'There is a mini-Pakistan growing in Delhi': Author Tarek Fateh speaks out after his lecture on Arafat is cancelled



Canadian author and broadcaster of Pakistani origin Tarek Fatah spoke out after his lecture was cancelled

Yasser Arafat died years ago but his name can still generate controversy, as Canadian author and broadcaster of Pakistani origin Tarek Fatah found out in New Delhi on Thursday.



A talk at Jamia Millia Islamia's Yasser Arafat Hall featuring Fatah was cancelled on Thursday after, according to the writer, "Muslim radicals" objected to his plan to speak about why a hall is named after the late Palestinian leader but not for a syncretist like Dara Shikoh.



"Some of these guys, who had researched me, planned to drop by this event and do something. So the vice-chancellor, out of a gesture of goodwill, decided that I should not be subjected to this," Fatah told Mail Today.



The university later sent out a release that the interactive session with Fatah had been cancelled due to "unavoidable reasons".



"I would have loved to take on these twits. I'm not allowed to speak in Pakistan and the sad thing is there is a mini-Pakistan growing in Delhi itself, at Jamia," Fatah said.



"It's not a war of religions, but a war of ideas. The only people who can destroy Islamofascism are Indian Muslims. Only in India can they get up and say we live in a secular country. Yet it doesn't happen."



Fatah is no stranger to controversy, primarily because of his strident anti-Islamism and his calls for a new form of secular Islam - through his books Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State and The Jew Is Not My Enemy as well as his broadcast work.



Fatah said a strain of racism is spreading through India's Hindu communities, particularly in its rejection of Bangladeshi immigrants.



"This country was formed on 5,000 years of illegal immigration, whether it is Muslims or Parsis," he said.



"And today, Maharashtrians are expelling Biharis. Is that what the Vedas say? If you're a Hindu, you should live up to that high level of spiritual depth that is the envy of this world."



