Finally a Muslim with the guts to say it
 

The Trouble with Islam Today

A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith

by Irshad Manji

A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change

Written by Irshad Manji

The Trouble with Islam Today is an open letter from award-winning journalist Irshad Manji to concerned citizens worldwide–Muslim or not. The book is a lively wake-up call, a demand for honesty and change in Islamic countries and the West. With guts and sincerity Manji insists that readers face some of the most important questions troubling the world today.

A self-proclaimed Muslim Refusenik, Manji exposes the disturbing cornerstones of Islam as it is widely practiced: tribal insularity, deep-seated anti-Semitism and uncritical acceptance of the Koran as the final, superior manifesto of God. But the book begins with and repeatedly returns to Manji’s own experience of Islam, from a teenage debate with a madressa teacher who couldn’t explain to her why girls weren’t allowed to lead prayer, to how she discovered what’s worth salvaging about Islam, to the surprising conclusions she reached about the Arab-Jewish conflict after traveling to Israel — a part of the Middle East that few Muslims dare visit.

Irshad Manji doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but in the book’s first two chapters she relates how, through her journey from childhood to adulthood, she came to ask several key questions about Islam that continue to concern her (and that few other writers have had the courage to raise): Why was her B.C. public school so open and tolerant, but her religious school bigoted and rigid? How could she reconcile her faith with the misogynist, homophobic and anti-Semitic violence committed in its name? Why are rote, literal readings of the Koran the mainstream of Islamic thought today?

“When Did We Stop Thinking?” she asks in chapter three, unearthing Islam’s tradition of creativity and curiosity — a tradition that died for entirely political reasons. Then, trekking through the Middle East, that Islamic countries’ difficulties can’t easily be blamed on the usual scapegoats: Israel, she discovers, is a fiercely pluralistic society that should be an example to Muslim nations; the United States, surprisingly, is admired by many Muslims and is seen more as an unrealized hope than as lead criminal.

This being the case, Manji wonders if the Muslim world is being colonized not by America, but by Arabia. Because Islam was founded in the land of Arabia, in the language of Arabia, for the people of Arabia, Muslims around the world have succumbed to “foundamentalism.” Even non-Arab Muslims — Islam’s majority — have come to imitate the seventh-century tribal rites of the Arabian Peninsula. But this narrow, intolerant and paternalistic system isn’t the only way to be a Muslim.

“Ijtihad” (ij-tee-had) is the positive message of this book. Ijtihad is Islam’s lost tradition of independent thinking, which flowered in the Islamic golden age between 700 and 1200 CE. Reviving ijtihad requires Muslims and non-Muslims alike to stop spouting received wisdom, start thinking for themselves and take action. For example, Manji writes, we can revitalize the economies of the Islamic world by engaging the talents of female entrepreneurs. When offered micro-business loans, women accrue assets, become literate, read the Quran for themselves and see the options it gives women for self-respect as well as for respect for the “other.” Through this and other practical ideas, Manji shows how ordinary Muslims, with a little help from their friends, can have a future to live for rather than a past to die for.

Of course, her campaign to revive ijtihad raises concerns: For Islamic countries, does becoming more humane mean becoming more Western? Can one sow reform without being a cultural colonizer? Manji addresses these questions head-on — and reminds us of a crucial fact: In the West one can ask dissenting questions about religion and society without fear of being raped, maimed or murdered by the state. Manji gives thanks for these precious freedoms and she challenges Muslims in the West to exercise them. She also invites non-Muslims to step out of “orthodox multiculturalism” and expect better of Muslims, both at home and abroad.

Irshad Manji remains a Muslim, one who takes seriously the verse in the Quran that states: “Believers, conduct yourselves with justice and bear true witness before God — even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.” In that spirit, she ends her open letter by asking critics to tell her where her analysis has gone wrong. The result is an intense discussion on her website. Whether you agree or disagree with her argument, one thing can’t be disputed: The Trouble with Islam Today has already created a worldwide conversation where none existed before.

Includes a powerful comment from Imam Khaleel Mohammad in the Preface for the book. His website:

http://forpeoplewhothink.org/

Irshad Manji is a feisty bitch, and apparently fearless.
Has anyone noticed that the Islamic voice of reason is almost entirely female?
There's another woman, older woman in NYC,(can't remember her name off hand) that has hammered the Islamic patriarchy relentlessly, for years.

of course it's a female voice. The men are all too busy trying to get laid in heaven.

Or busy looking at the Poppy.

I am still trying to find a copy of the preface written by the Imam. This guy really lays it down about the author. Here is some snips I copied:

"Let us face a simple fact: I should hate Irshad Manji. If Muslims listen to her, they will stop listening to people like me, a imam who spent years at a traditional Islamic University."

