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Authenticity, Part One

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Jan 16, 2009

The Rev. Rick Warren, whom a lot of gays and lesbians anoint a homophobe, has been tapped by Barack Obama to present at next week’s presidential inauguration.  But so has the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who expresses support for same-sex marriage. Whether on domestic civil rights or on foreign policy, Obama often speaks of a country in which we can “disagree without being disagreeable.” Honest debate might just be returning to America.

And you, my readers, are catching the spirit.  After I wrote this blog entry, a number of you got animated by the raw nastiness of human beings losing their emotional marbles — and the nobility of other human beings proving that we’re capable of much better.

Seems you freaks appreciate authenticity.  Alright, then.

My personal authenticity – as an out lesbian, for example – is the fixation of many a Muslim who emails me.  I won’t hide my sexual orientation because that would amount to hypocrisy.  How can I call on Muslims (and everyone else) to tell the truth about their lives while I quiver in the closet?

But neither do I trumpet my sexual orientation, largely because I refuse to be reduced to this single slice of the human experience.  Of course, you’d never know that from the reductionist vitriol hurled at me simply for being gay.

Memo to my Muslim detractors: Your obsession with queer sex is counter-productive.  It diminishes your power.  You get so worked up about my homosexuality that you’re distracted from proving your monopoly on Truth.  In your bloodrush of bigotry, you forget to challenge my arguments about Allah, the Qur’an, Arab tribal culture, American foreign policy, women, Jews, Christians, slaves and the plethora of additional issues that rock and roil Islam today.

Why should you care about your tactical tunnel-vision? Because more and more Muslims are getting over the little lesbian thing.  They’re hearing my message for its intellectual content and spiritual intent.  Even imams can come around, as I learned last year at a conference where an Iraqi cleric (who’d read my book in Arabic) congratulated me after I spoke. He said that a merciful God will forgive him for approving of a lesbian and an omnipotent God must have created me that way for a reason.  “The Almighty knows best,” he sheepishly whispered in encouragement.

I assure you that he’s not the only cleric capable of moving past pre-judgment.  Another imam wrote the preface to the paperback edition of my book, starting it this way:

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

She threatens my male authority and says things that I wish were not true.  She has a big mouth, and fact upon fact to corroborate her analysis. She  doesn’t fear death, except the kind that comes shutting down one’s brain. She is a lesbian, and my madressa training has instilled, almost into my DNA, that Allah hates gays and lesbians. I really should hate this woman.

But then I look into my heart and engage my mind, and I come to a discomfiting conclusion. Irshad is telling the truth, and my God commands me to uphold the truth…”

See why I believe that Muslims have what it takes to discover our better angels? If I didn’t feel that way — authentically, that is — I couldn’t keep reading the toxic waste that fills my inbox.  Or delighting in the decency that enters it, too.

All of which brings me to the debates being captured in your feedback.  Some of them are doozies.  You’ll see in my coming blog post, “Authenticity, Part Two.”

Stay tuned.  Stay true.

Inauguration of a different kind with Salman Rushdie

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Jan 12, 2009

On Sunday, January 18, celebrated novelist Salman Rushdie and I will be inaugurating the Moral Courage Conversations in New York City — just in time to mark the 20th anniversary of Iran’s fatwa against him. Please join us.

As the 2003 photo above attests, I’ve known Salman for a few years now. We first met in Toronto, where I interviewed him for Canada’s public broadcaster. He later appeared in my PBS documentary, Faith Without Fear.

On camera, I asked Salman to counsel young Muslims who desperately want to say what they’re thinking yet feel the pressure to clam up and conform. His advice:

“Just go ahead, you know? How many people can they shut up? It’s got to start happening. If you have the great privilege of living in one of the relatively few free societies in the world, use the freedom. The point about freedom is to use it.”

And that’s what the Moral Courage Conversations are all about — to explore the future of free expression in a fractured and fragile world. It’s no coincidence that we’re launching these dialogues on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. Here are the details.

Supporters of this initiative include the Ford Foundation, the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University and the Brussels-based European Foundation for Democracy.

Use your freedom of inquiry. Find out more about the Moral Courage Project.

