse types of the same guy. Tell that to a Pakistani, they will say, “Tarek is lying.” Why? Because that person has the imam telling them. Because Islam came to ordinary men from the priests.

Islam’s last verse – it is very interesting – or the last words of the revelation are “I have completed the faith for you.” The Arabs said, “No, no, no.” 100% of the text has been written after supposedly God said, “Today, I have finished everything.”

By the way, what I am discussing with you, there is no place on Earth that this can be discussed.

5. Jacobsen: What is the last Surah given the mixed ordering?

Fatah:​ I do not memorize, but I know. It says, “In the name of God who created you.” They preach it. For people who have been asked to read and write, they are 80% illiterate. That is a problem! [Laughing] When you proclaim, “My God told me to read and write. But I have decided not to do it.”

It is the first verse. It is absolutely stunning in its beauty. What did Muslims do? It probably means the guy who compiled by size did not know how to read and write. It is very primitive thought, “Big is better. Small is not so better.”

​6. Jacobsen: If you look at the Eastern Orthodox Church and its very satellites, they have their own issues with the Russian Orthodox and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.  If you look at the Roman Catholics and Protestants, etc., we can note the same issue of textual analysis. 

Them asking themselves, at least the scholars or theologians, tacitly, “How do we properly contextualize this within our particular dogmatic stance?” I would not apply this to the liberal-progressive branches of these.

Fatah:​ But this has happened in Islam. It happened in the year 900. The rationalists of Islam were slaughtered. In fact, there were a couple of Caliphs who were declaimed as apostates because they nurtured the rationalist view.

The whole debate was if the Quran was a created book or a divine book, the debates of the 10th century were far more progressive than the 20th century. They were brighter than the dumb people now who go around in robes.

So, the Christian divide is, essentially, a European awakening based on Greek thought and Roman tradition. All of that is a European tradition. I keep reminding my Muslim friends. There is a world East of Greece and Japan; that is a different world altogether.

No John Smith is ashamed to be a John Smith. No one says, “I am not going to name my son John. It is a good name.” If you go to Pakistan, you can find people looking for names. It shows the weakness of your identity. “Who are we?”

We cannot even invest in making a bicycle. Imagine if you are an idiot, you find out nothing that works is made in your country; other than bombs that explode. Even those too, we smuggle through deliveries through the Merchants of Death bring Russian materials through Yemen and elsewhere.

We know how to use AK-47s. We just do not know how to make them. We have become so stupid that we fire the AK-47s during weddings. I asked, “Why?” He said, “This is our tradition.” I said, “No, your tradition is in bows and arrows. You did not make them. The Chinese made gunpowder. The Westerners made the cannon. You had spears and bows and arrows. I would you see bows and arrows at your sister’s wedding and then tearing things up.”

Imagine the concept that says, at your wedding, “You need to hear gunfire.” It is bizarre, but true.

7. ​Jacobsen: For any long-term civilization or culture, there will, typically, whether the Navajo, the Orthodox Jewish community, the Hopis, have strong bonds between generations. 

In terms of the more sophisticated secularist, typically, branches of faiths, which implies a certain respect for other people’s beliefs by having that separation, what do you think that we can do in our own countries and in our own communities to build those bonds to make that more progressive and secular branch of faiths more robust across time?

Fatah:​ It is very simple. There must be no road of religion in any political area of life from the school trustees. The infiltration is taking place. The political party memberships as well, I will give an example of the recent nomination listing in Mississauga-Erindale.

1 in 3 is a sitting liberal. There was one MP He is a former sitting MP [Didn’t get the name], sitting MP who came 3rd. The nomination was won by the group candidate who only had Egyptian Coptic Christians in the nomination.

Number 2 was only a candidate who had Vietnamese people. The two tribes and white Canadians fought. The white Canadians cannot go out and fight with their tribe. People would laugh in their tribe, “Let’s get together” [Laughing].

This is happening now. The Conservative Party nominated someone solely based on being an Egyptian Coptic Christian who would fight against the Muslim Pakistani woman who wants Sharia. Is this what we turned this country into?

The Egyptian Copts and the Pakistani Muslims [Laughing] are contending the next Mississauga-Erindale election. To answer your question, there must be religion taken out of schools. There should be one school board. There should not be a prayer room.

Every prayer room means one thing. Muslims monopolize it. How many Buddhists stop work to stop for prayer? This is how you capture power, by taking over public tax money and every high school in Ontario, all over North America; public money is being taken by Muslims in high schools to take over a room at taxpayer expense.

It does not just become a prayer room. There is a newspaper office with a prayer room. When was the last time that you found a Catholic who says, “Uh oh, I need to prayer”? Go home and pray.

Who are we feeling Why are we lying? York University has a prayer hall. The city of Toronto has the prayer hall. Who is there? No Baha’is are coming and demanding, “We want to pray. We want to pray!”

Canada is being screwed by making sure that it gets screwed well. Hockey players brandish their hockey sticks like gladiators from the Roman days. Get religion out of public life. If you want to survive, if you introduce religion, it becomes one religion.

That is not even Islam. It is what enemies of Muslims made, wrote of Sharia, and The Muslim Brotherhood, and, by the way, backed the CIA to combat communism, “Use Muslims, they are idiots.”

We turned this USSR issue with Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey, and then make them fight the communists because it was crazy. Ours will not die. Muslims will die fighting communists. Muslims turned out to be people who love to die because they believe life begins after death there.

This may sound bizarre to listeners or you. The Earth is a transit lounge. “You want to live. We want to die.” Who is going to win?

Appendix I: Footnotes

[1] Columnist, Toronto Sun; Founder, Muslim Canadian Congress.

[2] Individual Publication Date: June 1, 2019: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/fatah-one; Full Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2019: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.

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