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Memo to YouTube: Don’t censor death threats

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Feb 18, 2008

Smile and say “death threat”: Sir David Frost with Irshad after their interview on Al-Jazeera International

Recently, Al-Jazeera International aired my interview with Sir David Frost. His questions focused on why I believe Islam can be reconciled with freedom of expression. Here’s the interview on YouTube.

It’s stirred quite a debate. Allyddawi writes, “i have more respect and compassion for a drug addict or a panhandler that i do for irshad trash manji. i hate her with a passion, especially since she came from my community and i now how retarded she is.”

By contrast, mzjef writes, “d message tht she brings to us mostly fellow muslims is to use our multi billion dollar gift frm God, which is our powerful brain to think b4 speak n act to others. shes trying to promote d spirit of Ijtihad… she never asks us to not praying, to b gay, to blow up ourselves in a mosque but wat she’s done so far 4 us r to stand up against injustice and fight for d rights of others.”

Debate is great. So why has another part of this debate - a death threat leveled against me early on - suddenly been removed from the responses section?

Two weeks ago, senadin wrote “Kill this whore now.” View the PDF of this comment by clicking here: a_j_comments1.pdf. Hint: It’s on the second page.

Now that comment is gone. Who’s censoring and why?

Is it YouTube editors who fear the implications of letting death threats remain posted? If so, I gladly give them permission to restore the threat and I waive any liability on their part for doing so.

After all, it’s important for people to see that in the name of protecting Islam’s pristine image, some Muslims paradoxically feel comfortable soliciting murder. That’s called a reality check.

Forgive my naïveté, but I thought the point of YouTube’s open community is to foster an authentic, unfiltered look at our world. Presumably, that’s why the editors didn’t touch comments like “May Allah suck my big fat dick.” (Uh, I’m guessing that God has better things to do.) And, on the other side, “May Allah curse her!” (Ironically, the latter comes from someone who identifies as habibti — Arabic for female sweetheart.)

It’s equally important to see that some Muslims condemn the threats, as does WarGuardian18 when s/he writes “How dare my brothers and sisters call for the death of anyone!… Shame on you!” Censors didn’t remove that comment, which only reminds us that a threat was, indeed, issued in the first place.

Leaving this response up is either very clever or very sloppy of the editors. Whatever the case, I’m glad it remains posted for all to view because it, too, is a reality check.

If we sanitize debate, we’ll never know what we’re up against in the struggle to reform the Muslim mind-set. That’s what I told a young Shia Muslim who once pleaded with me to delete a death threat issued by a fellow Shia. Her message to me: We’re not all like that and by posting the threat on your site, you’re making us look bad.

My message to her: Instead of pleading with me to erase facts on the ground, wouldn’t you serve Muslims more by using your voice to challenge my would-be assassin? Doesn’t reforming a criminal have more social value than denying that he or she exists?

To all readers: You can challenge death threats by signing this petition. In added defiance of violent Islamists, please be sure to identify your city along with your name.

Let us — Muslims and non-Muslims — assert the universal values of humanity and rationality. Let us do so with honesty.

Be not afraid

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Q & A on Feb 14, 2008

This week, I participated in a debate about whether democratic governments are obliged to protect Muslim citizens who live under threat of death merely for opposing Islamists.

Many of you who watched are suggesting that I remind people to sign my petition against death threats. Almost 3,000 have already done so, but freedom of conscience surely deserves more friends.  Please sign your name and city. Don’t let give violent Islamists the authority to intimidate you into anonymity.

There’s a second reason for issuing this reminder now. Yesterday, a Danish journalist wrote me this message:

“A group of men has just been captured. They had plans of killing one of the Muhammad cartoonists here in Denmark. I would like to know if you still have the security that you had in Toronto. Do you have police surveillance or do you go as you please? Do you still live the way you told me a few years ago - ‘if I die, I die’?”

My response:

“I’m now living in New York where daily protection for me is better than in Canada. The death threats are still coming; in fact, I received a fresh round of them only two weeks ago. But I refuse to hide — or be cowed into conformity. I ‘m convinced it’s more dignified to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

My decision to speak up is an active choice, an exercise of personal agency. If die for making that choice, then at least I will have lived on my own terms.  At my funeral, let it be said that ’she sacrificed something she was already willing to give — not something that terrorists stole from her.’