"She has a big mouth and fact upon fact to corraborate her analysis."

"I should hate this woman."

"But then I look into my heart and engage my mind, and I come to a discomforting conclusion: Irshad is the the truth. And my God commands me to uphold the truth - which means that I have to side with her."

There is much more.

"discomforting conclusion"s are a good indicator you're on the right track...
 

I personally think the Muslim religion has been twisted by evil men into something it really wasn't intended to be.

Sort of like the Bible.

well, that's true, too

That is the case with just about every major religion. Desire for power can destroy the beautiful.

Better off without all of it.
There is no need or use for it.

Except, rkzen, that as a practical matter people behave better if they credit an afterlife -- one with a connection to this life.

It can't help but enlarge one's perspective.

That is why I am not an atheist, nor likely ever to become one. That and it takes just as much mental effort to un-believe as to believe, and for considerably lessened philosophical reward. So I end up figuring atheism for a screwjob.

Why? That makes no sense.
This is my only shot, I have to get it right.
Ethics based on "the skydaddy will smite me" is scary to me.
Crisis of faith=guy with no morals.
Mine are based in logic and my own sense of truth.
For me, there just is no reason to believe in a god and no one has ever given me one that makes any sense.

(sigh) Well, rkzen, I just did. Perhaps if you turn the ability at meditation implied by your handle upon it, you might find that sense.

I won't claim that I've personally got, or indeed ever had, it all, but such as I do have seems to me so far sufficient. I do have the hope that I may improve my understanding as my days increase.

I should think a man without morals would never have grounds for a crisis of faith.

The difference between professing a faith versus the kind of superstition you so happily lampoon would be what you do with it -- primarily this would be the difference between being ethical and spending your days in magic rituals alleged to increase your balance of celestial Brownie points.

"Muslin religion" is a particularly interesting if infelicitous typo.

Maybe it wasn't a random typo, maybe God made her type that.

(whistles nonchalantly). I have no idea what you all are on about. I never make typos! (cough)

That's not a reason to believe. That's a reason to trick people you don't trust into believing. If you use that reason for yourself, you are trying to trick yourself into believing.

What was that jingling sound?

the music of the spheres, man!

So, basically, something you pulled out of your ass. Just like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, ad nauseum.

Isn't that what happens all round? Men fight for religious rights. Would women?


It makes me wonder if women were the religious leaders if there would be all this chaos and war?

Well maybe chaos at times but I am sure our nesting instinct would take over. I wonder how that would look.

yes, women would, and have, fought for religious rights. But I don't think they've been involved much in the decision making of the Muslim heirarchy.

the Muslin heirarchy, perhaps.

Whattaya mean, trick? Why would I try and trick myself, do you think? Do you really think I have to? Frankly, I never worry about whether other people have religious faith or not -- though their behavior can certainly give me a clue. My motivation here is utilitarian. The people who credit an afterlife tend to be better behaved, and are taking a larger perspective rather than staying rooted deep in selfishness. Try looking at it from that viewpoint and see if I ain't right on this one, too.

No, you're not. Whether belief makes someone behave in a certain way has no relationship with whether it is true or not.

You haven't tried yet, I see. Quit dicking around.

How did you get to this, I'm curious?

I have found people who believe in an afterlife and people who don't believe in an afterlife to be perfectly equal morally.

A true man of the cloth.

The movie First Knight (1995) with Sean Connery and Richard Gere.
Little antiquated, but...:eyebrow:

There's nothing to try. Even if the premise (believers are better behaved) were true, it in no way implies that what they believe is true. A kid afraid of Santa's list may be on his best behavior, and the parents may find that convenient, but there's no Santa.

What? No Santa??? Are you serious??:mecry:

In their youth, there's less difference between the two -- in the middle of the population bell-curve, that is. The extremes are always readily distinguishable, though, viz. the religious-nerd contrasted with the gangbanger.

The difference becomes easier to see later in life, in the thirties and forties, again in the middle of the bell curve. The afterlifers try harder to avoid being jerks or worse. That, at any rate, is my observation.

And there are people like me who just don't know either way, and we avoid being "jerks or worse" just in case.

In my experience, those who don't believe in an afterlife are no more inclined to act like a jerk than those who do.....if anything, marginally less. If there's no afterlife, then this life is it...better make the world a more pleasant place to be by being nice to people eh?

And you, in your typical tautological fashion, are the exception that proves the rule. That's just ducky.

So, now that I've :stickpoke can you tell us if I'm a believer or not? Can you tell us *why* I believe what I believe? Can you tell us *why* I act the way I do?

