A good author becomes famous not by writing a big book but by touching the contemporary issues those touches our lives. Our Tarek Fatah has done such a job by writing Chasing a Mirage. This book is a fearless documentation of truth which many of us are afraid to tell. The author showed his rare courage to dispel and dismantle many Islamic myths we used to believe and adore. Tarek Fatah also showed his intellectual sincerity by depicting himself as a human being rather than a slave of any faith. This is a wonderful identity of any real person who loves facts not fables. I wonder why truth is a fiction to many people when our very existence itself is based on certain principles based on truth only. The facts he has brought before us needs to be understood in a pragmatic way to dispel century long misconceptions in the history of Islam. He has emphasized that a faith must be based of facts not on fables. The crisis in Islam in relation to other faiths can only be handled if we can free this faith from the vicious clutches of immovable dogmas. Tarek has brought facts into the sun, now it’s our job to adjust our modus operandi. People like Tarek and others are castigated and shunned by the conservative Islamists for efforts to make this faith well understood in our times through logic and reason. I hope his book will be able to shed some light on those immovable minds.

Akbar Hussain