Ultimately, I refuse to hand the enemies of reason and humanity more power by sanctifying what they can snuff out. They can take my physical being, but they’ll never, ever,  be able to kill my ideas or the spirit behind them. Gandhi would have approved.”

Allow me to explain the last line. Gandhi advised that in the face of genocidal evil, we must resist vigorously yet non-violently. Should the resistance effort prove utterly fruitless, then something else needs to be done. Since reciprocal violence wasn’t an option for Gandhi, his answer was to die voluntarily as a way of exposing the sheer depth of the evil in our midst. Until then, he emphasized, resist.

Speaking purely personally, I can’t disagree. I’m prepared to die in order to shine a spotlight on the horrors of Islamist abuse — as long as that’s the only dignified choice I have left. The reason this approach doesn’t make me a martyr is that I recognize all other options have yet to be exhausted. So I’m not cruising for death; just aware of its possibility and content to press forward in spite of it. Non-violent resistance remains an option, to say nothing of a necessity.

Another reason I’m no victim is that I insist on remembering those who don’t have the profile or platform that I do. They include Kenyan democracy activists and human rights defenders who are receiving death threats through SMS texts, emails and phone calls. Women Living Under Muslims Laws has issued a bulletin about this.

Amid all the threats, it’s easy to believe that we’re powerless. But feeling inadequate doesn’t mean being so.  Signing your name and city to my petition is a shout-out that you live your values openly.  The meek may inherit the earth, but God knows they won’t save it.

Of course, some will hate your guts for supporting those who dissent with Islamist extremism. Beauty is, you’ll have guts.

The French government: Agents of Moral Courage (for now)

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Feb 11, 2008

A message to all atheists: There really is a God. Read on.

I never thought I’d be able to call France’s government an Agent of Moral Courage, but today it’s taken a step in the right direction. Rama Yade, the French Secretary of State for Human Rights, has announced official support for the physical protection of dissident Muslims who are living under death threats.

Specifically, France will advocate a European fund to provide personal security for reformist Muslims.  Among the beneficiaries will be Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former member of Dutch parliament and vocal ex-Muslim who has just appealed for citizenship in France. Minister Yade has suggested that Ayaan will get that, too.

What I deeply appreciate about this announcement is that  it’s not strictly about Ayaan.  Lesser known Muslim dissidents will also benefit. They need the help even more than Ayaan does, since they’re not empowered by boatloads of media coverage.

Consider, for example, Mohamed Sifaoui. Never heard of him, right?  Let’s fix that.  He’s  a documentary-maker who risks his life to enter radical mosques and chronicle what happens in them. For his pains, he’s received more than his share of death threats.

French police haven’t exactly helped, mouthing the old mantra that they can’t do anything until he’s killed.  At which point, what’s the point? Isn’t too late by then? I thought we went over this when feminists made the case about why police need to be pro-active in defending battered wives. Plus ςa change, plus c’est la même chose.

Yet it may be that things really are changing.  Last month, on a visit to Paris, I spoke with Minster Yade’s office about this issue.  Even then, I sensed their sympathy — but would it translate into action?

The pressure continued.  Thanks to non-Muslim intellectuals such as Bernard-Henri Levy and Caroline Fourest, who don’t fear being labeled “racists” for supporting progressive Muslims and ex-Muslims, along with organizations like the European Foundation for Democracy, which gives a platform to reform-minded Muslims (including me), the French government “got” it.

Starting tomorrow, our challenge is to ensure that European forces of denial don’t dilute today’s announcement with endless bureaucratic attrition. Europe does many things well. Red tape is one of them.

For now, félicitations to President Sarkozy who appears to be serious about his statement, made on the eve of his election, that France must stand by the tormented women of the world.  Add men to that list.  Anybody who challenges the silence of Muslim moderates is bound to be targeted, whatever their gender.  In an era of cultural relativism, it’s an act of moral courage to ally yourself with despised champions of universal values — rationality, humanity and individuality.

Please, Monsieur le Président, don’t make me retract this congratulatory note.  Just deliver on today’s announcement and let’s get on with building a better Europe.  Merci bien and give my regards to Carla.

