Book Review 

Chasing A Mirage – The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State. 

Author: Tarek Fatah

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Canada

Reviewed By: Javed I. Chaudry

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Dear Haider Sahib,

 

Please allow me to ask you a couple of questions:  

Suppose you are the judge of a court of law and the persecutor submits a picture of an alleged criminal and a story with no substantial supporting evidence that you can share with the public and still stay worthy of being called a judge. Would you convict the man just by looking at the Exhibit A , a picture? 

Do you know how a mind works after going through even the mildest forms of tortures such as sleep deprivation and water boarding? I called these the milder tortures as they do not cause the spleen to get ruptured, kidneys to get permanently damaged, skull does not crack open and there is no obvious bleeding wound. At a minimum, you react the way they want you to react. You admit without knowing what are you admitting and why. 

Regarding Osama and others, where were you during 1980s, when these people were called the mujahedeen fighting against the Soviets? Did you consider them the criminals then, or did you switch lately, if so why?  [forgive me if in your books, fighting against the Soviets makes some one  a mujahid, but fighting against the Americans is a criminal act] 

Let’s not talk about moon before doing some thing about a million dead, 2 million injured or maimed and about 10 million homeless, jobless, suffering from hunger and malnutrition. That is only in Iraq, no reliable figures for Afghanistan as yet. So my friend, let’s fix the earth first before worry about the moon. We have plenty of time to destroy that later.  

Javed I. Chaudry

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