Posted on 01/06/2004 5:10:01 PM PST by PoisedWoman
Muslim Author Called "Osama bin Laden's Worst Nightmare"
In Trouble with Islam: A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change, being published by St. Martin's this month), Muslim journalist and TV personality Irshad Manji calls for the rehabilitation of Islam. She aims squarely at the religion's inferior treatment of women and the literalism that she contends defines the mainstream of the faith around the world. With "Trouble," Manji told Religion BookLine, she hopes to revive ijtihad, the Islamic tradition of interpretive thinking, independent reasoning and religious scholarship ( "it has the same root word as jihad," she pointed out).
Manji said that much of the motivation for writing the book came from her conversations with young Muslims, who, she said, did not see the need to artificially identify themselves as either Muslim or Western.
She looked to the early decades of Islam for inspiration: "135 schools of thought flourished in Muslim Spain--in Cordoba, there were 70 libraries! The faith has since degenerated intellectually."
In addition to being a practicing Muslim and feminist, Manji is an openly gay political activist. A profile in the "New York Times" when the book was released in her native Canada last fall got right to the point, dubbing Manji "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare." Others called her a female Salman Rushdie. (Of Rushdie, whom she interviewed for the book, Manji said, "We have a civil relationship but nonetheless fundamental disagreement. Rushdie believes that religion is a fur coat in the summer. I'm not there yet.")
Through "Trouble" (and her Web site, http://www.muslim-refusenik.com ) Manji wants to make a contribution to healing her faith and improving the lives of the 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide by creating conversations where there weren't any before. "If I may be so bold," she said, "only in Islam today is literalism mainstream. This is dangerous because when--not if --abuse happens under the banner of our religion, Muslims have no clue how to debate, devise, dissent, reform. We have no incentive to develop critical thinking skills."In Arabic, Manji said, this is called jahalia--ignorance.
"In contemporary Islam, there is a critical mass of Muslims who don't even know that Islam came out of the Judeo-Christian religion," she continued, "and that the Qur'an explicitly affirms the validity of Christianity and Judaism!"
Manji is also critical of non-Muslims in the West who fail to ask tough questions for fear of being called racist. "I'm enough of an insider to know what is going on in the world, enough of an outsider to explain and expose it, and enough of a Muslim to want to heal," she said. --Nathalie Atkinson
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There are NO "ISLAMIC FANATICS" attempting to "Take Over the World!!"
We SEEM to be "Dealing With" a well-Organised Group of "Narco-Terrorists," (Their 'Funding' is MOSTLY From Narcotics) who wish to Dictate Western Political Policy!!
These Psychopaths need to be ELIMINATED--FORCEFULLY!!
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