Sharia law in Britain: Some of my questions for its arch-cheerleader

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Feb 07, 2008

Leaders are often mis-leaders. Robed in the vestiges of authority, they can mislead us into believing half-truths and outright lies.

So it is with Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury and arch-cheerleader for Islamic law in the UK. Relying heavily on the words of Tariq Ramadan, the Right Reverend has claimed that partial adoption of Sharia law is not just “unavoidable” in Britain; it’s also desirable for the sake of “social cohesion.”

An incredibly misleading statement. It plants words in the mouths of British Muslims. It suggests that they, themselves, are demanding Sharia law. Not true.

As Ruth Gledhill, religion correspondent for the Times of London, writes on her blog: “Who exactly is asking for this [Sharia law]? No Muslim organisation in Britain has requested it, I could not find any who even wanted it.”

Well, let’s not go that far. The Ramadhan Foundation, for one, applauds Williams. No doubt, a minority does want Sharia. But — and these are questions for the archbishop — why should that minority’s interpretation of Islam be any reason to balkanize legal systems further? What gives their sensitivities the weight to become public policy?

The archbishop would retort that he’s proposing nothing more than choice: those who want Sharia law can have it; those who don’t, won’t.

Get real, Rev. When it comes to contemporary Sharia, choice is theory; intimidation is the reality.

Ask Muslim women in my home country of Canada. Two years ago, when news broke that the government of Ontario was considering how to introduce voluntary Sharia law, the very first people to hit the streets in protest were Muslim women. Some wore hijabs; some didn’t. Some defined themselves as religious; others called themselves secular.

What united them was the understanding that in practice, Sharia would be imposed on Muslim Canadian women, most of whom are newly arrived immigrants. They can’t speak English or French, don’t know about Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and won’t be told about it.

They will be told that Allah insists they stand before a religious judge who, in turn, will present Sharia law through the cultural filter of honor — the pre-Islamic tribal tradition that turns women into property of their communities. Thanks to the tribal mindsets of Muslim today, contemporary Sharia ain’t so contemporary. That’s why it can’t be trusted as a source of justice in a pluralistic society.

Let me emphasize that these points came from devout Muslim women, many of whom led (and not just joined) anti-Sharia demonstrations in Ontario. To quote the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, “We are believing women who are committed to our faith and our members are very concerned that the use of Muslim family law will erode the equality rights of Muslim women that are guaranteed under the Canadian Charter…”

Evidently, they have sisters in Britain. Ruth Gledhill tells this story, which I’m highlighting for emphasis:

A few weeks ago, I was chatting to a woman who works in an advocacy role for Muslim women in an area that… she described as a ‘no-go area’ for non-Muslims. Her clients were women in the process of being sectioned into mental health units in the NHS [National Health Service].

This woman, who for obvious reasons begged not to be identified, told me: “The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn’t want. Or maybe she starts wearing western clothes. There can be many reasons.

The women are sent for assessment to a hospital. The GP referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye?

The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned. She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don’t you people write about this?”

My interlocuter went very red and almost started to cry… “You must write about this,” she begged.

“I can’t,” I said. “Not unless you become a whistle-blower. Or give me some evidence. Or something.”

She went white. “I can’t be identified,” she said. “I would be killed. And so would the women.”

A final question: Under such circumstances, how in God’s name can any immigrant Muslim woman be expected to know that it’s her “choice” to settle disputes with her husband in a civil court?

Over to you, Right Reverend Rowan.

From Paris to New York

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road on Feb 05, 2008

A full house in Paris to hear my debate about the role of women in Muslim reform. (Photo: Giordana Grego)

I’ve just returned home from Paris, where debates about Islam and feminism are raging — as you can see from all the women in the photo above. I’m the panelist in orange who’s reaching over. No, that’s not an attempt to lay a right hook on my debate opponent. (Although the debate did get scrappy.)

If you’d like to read or watch media coverage of the trip, click on these links:

* France’s newspaper of record, Le Monde;

* the popular cable television channel, France24; and

* 20 Minutes, a youth-oriented French daily.

Finally, if you’d like to receive advance notice of my public appearances overseas, sign up to my confidential and free mailing list. Here’s the bulletin I sent out about my latest Europe trip.

To receive future bulletins, scroll down to the “Get Updates” box on the right-hand side of this page and input your email address.

Bon. Salut!

