Tarek Fatah: West Created Islamic Extremism in Middle East

Tarek Fatah: 'The West Created These Monsters'

Tarek Fatah on Destructive U.S. Foreign Policy

Tarek Fatah, a Pakistani born Indian Muslim raised in Canada, criticized Western imperialism in his August 2008 interview with far right wing web site FrontPage Magazine. Fatah, an advocate for secular Islam and harsh critic of Islamic extremism, is the founder of Muslim Canadian Congress, a columnist, TV host, and author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, which also covers the 1953 coup.

In the interview, Tarek Fatah rails against the U.S. role in crushing democracy in the Middle East, which, by his own argument, means that America helped bring about the rise of Islamic extremism he so despises.

However, whether your readers like to read this or not, the USA played the most significant role in destroying the nascent democratic institutions that were starting to show signs of growth with roots deep into the countryside of these largely poor nations.

The Cold War had begun and the US needed to circle the underbelly of the USSR . Who else but the Muslim world was there to be used in this effort. One by one democratically elected governments were either overthrown by CIA help or were undermined by internal coups to install monarchs or military dictators who were willing to fight the communist Russian bear. First the popular elected government of Iran led by Mossadegh was overthrown in a CIA sponsored coup in 1953 and the Shah of Iran was flown in to take over. Next door in Pakistan in 1958 another US backed coup dissolved parliament and installed Field Marshal Ayub Khan.

In Iraq, the CIA spirited Saddam Hussein from Cairo to help overthrow the government in Baghdad. In 1965, in Indonesia a bloodbath took place where Islamists were used by the American backed military coup to hunt down and massacre hundreds of thousands of secular, liberal and left wing Indonesians. Thus, the very people who could have built the democratic institutions in the Muslim world were wiped out. On the other hand the US propped up the medieval kingdom of Saudi Arabia and even today serves as a guarantor to the 5,000 princes and princelings who occupy the Muslim holy lands as surrogates of the Empire.

Today, the people and the institutions that could have introduced democracy, freedom and human rights to the Muslim world, lay in tatters, chased out or killed by regimes that relied on US support. Today the only Iranian group that can provide a challenge to the Iranian Mullahs has been banned by the US and Canada. There are times the West needs to look at itself in the mirror and ask, "Did we create these monsters?" The answer is yes.

The Globe and Mail, July 2007

Tarek Fatah also argued that the West unleashed radical Islam in this July 13, 2007 live web chat for the Globe and Mail's web site, following his column on Musharraf of Pakistan.

Derek Butler from St. John's Canada writes: Having lived in the Middle East and North Africa conducting democratic development, and now teaching on preconditions of democracy, I like you am more than fan of democratic government. But Algeria and Palestine are just two more recent examples of the ballot box having produced less than ideal results (in one case an election thwarted to avoid Islamic fundamentalists taking control, and the second Hamas taking power). I would be interested in hearing Mr. Fatah give some thought to the insufficiency of elections, even fair ones, in light of his comment 'The best way to fight Islamist radicalism in Pakistan is to ask the general to step down and organize democratic elections without the aid of fraudulent voter lists that deny exiled politicians a return to the country.'

Tarek Fatah: In both Palestine and Algeria, the West made a bad thing worse. In Algeria the Islamists were the protest party against the near one-party rule of the government. Instead of allowing the Islamists to take power and deal with the reality of governing, the cancellation of the elections allowed the Islamists to grow into a radical terrorist movement that killed nearly 100,000 fellow Muslim Algerians in the bloody civil war.

By denying them power, the West proved their point that democracy is only valid if it elects people who serve Washington, not the electorate.

The election of Hamas was also a direct result of anger against the corruption of the Fatah government. Even then, Hamas won no more than 46% of the vote, while Fatah garnered 43%. So the result was pretty close. The West was right to demand that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist, but it failed to give Hamas room to maneuver and the result is a fiasco for all of us to see. The Hamas that could have been tamed, is now a breeding ground for even more Islamic radicals than anyone could have imagined under a Hamas-Fatah national government.

Let me point out Iran. By throwing out Mossadegh in the 1950's, because the West didn't like his policies on oil, we lay the seeds of Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic revolution that has oppressed the Iranian people now for nearly three decades and now poses a threat to all of us.

There is no substitute for democracy and there are no short cuts to eradicate the scourge of Islamic terrorism.