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Tarek Fatah is a Muslim Canadian journalist, TV host, political activist, and a founding member of the Muslim Canadian Congress.
Fatah was a student radical in Pakistan in the 1960s and 1970s and was imprisoned under military governments under the charge of sedition.
A biochemist by training, Fatah entered journalism as a reporter for the Karachi Sun in 1970 and went on to become an investigative journalist for Pakistani television. He was fired after the coup that brought Zia ul-Haq to power and fled to Saudi Arabia where he lived for a decade.
In 1987, he emigrated to Canada and settled in Toronto. He became involved in the Ontario New Democratic Party and worked on the staff of Premier Bob Rae. Fatah was an NDP candidate in the 1995 provincial election but was unsuccessful. In July 2006, he left the NDP to support Bob Rae's candidacy for the Liberal Party of Canada's leadership. In an opinion piece published in Toronto's Now Magazine, Fatah wrote that he decided to leave the NDP because of the establishment of a "faith caucus" which he believes will open the way for religious fundamentalists to enter the party.
Since 1996 he has hosted Muslim Chronicle, a Toronto-based current affairs discussion show focusing on the Muslim community. One episode that aired July 8 2006 featured a wide-ranging discussion between Fatah and Husain Haqqani. The show airs on CITS-TV.
Fatah has also written opinion pieces for various newspapers including the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail.
He was a founding member of the Muslim Canadian Congress in 2001 and serves as its communications director and spokesperson. In this capacity, he has spoken out against the introduction of Sharia law as an option for Muslims in civil law in Ontario and has promoted separation of religion and state and social liberalism in the Muslim community.
In 2003, Fatah engaged in a high-profile break with Irshad Manji in the pages of the Globe and Mail in which he repudiated the thanks she gave him in the acknowldgement section of her book The Trouble with Islam. Fatah wrote of Manji's book that it "is not addressed to Muslims; it is aimed at making Muslim-haters feel secure in their thinking."
In 2006, Fatah campaigned to bar the Islamic cleric Sheikh Abu Yusuf Riyadh Ul-Huq from entering Canada on a speaking tour.
His daughter, Natasha Fatah, is a producer of the CBC Radio program As It Happens.
External links
- Thanks, but no thanks: Irshad Manji's book is for Muslim-haters, not Muslims - Fatah's criticism of Irshad Manji
- The trouble with à la carte critics - Manji's response to Fatah
- PDF letter concerning British cleric Shaykh Riyadh ul Haq
- Tarek Fatah, "Faith no more - How the NDP's flirtation with religion pushed me out of the party", Now Magazine, July 20-26, 2006