My latest on Washingtonpost.com - and a petition to sign

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Feb 01, 2008

The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine co-host a popular blog called “On Faith.” This weekend, On Faith features my column about a 23-year-old Afghan journalism student who’s being sentenced to death.

He downloaded an Internet article that analyzes how the Qur’an treats women, thus outraging a group of mullahs. They got their day in court. He didn’t even get a lawyer.

The absurdity of a newly “liberated” Afghanistan that puts a bright mind to death for exercising freedom of inquiry boggles my own not-so-bright mind. Then again, you don’t need to be a genius to understand basic human rights.

Let’s exercise our own precious freedoms to become pro-active. Reporters Without Borders is circulating a petition to support this journalism student. Please sign. We need to generate the kind of international pressure that ensured the pardon of that Saudi gang-rape victim last December.

Our troops in Afghanistan shouldn’t be dying for nada.

Diversity needs to grow up

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road on Jan 30, 2008

On Thursday, I’ll be speaking at a girls school about the power of finding and using your voice.  Among the reasons I love engaging with students is that they can be the best teachers.  This isn’t feel-good rhetoric. It’s demonstrable truth.

Take the students at the Young Women’s Leadership Academy in Jamaica, Queens, a borough of New York City.  Last year, I spoke at their school in the same week that Don Imus made major news.  He’s the American radio talk show host who described a university women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.”

African-American community “leaders,” along with feminist “spokeswomen,” bombarded TV channels with their counter-bombast.  It’s one thing to denounce Imus, who absolutely deserved the condemnation.  Quite another to announce that he made all young women of color feel like victims.  Upon hearing this claim for the umpteenth time, I took it to the girls in Jamaica, Queens.

Did they agree with those speaking on their behalf that they’ve been victimized?  Nope.  Quite the opposite. They asked a piercing question: Why would we let anybody, white or not, male or not, define who we are?  We’re not seeking his approval, so who’s to say that we’re victims because of something that he blurts?

To my ears, these students were implying (rather strongly) that they’re individuals, not property of the tribe. This is the essence of meaningful diversity.

Superficial diversity reduces all of us to external markers of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and the like.  Far more meaningful to elevate ourselves to different ways of thinking. It’s high time to popularize the distinction between diversity of thought, which recognizes individuality, and diversity of appearance, which glorifies only the group.

What I’m celebrating here is not individualism. An individualist would state, “I’m out for myself, and I don’t care if my society benefits.” Someone who honors individuality holds that “I am myself, and my society benefits from my uniqueness.” It’s a far more honest approach to the common good than the us-versus-them slogan of many equality activists.

Social movement luminaries often play the politics of representation — “you can’t comment if you don’t represent.” Well, here’s breaking news: They don’t represent either.  They can’t. We can each only represent ourselves, and that’s why unique, authentic voices matter.

Even when you’re young and relatively poor, as the students in Queens are, you can be smart enough to get it.  I can’t wait to glean insights from the girls with whom I interact on Thursday.

A final note: Two week ago, I blogged about Rebecca, a 14-year-old Catholic student.  She wrote admiringly about my willingness to challenge those who pretend to speak in the name of all Muslims.

Rebecca told me that she chose to write a paper about my work. I teasingly asked her what grade she got. Having not heard back, I figured she’s sparing my feelings.

This just in: “I got a 95% on that assignment (which, might I add, was around seven pages long because I found that the required 2-3 pages would definitely not suffice in conveying your views…”

Rebecca, can I convince you to enter the media training business upon graduation?

Freedom, faith and Bush’s final State of the Union

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Jan 27, 2008

Tonight, George W. Bush will deliver his final State of the Union address. Like a Hail Mary pass in the biggest football game of a washed-up coach’s career, this is his last shot at spinning a positive legacy for his pilloried presidency.

I imagine Bush will fly in Iraqi and Afghan individuals who represent the untold stories of triumph, heroism and hope. One individual he won’t be able to showcase — and likely doesn’t want to — is Sayad Parwez Kambaksh, a 23-year-old journalism student in Afghanistan.

Kambaksh has just been sentenced to death by an Afghan court for downloading and distributing a document that offends Islam. Welcome to the Bush “Freedom Agenda.”

I blogged about the irony of liberating Afghanis just enough to create a new constitution that makes Sharia law pre-eminent. Article 3 of Afghanistan’s constitution states that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.”

