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My friend Tahir and the battle for the soul of Islam

October 27, 2001 | The Globe and Mail |By MARCUS GEE

Are you one of those people who believe the Islamic world is a seething nest of extremists? Or are you one of those who believe few Muslims sympathize with the extremists and to suggest that some do is wrong? Well, let me introduce you to my friend Tahir Aslam Gora. Before he came to Canada two years ago with $5 in his pocket, Tahir was the editor of a weekly magazine in Pakistan.

He published a blizzard of articles criticizing conservative Muslim groups for denying equal rights to women, condoning polygamy, spreading hatred of Jews and Christians and blaming the West for all of Pakistan's ills. He also took on the government of Pakistan for testing a nuclear device. The articles brought him a stream of threats and, in July of 1998, a month after
the nuclear test, he was kidnapped.

A group of men pulled him out of his car, pushed him into theirs, flashed official-looking badges and called him a traitor to his country and to
Islam. After holding him for two weeks in a cell and subjecting him to repeated interrogations, they let him go. Tahir fled to Canada, where he
hoped to continue his writing free of fear. Instead, he ran into the same sort of flak he got back home. When he wrote an article early this year saying polygamy was being practised by some Toronto-area Muslims, someone called to threaten his life.

A few months later, someone phoned in a bomb threat after an article in his Urdu-language newspaper, Watan, criticized the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan. People came up to him in local mosques and told him that his writings were anti-Muslim. Several companies pulled their ads from Watan. Cars started tailing his distribution van. So last month, out of money and worried about his safety, he decided to stop publishing his little paper.

A gentle bear of man with a goatee and a warm smile, Tahir promises to go on challenging those who sympathize with extremists such as the Taliban. Muslims, he insists, must adapt to the modern world instead of fighting it.
He is working on a book, Dilemmas of the Islamic World,and a novel. "I feel I must keep writing. Otherwise, we will never change things." Tahir's story is a reminder that, despite the anti-American demonstrations we keep seeing
on television, not all people in the Islamic world are hostile to the West.

A brave minority challenges the anti-Western dogma that has taken hold in countries such as Pakistan, Egypt and Iran. Instead of blaming the West for the backwardness of their countries, they focus on the pathologies in the
Islamic world: despotic regimes, rigid social structures, prejudice against minorities, the subjugation of women, the suppression of free speech. Tahir's story is also a reminder that those who say such things often put themselves in great danger. Most Muslims deplore horrors such as Sept. 11, but it's also true that many feel a certain sympathy for the anti-Western ravings of Osama bin Laden.

That sympathy exists even in Canada. Tahir says at least two Urdu papers in Toronto have published articles sympathetic to the Taliban. He says he has heard anti-American tirades at local mosques, too. It was when he started
criticizing those sentiments that the threats began. It has been common since Sept. 11 to speak of a "clash of civilizations": Islam versus the
West. But that's the wrong way to think of it. However much they may hate the West, the extremists don't really hope to conquer Western civilization and make all Americans and Canadians into Muslims. They hope to win the fight in the Islamic world against pro-Western modernizers such as Tahir. It's not a clash between civilizations, but a clash within one.

On the outcome rides the fate of hundreds of millions. Will the Arab and wider Islamic world learn to embrace modern values such as democracy, the emancipation of women, freedom of expression and tolerance of minorities -- values that happened to flower first in the West but should apply to all people? Or will it turn down the blind alley where Osama bin Laden beckons?
Until Sept. 11, we in the West did not really think of this as our fight. As long as Islamist regimes did not actually come to power and threaten our oil supplies, we were content to stay on the sidelines. But it's now clear that
we have to work much harder for change in the Islamic world. That means rethinking our blind support of regimes, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, that call themselves pro-Western but deny their people the most basic freedoms. And it means recognizing people such as Tahir as what they are: heroes in the battle for the soul of Islam.


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