My latest column about Gaza…

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Jan 09, 2009

… is generating more than the usual reaction. A small sample of the comments that have flooded my inbox:

* “… all I can say is Fuck You… I’m ashamed that you’re a Canadian.”- Stephen MacEwen

* “… of all the people in this world I think you are my greatest hero.” - Gil Johnson

* “You truly are a sick embarrassment to women, lesbians, Muslims and jew-tools.” - Anonymous

* “We need more people like Irshad Manji, who question the unfamiliar, break taboos, and discuss illogical interpretations in any religion.” - Mohamad Jukhadar

* “Thank you for continuing to be a shining light for all intelligent women out there, and for all conscious people who choose not to be sheep.” - S. Natasha Young

* “Are you inured to the murdering/suffering taking place? How does your writing show courage?” - Regina Bueno Renke

* “If more people could be as courageous and honest as you are, we might be closer to peace.” - Monsignor Peter Schonenbach

* “Thank you for asking the right questions.” - Mary Jo Rotheker

Here’s the column they’re debating.

PS: This Saturday and Sunday night, I’ll be on CNN’s new variety program, “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News” (10-11 pm Eastern) to discuss Gaza.

Palestinian leader: “Fatah and Hamas come from the same root”

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Jan 06, 2009

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti on the campaign trail

(Photo: Associated Press)

At the height of the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, I traveled to the West Bank. There, I spoke with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who came second in the campaign to succeed Yasser Arafat.

Here’s what he told me — on tape: “Fatah and Hamas both come from the same root… It is basically the clan mentality.”

He went further in explaining the democracy deficit that Palestinian elders have bequeathed to their people:

“Democracy is not just elections. We still lack a lot of things. We do not have an independent judiciary. We still do not have rule of law… Every Palestinian should be entitled to the same rights as every other Palestinian. In the system that exists right now, if you are an excellent student but not aligned with Hamas or Fatah, you probably will not get a loan or a scholarship.”

You know what this means, don’t you? The “clan mentality” runs rampant enough in Palestine that wiping out Hamas won’t produce substantial change for the people. Replace Hamas with Fatah, and you wind up with honor-lite. At core, both political camps share a commitment to nepotism, corruption and human exploitation.

Bottom line: An Israeli war on Hamas can only be about protecting Israelis; the deeper struggle of reforming culture is up to Palestinians themselves.

So why is Dr. Barghouti, a self-professed reformer, staying silent about this point in his media appearances of late? Why not bulldoze through the fog of battle and speak truth to all powers, not merely those in IDF uniforms?

Precisely because of the clan mentality. Even he isn’t immune to it.

When I sat down with Dr. Barghouti, we broke the ice by joking about the caustic criticism I incur from mainstream Muslims. “One will make as many enemies as friends, merely by having ideas,” I suggested.

Replied Dr. Barghouti, “It is very painful. It is the most painful thing. And that is why so many [Palestinians] abstain from participating in democratic processes, criticizing without taking the risk of proposing an alternative.”

To be sure, Palestinians hold no monopoly on caving to intimidation. On the fear front, they’re in stellar company. But the world’s refusal to acknowledge this native barrier to peace actually undermines solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Take the tragic tale of Aziz Shehadeh, the first prominent Palestinian to accept Israel’s existence and advance a compromise based on two states. Yasser Arafat’s henchmen responded to Shehadeh by branding him a “despicable collaborator” on Arabic radio. “You shall pay for your crimes,” the husky voice decreed over the airwaves for all to hear and heed. “We shall eliminate you. Silence you forever. Make an example of you for others.”

Maybe worse, the Palestinian lawyers’ union disbarred Shehadeh. Years later, he was mysteriously murdered.
“He was an energetic, public-spirited man who was never allowed to succeed,” writes Shehadeh’s son, Raja. “He had become a marked man…”

In painting this portrait of his father, Raja illuminates social context that we ignore at the price of peace: In Palestine, observes Raja, “society conspires to destroy, discourage, and bring down by rampant corrosive jealousy those who triumph. It’s a society that encourages you to cringe. Most of your energy is spent extending feelers to detect public perception of your actions because your survival is contingent on remaining on good terms with your society.”

