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Irshad Manji

Irshad Manji (born 1968) is a Canadian feminist, author, journalist, activist and professor of leadership. Manji is Director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University. The Moral Courage Project aims to teach young leaders to speak truth to power in their own communities. Manji is openly lesbian.

Manji is a well-known critic of radical Islam and orthodox interpretations of the Qur'an. The New York Times has described her as "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare". Manji is founder and president of Project Ijtihad, an international charitable organization working to "build the world’s most inclusive network of reform-minded Muslims and non-Muslim allies.

Manji's book, The Trouble with Islam Today, has been published in more than 30 languages, including Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Malay and Indonesian. Manji has produced a PBS documentary, "Faith Without Fear", chronicling her attempt to "reconcile her faith in Allah with her love of freedom". The documentary has been nominated for a 2008 Emmy Award. As a journalist, her articles have appeared in many publications, and she has addressed audiences ranging from Amnesty International to the United Nations Press Corps to the Democratic Muslims in Denmark to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. She has appeared on television networks around the world, including Al Jazeera, the CBC, BBC, MSNBC, C-SPAN, CNN, PBS, the Fox News Channel, the CBS Evening News, and Real Time with Bill Maher.

Biography

Early life and education

Manji was born in Uganda in 1968 to parents of Egyptian and Gujarati Indian descent. Her family moved to Canada when she was four, as a result of Idi Amin's expulsion of South Asians. She and her family settled near Vancouver in 1972, and she grew up attending both a secular and an Islamic religious school. Manji excelled in the secular environment but, by her own account, was expelled from her religious school for asking too many questions. For the next twenty years, she studied Islam via public libraries and Arabic tutors.

Manji earned an honours degree in the history of ideas from the University of British Columbia. In 1990, she won the Governor General's Medal for top humanities graduate.

Career

Manji worked as a legislative aide in the Canadian parliament, press secretary in the Ontario government, and speechwriter for the leader of the New Democratic Party. At age 24, she became the national affairs editorialist for the Ottawa Citizen and thus the youngest member of an editorial board for any Canadian daily. She has hosted or produced several public affairs programs on television, one of which won the Gemini, Canada’s top broadcasting prize.

Manji participated in a regular segment on TVOntario's Studio 2 in the mid-1990s, representing liberal views in debates with conservative journalist Michael Coren. She later produced and hosted QT: QueerTelevision for the Toronto based Citytv in the late 1990s. Among the program's coverage of local and national LGBT issues, she also produced stories on the lives of gay people in the Muslim world. When she left the show, Manji donated the set's giant Q to the Pride Library at the University of Western Ontario.

In 2002, she became writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto's Hart House, from where she began writing The Trouble with Islam Today. From 2005 to 2006, she was a visiting fellow with the International Security Studies program at Yale University. She is currently a senior fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels. In January 2008, Manji joined New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service to spearhead the Moral Courage Project, an initiative to help young people speak truth to power within their own communities.

Manji has received numerous death threats. In an interview with Glenn Beck, Manji stated that the windows of her apartment are fitted with bullet-proof glass, primarily for the protection of her family.

"Muslim refusenik"

"Muslim refusenik" is a phrase Manji uses to identify herself as someone who refuses to "join an army of robots in the name of God. "Refusenik" is an English-Russian portmanteau word first used for Russian Jews refused permission to emigrate, and then for Israeli conscientious objectors who refused to do army service on the West Bank.

The Trouble with Islam Today

Manji's book The Trouble with Islam Today was published by St. Martin's Press in 2004. It has since been translated into more than 30 languages. Manji offers several translations of the book (namely Arabic, Indonesian, Urdu, Malay and Persian) available for free-of-charge download on her website. To date, the Arabic translation alone has been downloaded more than a quarter of a million times.

Praise

Praise for the book comes from both Muslim and non-Muslim sources. Khaleel Mohammed, an imam and professor of Islam at San Diego State University, wrote in his foreword to Manji's book that "Irshad wants us to do what our Holy Book wants us to do: end the tribal posturing, open our eyes, and stand up to oppression, even if it's rationalized by our vaunted imams... She remains obedient to the Divine Imperative: 'O you who believe! Be upholders of justice, witnesses for God, even if it be against yourselves, or your parents and kin' (Quran, 4:135).

Jane Mansbridge, Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at Harvard University, says that “all is not lost if people of Irshad Manji's capacity can carry a fresh and convincing message to the coming generation. I cannot urge her more strongly to maintain her frank, open and intelligent approach. This cause is, I believe, the most important new movement in several decades.”

The New York Times ran a positive review of The Trouble with Islam by Andrew Sullivan: "Its spirit is undeniable, and long, long overdue. Reading it feels like a revelation. The Times of India reviewed "The Trouble with Islam Today", and said that Manji's "courage is to be commended. The Pakistan Friday Times encouraged Pakistan to set a "positive example" by letting the book be distributed and discussed freely.

Criticism

Criticism of Manji's work comes from within Islam and from secular sources. Bina Shah believes that she provides "a million excuses for the excesses committed against the Palestinians."

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam notes that Manji ignores a wealth of scholarship by Jewish historians on Israeli ethnic cleansing, massacres, and torture committed against Palestinians, and is openly feted by ultra-conservative Americans who have advocated war on Iraq and Iran. Article link

As'ad Abu Khalil, political scientist at California State University, Stanislaus, accuses Manji of disproportionately targeting Muslims, ignoring the peripheral context within which most Muslims live, and not applying the same critiques to other groups, notably those with allegedly more power in society such as conservative Christians. Abu Khalil also asserts Manji is not trained in Islamic scholarship, history, or the Arabic language, and as such ignores the multiplicity of debates and traditions within Islam.

Khaled Almeena, editor of the Arab News in Saudi Arabia, complains that "This fraudulent book has now become a guide to Islam.

Awards

Manji was awarded Oprah Winfrey's first annual Chutzpah Award for "audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction. Ms. Magazine named her a "Feminist for the 21st Century, and Immigration Equality gave her its Global Vision Prize. In 2006, The World Economic Forum selected her as a Young Global Leader. She has also been named a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the American Society for Muslim Advancement. In May 2008, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound.

Works

Books

The Trouble with Islam Today, 2004, ISBN 1-8401-8837-5

Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali appearance at the 92nd Street Y on The Trouble with Islam, audiobooks, 2006. (ISBN 0312326998 )

The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith, 2005, ISBN 0-3123-2700-5
Risking Utopia: On the edge of a new democracy, 1997, ISBN 1-5505-4434-9Film
Irshad's PBS documentary, Faith without Fear, follows her journey to reconcile faith and freedom. Released in 2007, the film depicts the personal risks Manji has faced as a Muslim reformer. She explores Islamism in Yemen, Europe and North America, as well as histories of Islamic critical thinking in Spain and elsewhere. . In 2007, it was a finalist for the National Film Board of Canada's Gemini Prize. It also won Gold at the New York Television Festival in 2008. In the same year, Faith Without Fear launched the 2008 Muslim Film Festival organized by the American Islamic Congress.

References

External links

Irshad Manji's media coverage page containing links to articles, reviews and interviews
"What Word Comes to Mind?" at Library and Archives Canada
[Irshad Manjis interview in Literal, Latin American Voices
The Trouble with Irshad Manji, from the Palestine Solidarity Review