Renowned Pakistani-Canadian columnist and author, Tarik Fatah is a liberal and LGBT activist. He does not shy away from criticizing the sharia law and advocates support for the separation of religion and state. He has met with several harsh controversies for fighting the spread of Islam, anti-semitism and Hindu hatred within the Muslim community yet he does not deter from the path of truth and resilience. At the 20th anniversary conference of Ideacity, he makes several remarks on how freedom of speech is deterred because no one wants to resonate with islamophobia.
He refers to his audience to guess which of these stories made it to the newspapers of North America with their YES and NO cardboard handles respectively. He first refers to the insidious burglary that occurred in Canada: 18 kilograms of gold were stolen from a bankrupt company’s account while the business manager who assisted in the burglary fled to Cairo after receiving two million worth of gold bars. One mullah from the UAE, a convert to Islam, asked the superior court judge in Ontario to pardon the crime as he briefly described it as a ‘steep learning curve in the Islamic sharia’. The fraud was recognized by everyone from the community, with many TV and radio correspondents and reporters to witness the judgment day. To everyone’s surprise, the judge experienced a ‘steep learning curve’ and realized Muslims love gold, ironic to the fact Muslims are not allowed to wear gold or silk for that matter. To the audience’s dismay, the news was never published; Toronto Star, Globe, and Mail, National Post nor Toronto Sun agreed to report it as they were scared of being misinterpreted as islamophobic. The story further outrages the audience when Fatah mocks at the criminal’s audacity to email the judge to build a mosque in the superior court after being declared not guilty.
Fatah says his religion is suffocating him, his freedom, his life, his choice to breathe in a free city, the lives of his family members are now at stake. Fatah talks of the sexist measures taken by tv channels to only let people appear on the show if they are ugly enough to look like authentic Muslims in the hood of diversity.
Fatah presents another instance where the story is about a fanatic who gets inspired by the people’s republic of china and kills 50 Muslims in a mosque in Christchurch. The same week, radical Muslim groups or the ISIS slaughter more than 300 Catholics in Colombo. The Canadian press prints about Christchurch.
Fatah asks why journalists do not speak about Charlie Hebdo, or of when Salman Rushdie was honored by premier Bob Ray despite facing death threats by the mullahs or the honor killings in Muslim countries. Fatah can no longer attend NDP conventions despite being a card-carrying member of the New Democratic Party neither his friends who have been the victims of the fascist Islam and cheering the Quebec ban on hijab. The media even reported that the deputy speaker of the Quebec national assembly who hailed the decision as a non-muslim.
Fatah mocks the diversity in newsrooms, Fatah, even more, says if one has an opinion he cannot become a journalist as it takes strength and integrity to distance oneself from an opinion and report facts.
