Canada's Salman Rushdie-Canadian Muslim writer, Irshad Manji, faces threats for new book on Islam

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | October 2, 2003 | Stephen Brown

[SJackson]

"You will sooner or later pay for your pack of lies."

That was only one of the threats that the author of a controversial new book about Islam, just recently released in Toronto, received via e-mail. Another typical email threat called the writer a "pro-Zionism parasite."

The work that has provoked these threats calls for a thorough reform of Islam in order to bring it into the modern world. And, as vexing as the message is for Islamic fundamentalists, even more horrifying for them is the fact that the Muslim author is a lesbian.

Toronto journalist Irshad Manji, 34, writes in her book, The Trouble With Islam: A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change, that Muslims need to look at themselves and take responsibility for what ails them and their religion rather than continue to blame the West, Israel and "colonialism."

"Muslims have been bludgeoning each other's freedoms well before European colonialism, well before the state of Israel and well before MTV," she said in an interview before the book's launch. "You can't blame intellectual stagnation or complacency on the White House, the Jews, even blame the House of Saud. We have only ourselves to blame."

Manji is a practicing Muslim. Her family emigrated to Canada after the brutal African dictator, Idi Amin, expelled all non-Africans from Uganda in 1971. Possessing a strong, critical mind, she was kicked out of a madrassa at age fourteen. She said her questioning of life's ways began at a Baptist church baby-sitting service where, at age eight, she received the Most Promising Christian of the Year Award.

In her book, Manji condemns Islamic terrorism, anti-Semitism, fundamentalism, and discrimination against women and homosexuals. In this light, she calls for her book's Muslim readers to update their faith. Representing the views of moderate Muslims, this writer's position is not often heard. For this reason, the author says her work is an attempt to break down what she calls the appalling practice of self-censorship of Muslims and non-Muslims in the West when it comes to critically examining Islam.

Manji's book also details a trip she made to Israel, a country she admires for its freedom, tolerance, intellectual openness and the equality it provides for women. Calling the Israeli press "ferociously free," she writes that she especially enjoyed reading newspaper editorials there.

Manji's visit to the Dome of the Rock mosque best symbolizes her belief that the Islamic Reformation must begin in the West with its great liberal traditions and spread from there. As a woman unaccompanied by a male, Manji was forbidden to enter the mosque, gaining access to Islam's third-holiest shrine only after an Israeli police officer, a non-Muslim Westerner, offered to chaperone her

The Muslim-Canadian has affirmed that she had been developing the ideas for the book for many years, but the 9/11 tragedy gave the project an urgency. She credits Salman Rushdie with motivating her to write it, since he told her that the Islamic reformation would begin with women like her.

Unfortunately, like Rushdie, Manji has also had to invest in extra security measures as insurance to protect her from fanatics. She has installed bullet-proof glass in her house, hired a bodyguard and developed relations with the police. Mainstream Muslim organizations have also not received her book well, accusing her of self-hatred.

Unlike Rushdie, however, Manji told an interviewer that the political Left has disowned her, saying she is no longer one of them. In Rushdie's case, the Left rallied to his cause, supporting his right to free expression and opposing Muslim death threats for his writing The Satanic Verses.

In turn, the Canadian Muslim refusenik says she is appalled by the Left's selectivity when it comes to problems in the Middle East, since they always blame the West.

"I'm stunned by the way the political tradition from which I come has abdicated responsibility for universal human rights," she told the interviewer. "They wax eloquent that Islamic societies have their own form of democracies. But please ask them how these places treat women, how they treat Jews? They love to dissect Israel - but to the exclusion of Saudi Arabia? How can they morally live with themselves?"

Besides the Left, homosexual and Canadian women's rights organizations have also been conspicuously and hypocritically silent concerning the threats made against one of their lesbian sisters, who once hosted a gay television show.

In another interview, the Muslim author calls on non-Muslims to constantly exercise their freedoms, support the reformation of Islam and not to be cowed by fear of being called racist.

"Bin-Laden is counting on this, on non-Muslims being cowed by fear of being called racist," she says. "It's as if they feel they are doing us a favor by refusing to have faith in us Muslims to push for reform, as someone called it, the soft racism of low expectations."

Manji also told an interviewer she may leave Islam if it does not reform itself. But the positive response to her book by other Muslims has served to encourage her.

'The West has saved my faith in my faith," she affirms. "Now it is up to Islam to redeem itself."

[Noachian]

...the political Left has disowned her, saying she is no longer one of them.

Is this really a surprise? This lesbian should have known, long ago, that the left is only interested in ideology, not individuality. Only the PC group, and those who adhere to it, are important, everyone else is on their own.

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