I didn't think so. Your simplistic attempts to generalize the reasons for people's behavior are comically pompous. Not only is your logic fatally flawed, you manage to insult the believers and those still searching in the same breath. Can't I be good because I find that the best thing to be? Why does it have to be dependent on my spiritual beliefs? What of the Muslim fundamentalists against whom you rail? Their faith and belief in an afterlife is widely agreed upon, yet so many are "jerks or worse". Is that because of or in spite of their belief in an afterlife? I find your remarks disgusting, dripping as they are with their fecal afterbirth.

Why on earth would you think that other people's definition of a "more pleasant place" would be the same as yours?

How can you discount the people who feel the world would be a more pleasant place if it were all about me, if I had more money, if I had more power, if you did what I wanted? There are quite a lot of them, you know.

I don't. Nothing in my post suggests that I do. I was positing a rationale for not being a jerk, which does not require the existence of an afterlife to inspire it (as per UG's post).

You said, "better make the world a more pleasant place to be by being nice to people eh?"
I'm saying that there are a whole lot of people that would not agree that's the way to make the world more pleasant, whether they be religious or not.

The fact that there's a rationale for not being a jerk doesn't require anyone to act on it.

Or even agree with it.

Who's requiring anybody to act on/believe anything? I'm just giving what I consider a rationale for not being a jerk. It's a fairly flippant rationale, granted.

so because 3 out of 1,300,000,000 say something against their own religion, that you want to hear, they must be right. by that logic Christians must all be child raping bigots.

No, we want to hear they can say something, without being murdered.

Like I said, what you want to hear.

You're right, anything but all non-muslims must die. That's exactly what we want to hear.

Maybe you're just not listening to the right people. Maybe the media doesn't find some bloke in a mosque, in a small town, telling young men to respect their elders and look after their mothers that interesting.

Islam is big. Bigger than Wahabism. Bigger than the Sunni-Shia divide. Bigger than Saudi Arabia and their oppressive regime. Bigger than Turkey, or Indonesia.

There are about 25 majority moslem countries in the world, and Islam is the second largest faith in many European nations. Altogether, probably a billion and a half of the world's population is Moslem, do you really think the only people speaking about Islam in a way that 'we' approve of, are the ones that get attention in our media?

Think about the sheer number of people we're talking about, and then try and imagine getting 20 of them in a room to agree completely with each other on everything. People aren't like that. People have varying views and interpretations. Some are likely to follow the literal word of the qu'ran, some are more likely to wear jeans and work in IT and go to the mosque on a friday afternoon.

Generally speaking, the media hasn't found the jeans wearing IT guy half as interesting as the mad mullah with a hook for a hand. (see British tabloid coverage of the Finsbury Mosque).

I'm not debating the fact that the media receives more ratings by knowingly portraying the majority of Muslims as terrorists. However, don't expect me to stand idly by as people criticize my religion as if it is some kind of affliction waiting to be cured.

Wow - where was that Rex? People were expressing views on the current situation.

Was that aimed at me? Because I don't recall ever suggesting that you stand idly by.

er . . . I don't think the media portrays the majority of Muslims as terrorists, only a small, but terrible, minority.

Depends what media. I know there's a tendency in Britain for the newspaper press in particular to focus an undue amount of attention on stories relating to Islamic extremism. Often this is done with caveats stating that most moslems do not agree with the extremists. But, even with the caveats, the focus is such that it distorts the picture of Islam in Britain.

Dana, my last comment was to you regarding Bruce's comment. Yesman, your post is weak as well as your kung-fu.
Cloud, do you watch fox news at all?

I thought you were referring to people here, not the media in general, so don't get on me about it, I have said nothing derrogatory with respect to "your religion." Oh, and my kung fu is actually Ken Po and it is rather good, thank you. Earned my brown belt years ago.

yesman, i was actually referring to the grammer of your last post, it looks as if you stopped typing mid-sentence. No need to take out the brown belt.

Ohhh are people using belts in this thread? interesting development....

Corrected - tx - as usual I had a thought and it passed. hence the extra "not"

Your religion is no more or less an affliction than any other, but it does have the extremist affliction more than most. And that needs to be cured.

Well duh, most muslims are not news. They cover the dangerous ones because they are the ones people are concerned with. Joe Muslim with the wife and two kids, that goes to work everyday and mows his lawn regularly is not news.
However Joe Jihad, that's bitching about the infidels and is trying to round up some buddies, with the means to kill people in the name of Allah, certainly is.

Discussing Joe Jihad, as a muslim extremist, for a long time, and because the Joe muslim is not discussed at all, after a while the "extremist" gets dropped as a matter of convenience. Then Joe Muslim gets all pissed off when it's not about him at all.

I'm not a newshound, by any means, so maybe it's not the media--it's me. If a particular newsprogram, or website, or newspaper were to say, "all Muslims are terrorists" or imply that ... I guess I just would not believe it. It's contrary to common sense.