Life around Cabbagetowner Tarek Fatah can be deceptively placid.

On this April morning, he has just finished the second broadcast in his new career on a local radio talk show, which his co-host had basically hijacked to launch into a vituperative attack against women in the armed forces, choosing to do so on the day that slain Trooper Karine Blais was returned to Canada from Kandahar.

Fatah, a staunch fighter for gender equity under any circumstances but not heavily briefed on military recruitment issues, has stood up for his principles and the trooper’s honour and returned home to be immediately congratulated by his next-door neighbour and then reminded by a family member to take the dry cleaning (“you’re going to Geneva next week, remember?”). He had managed to begin the morning by getting into trouble with his new employers by inadvertently appearing (by previous arrangement) on someone else’s show—and he’s still smiling.

Since this seems to be a fairly ordinary “day in the life” of a journalist, commentator, high-profile secular Muslim advocate. The recipient of more death threats than he can recall is now a nominee for the highly esteemed Donner book prize. His placidity, inner calm and gentle good humour is very likely what has gotten Fatah through more than forty years of this sort of existence in Canada and the Middle East.

Fatah has been nominated for his latest book Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State. It is, among other things, a succinct history of political Islam from its earliest hours following the death of the Prophet in 632. The prize, awarded on April 30, is worth $35,000.00 to the winner.

The Donner “annually rewards excellence and innovation in Canadian public policy writing; inspiring lively debate on public policy issues and rewarding provocative and excellent work that speaks to an informed readership and an open exchange of ideas and public debate. In bestowing this award, the Donner Canadian Foundation seeks to broaden policy debates, increase general awareness of the importance of policy decision making and make an original and meaningful contribution to policy discourse,” according to its Chair, Allan Gotlieb.

Over tea, Fatah says of the book: “Being shortlisted for the Donner award is its crowning glory. The award not only accords serious recognition to the book's subject matter, it validates my critique of the Islamist agenda.”

His career has always been one of struggle for what he believes in—that Islam can and must adjust to the needs and ways of contemporary global secular society, and that extremist interpretations must be resisted at every step. He consistently deplores what he sees as a readiness by Canadian mainstream politics and media to accept the radical Islamist point of view as the only legitimate Muslim voice.

In his adult life, Fatah has never shied from controversy. Born in Pakistan, he was a left-wing student leader in the late 1960s and was twice imprisoned by successive military dictatorships. He started his career in print journalism in Karachi before moving to the Pakistan television network PTV where he won a number of awards for his work as a pioneering investigative reporter. After yet another coup in 1977, the one which placed General Zia ul-Haq (of Charlie Wilson’s War fame) in power, Fatah moved to Saudi Arabia where he worked ten years in the advertising industry while observing up-close the working of radical Islamism and its global agenda before migrating to Canada in 1987.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Fatah and his friends founded the Muslim Canadian Congress, a secular Muslim organization dedicated to the separation of religion and state, opposition to Islamic extremism and an end to what it describes as “gender apartheid” that is practiced in many parts of the Muslim community.

A long-standing Liberal Party supporter, he does not shy away from criticizing what he feels to be poor outreach policy by its leadership.

“I have just had a huge issue with the Liberal Party which I took right to the top. Michael Ignatieff had a breakfast with Canada’s Muslim community, and they made sure that the one person who should not be allowed to enter was Tarek Fatah. So I took it up. I talked to (Liberal MPs) Bob Rae and Alfred Apps. The folks in Ottawa called and said there must have been some kind of misunderstanding—but it is really very troubling that political leaderships recognize only the most conservative community members as legitimate. In effect you could not get in if you were not approved by (defeated Mississauga-Erindale MP) Omar Alghabra) and Ignatieff is repeating this mistake.”

Fatah believes strongly that political and media attention and credibility in Canada have been captured by extremist points of view within the Islamic community, often by playing the “diversity card,” and denouncing any more liberal voices as betrayers of culture.

Around the time of the Donner announcement, Fatah embarked on some fairly lengthy and high profile international travel. He visited Geneva from April 20 to 24 to take part in an alternative session of the UN conference on racism (Durban II). In May he will attend a conference in Lahore, Pakistan, one of whose participants will be noted US linguist and left-wing activist Noam Chomsky.

“I am going to ask Chomsky why the US left appears to have a soft corner for some of the most brutal murderers of Muslims—the al Qaeda and the Taliban,” says Fatah. “Would he have remained silent if the victims of the Taliban had been Americans? I will suggest to him that part of the Left that seems unable or unwilling to slam the misogyny and homophobia of the jihadi radicals, is practicing a racism of lower expectations that places Muslims as less than human.”

More finalists for the Donner prize are Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North by Ken S. Coates, P. Whitney Lackenbauer, William R. Morrison and Greg Poelzer, Fixing the Future: How Canada’s Usually Fractious Governments Worked Together to Rescue the Canada Pension Plan by Bruce Little.