That’s freedom? For whom? Ali in Wonderland? 

In a perverse tribute to democracy, Sayad Kambaksh’s case will now go to the first of two appeals courts. To be sure, these checks and balances wouldn’t exist under the Taliban. But can the judicial process be trusted when journalists point out that Kambaksh didn’t have a lawyer in the first trial? The good news is that Afghan president Hamid Karzai, a well-educated Muslim moderate, has the authority to pardon this university student.  The bad news is that Kharzai doesn’t have the guts to do so.

It wouldn’t be the first time. In 2006, an Afghan convert to Christianity faced charges of apostasy. What struck me about the case was not that mullahs called for his execution, or that judges obliged them, but that the exemplar of a modern Afghanistan — the suave and sophisticated Karzai — didn’t publicly challenge their retrograde interpretation of Islam.

All he had to do was quote from the Qur’an, which flat-out states “there is no compulsion in religion” (2:256). Full stop and khalas.

Of course, after any such pronouncement there would be violence. But there is anyway. We Muslims have been bludgeoning each other’s freedoms for 1400 years.  Three of the Prophet’s first four successors were killed by fellow Muslims.  Now, as then, letting an innocent man die as the price of pre-empting further death makes no sense.  Above all, it changes nothing.

As a graduate of history, I’m only too aware that reform takes time.  America itself was founded as a theocracy whose clerics could be murderously dogmatic.  The country needed several generations to figure out a workable separation of church and state.

Still, that effort required agents of moral courage who would doubt the perfection of Christianity precisely to ensure the free and voluntary practice of faith.  Here’s what Thomas Jefferson advised his nephew:

“[S]hake off all the fears of servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear…

Do not be frightened from this enquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitement to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you.  If you find reason to believe there is a god, [then] a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement…

I repeat that you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject any thing because any other person, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it.  Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven…”

Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the Qur’an. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the US Congress, was sworn in one year ago this month while placing his hand on Jefferson’s Qur’an – after taking his official oath on America’s constitution. What a testament to the higher expectations we can all have of our faiths.

I expect George W. Bush to expect better of Hamid Karzai and himself. He has every opportunity to say so in his State of the Union speech.

Perhaps that dream, along with a stirring defense of free conscience, will have to wait for another Christian president. One named Obama.

United Kingdom premieres Faith Without Fear

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Jan 22, 2008

Q & A at the London launch of my film (Photo: Jessica Dean)

‘Why do Muslims revere a book that says it’s ok to sleep with animals?’

‘You’re clearly angry and you hate men. Tell us a bit about your background.’

I’m paraphrasing. Hence the single quotation marks. But — and I swear on the book that supposedly tells Muslims to get intimate with goats — these were the first two questions posed to me on Monday night.

The Frontline Club, a locus of independent journalism in London, joined the European Foundation for Democracy in hosting the British debut of Faith Without Fear. An energetic Q & A followed. I was up past midnight engaging with various people both in the theater and, after we got kicked out, in the café.

As I explained to the packed house at the start of the event, my film is about transcending fears of various kinds — the fear of of being ostracized (or worse) by your community; the fear of offending minorities in a multicultural world; and, above all, the fear of asking questions out loud.

Questions are the life-blood of open societies. We can’t stop posing them. But one can still hope that the questions I receive at my film’s next screening will be much more mature.

And where will that next screening be? At the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Some would argue that in the bastion of dogma that is SOAS, mature questions will be trumped by strident statements. Let’s find out together. It’s a public event. Join me at 3 pm this Friday. Here’s more info.

Young, restless and increasingly radical

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Jan 18, 2008

My previous blog entry featured the letter of a 14-year-old Catholic girl, Rebecca, who admires my work and has written a paper about it. I jokingly asked her what grade she received. (I’m still waiting for the answer.)

But even as I called the post “A+ for passion,” I realized the paradox of my title: If burning conviction deserves high marks, then would I give an A+ to a 14-year-old Muslim whose passion is so intense that he (or she) would kill Rebecca and me for our open-mindedness?

It’s a serious question for students everywhere because radicalism is increasingly an affliction of youth.

