Canadian journalist threatened with death

Hit talk show in India courts controversy

In Canada, Tarek Fatah is not exactly known as a diplomat; the journalist’s provocative criticism of the Islamic world has even extended to promoting a conspiracy theory about the Quebec City mosque shooting.

But when he took his needling brand of commentary recently to India — where tensions between Hindus and Muslims simmer just below the surface — the reception was explosive.

Fatah’s talk show about Islamic issues on India’s Zee News channel has quickly become a hit — garnering tens of millions of viewers per episode — and also triggered angry reaction from within the country’s huge Muslim minority.

One group has filed a court case demanding the show be cancelled, calling it a threat to communal peace, another asked the elections commission to take similar action, suggesting the show is a ploy to fuel Hindu nationalism, while petitions have pressed sponsors to drop the program.

More viscerally, an infuriated critic put a bounty on the Canadian’s head, while one of his own guests suggested on air that he be decapitated.

Between being mobbed by fans in New Delhi and police warning him to keep a low profile, Fatah says he’s become a virtual shut-in.

“I can’t walk on the streets any more,” says the 67-yearold, who has been advised by police to stay home. “I have never experienced anything like this … It’s just shocked me.”

A native of Pakistan, Fatah emigrated to Canada in 1987, coming to prominence as a opinion-writer in the wake of 9/11, a moderate Muslim willing to criticize what he considered extremism within his own religion.

He has arguably evolved into a more inflammatory critic, appearing regularly on The Rebel — sometimes called Canada’s Breitbart News — applauding Donald Trump’s proposed travel ban on seven Muslim countries and supporting the debunked theory that a Muslim was involved in shooting six members of a Quebec City mosque last month.

Fatah travelled to New Delhi a few months ago, chiefly to research a book about the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, and was invited to host a talk show by the private Zee News channel.

The Hindi-language program, called Fatah ka Fatwah or Fatah’s Fatwa, features panel discussions involving Muslims discussing Islamic issues, followed by the host’s impromptu answers to recorded questions, often hostile, asked by people in the street.

It has quickly become the most-watched show in its early-evening time slot on Saturday and Sunday, he says.

“It’s huge,” confirms Harbir Singh, a columnist with the New Delhi Times and Fatah supporter. “You literally cannot meet someone in India who has not heard of Mr. Fatah. … This show is really shaking things up.”

He said the program is doing what is rarely done in the country: openly discussing some of the more controversial aspects of Muslim life, from a distinct family-law system that lets men divorce their wives simply by saying the word Talaq (divorce) three times, to temporary marriages and Sharia banking.

Others, however, see the discussions and Fatah’s comments as an attack on the religion and its followers, closely paralleling Hindunationalist narratives. He has, for instance, endorsed a theory that the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam’s holiest site, was originally a Hindu shrine.

A Muslim lawyer filed a “public-interest litigation” case in New Delhi High Court demanding the show be taken off the air, arguing that Fatah’s Fatwa has undermined communal unity in the country.

A Muslim-dominated political party similarly has urged the Indian election commission to ban the program.

Fatah, meanwhile, must cope with his own threats, both in the form of the bounty of five lakh rupees (about $7,500) offered recently by an obscure cleric and comments on the show itself.

“Your throat also will be slit,” the imam of a Calcutta mosque suggested on air last month.

Another guest ominously mentioned the name of his daughter in Canada and her “kafir” husband.

Fatah, who plans to return to his family in Toronto once his contracted 13 episodes are complete, said he has also heard an intercepted telephone call in which “gangsters” in Pakistan talked of the need to kill him.

The Canadian insists he is not scared, but columnist Singh says such threats should not be dismissed lightly.

“I fear for my safety,” he says, “just because I associate with him.”