So says Hind Fraihi, a 30-year-old journalist in Europe. Having gone “undercover in little Morocco” — the title of her best-selling book about the spread of political Islam in Belgium — she’s noticed that it’s not only young Muslim men who are turning extreme. It’s also young Muslim women, many of whom want to marry would-be martyrs. They’re called “jihad brides.”

Sigh. At least they’re reducing the billable hours of divorce lawyers. Of course, you just know that some will dismiss Ms. Fraihi’s analysis merely because she’s a woman. (”Very emotional,” as many Muslim men love to mutter in their own stellar displays of logic.)

In that case, they’ll have to contend with Ibrahim “Eboo” Patel, a young Muslim Rhodes scholar and Ph.D. Eboo points out that “acts of religious violence abroad as well as religious hate crimes in the United States are overwhelmingly committed by young people. However, conferences on interfaith cooperation are generally attended by by older people.”

That’s why he started the Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that mentors students to live their faith in concrete acts of service toward others. It’s an important contribution to peace. God bless.

At the same time, there’s something more to be done. And it starts with recognizing why young Muslims are feeling humiliated. Western foreign policy? Not exclusively. It’s also about what Muslims are doing to each other.

I’ve spoken with a number of young Muslim men who knew Mohammad Siddique Khan, ringleader of the 2005 London bombings. (Police consider his “jihadi bride” to be an accomplice.) They’ve told me that Khan left his family’s moderate mosque to attend a Wahhabi mosque nearby. Why? Because the Wahhabis provide — get this — a “safe space” in which boys like Khan can ask questions, express theological doubts and challenge the moderate imams who repeatedly send the messages: shut up, don’t think and do as you’re told.

In an age when young people are constantly using their minds to navigate the ocean of information they receive through the web, it’s not only insulting to be told you can’t think. It’s unrealistic.

The Wahhabis “get” this. They tap into the rage that young Muslims are feeling not just about the racism of outsiders, but also about the tribalism of their own communities.

For Mohammad Siddique Khan, stifling tribalism went deeper. He desperately wanted to marry a Muslim woman from outside of his Pakistani community, only to prohibited by his moderate parents and clerics.

The Wahhabis assured Khan that the moderates are abusing Islam by preventing his marriage. They were right. While approving of his non-Pakistani fiance, they lured the young man into their midst with other reasons to feel demeaned — Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmir.

Never did they inform Khan that in the past 100 years, more Muslims have been tortured and murdered at the hands of other Muslims than any foreign imperial power. Never did they play DVDs of Black Muslims dying at the feet of Arab militias in Darfur. No mention that Sunnis routinely target Shiites in Pakistan, that Shiites routinely target Sunnis in Iraq, or that Palestinians in Lebanon get by on odd jobs because they’re not allowed to buy property, let alone become professionals.

Mohammad Siddique Khan got the love of his life, and then sacrificed his love for life. I don’t simply mean that he abdicated his interest in living. I mean that he ditched any interest in asking questions.

I emphasize asking questions because that seems to be a crucial part of the solution. But don’t take it from me — a dyed-in-the-wool missionary for ijtihad. Hell, I’m biased. Maybe even emotional!

Rather, take it from Jared Cohen, a 25-year-old who hangs out with kids from Syria to Iran to Saudi and everywhere in-between. His face-to-face conversations have produced Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East. In a recent appearance on CSPAN’s Booktv, Cohen claimed that for young Muslims to reform their societies, they’ve first got to feel the permission to ask questions.

My personal conversations with youth in the Middle East prove Jared Cohen’s point. In Cairo, I was amazed by how many young Muslim men approached me to say, “Thank you for posting the Arabic version of your book online. I’m reading it, my friends are reading it and it’s now making the rounds of the democracy movement.” This, in a city where President’s Hosni Mubarak’s thugs club 20-year-olds for protesting a two-decades-old “emergency” law.

In our wired era, where you have instant access to information about how the other half lives, youth need to explore the world — if not physically then at least intellectually.

The Wahhabis understand this. Their trick is to open the doors of ijtihad, usher you through and then narrow the doors behind you until nary a stream of sun trickles through.

Reform-minded Muslims don’t have all the answers. What we have is crucial questions. In asking them out loud, we’ll be doing all of humanity a service.

As Leonard Cohen (no relation to Jared) once cooed, “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Tupac couldn’t have said it better.

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