Time and again, young Palestinians have told me the same. A couple of years ago, I moderated a roundtable of Arab youth at the World Economic Forum in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt. The Palestinian delegation complained bitterly that their own politicians treated them as “suspect” and “deviant.” Innovative ideas, they said, are deemed “dangerous.”

Then came this bombshell: “We cannot keep blaming the Israelis for our problems. We all know that opinions in our Arab societies are determined by family loyalties instead of reason. My brother and I against my cousin; my cousin, brother and I against an external threat.”

Edward Said, the eminence grise of Palestinian nationalism, once famously asked, “Why don’t we fight harder for freedom of opinions in our own societies — a freedom, no one needs to be told, that scarcely exists?”

Great question. I’ll bet Dr. Mustafa Barghouti has a great answer. It would be an act of moral courage — and perhaps even peace — to get that conversation going again.

My Newsweek essay for a new year

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Jan 02, 2009

Newsweek International has published a special edition entitled, “Issues 2009: How to Fix the World — A Guide for the Next President.”

The magazine’s editors asked me advise Obama on U.S. foreign policy towards the Islamic world. Here’s how I begin my essay:

“America’s 44th president will not need any 3 a.m. phone calls to keep him awake. Figuring out how to restore the United States’ moral authority in the Islamic world — while encouraging Muslims to reform themselves — would stop anyone from sleeping soundly.

The solution will require more than success in Iraq or the Palestinian territories. After all, most Muslims live outside of the Middle East, and Washington must learn to acknowledge their worth. Doing so demands a foreign policy re-think.

Instead of being driven strictly by counter-terrorism, the U.S. approach should be complemented by a universal human rights thrust — a cooperative strategy that recognizes ordinary Muslims, especially women, to be immediate targets of jihadism, as well as indispensable partners in the fight against it.”

Read the rest of my essay on newsweek.com.

What could replace the Coalition of the Willing?

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 29, 2008

With Palestinians and Israelis once again caught in the cross-hairs of Tehran and Tel Aviv, with Pakistan and India baiting each other through troop movements, with the Iraqi shoe-hurler being hailed as a hero throughout the Middle East, and with Islamism rising in historically tolerant lands such as Bosnia, America’s new president will need all the friends he can muster to defuse far-flung tensions.

God knows, defusing won’t happen through the Coalition of the Willing. Or the United Nations. Or the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or the European Union, or OPEC, or the Commonwealth, or the Arab League. But what’s the alternative to these multilateral networks?

I propose something entirely new: an Alliance of the Interdependent. And I explain this idea to Laura Flanders of GRITtv…

From Mumbai, a (very cool) letter to Israel

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 21, 2008

By now, most of us know about the Indian nanny who saved a Jewish baby from Islamist terrorists in last month’s Mumbai attacks. But have you heard of the Muslim cook who worked alongside this heroic nanny, and may have helped in the baby’s rescue?

Below is an open letter from Javed Anand, head of the Mumbai-based Muslims for Secular Democracy. He’s asking of all of us to do something special — encourage Israel to award the title of “Righteous Gentile” to both the Christian nanny and the Muslim cook.

To understand this appeal, read the media story embedded in Javed’s letter. It describes an uplifting act of courage that shames the cocaine-fueled terrorists. Inspired by that media story, Javed’s proposal to Israel is itself an act of moral courage, since many Muslims will only accuse him of pandering to Zionists.

Let them howl. I can’t think of a better way to combat their sniveling, spineless passivity than to support the idea you’re about to read.

Send your messages of support directly to me, and I’ll fast-track them to my bosses in the Mossad.

*****

MESSAGE FROM JAVED ANAND, SECRETARY GENERAL, MUSLIMS FOR SECULARY DEMOCRACY, MUMBAI

Dear Friends,

Please click here for an extraordinarily heart-tugging account of how Zakir Hussain, a Muslim, and Sandra Samuels, a Christian (cook and nanny respectively in the home of Rabbi Holtzberg) hid behind two refrigerators for 13 hours and managed to escape with the Rabbi’s two-year-old son, Baby Moshe.

Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivkah were mercilessly killed in their home by monsters supposedly acting in the name of Islam.

According to reports, the Israeli government is considering honouring nanny Sandra, who has travelled to Israel with Baby Moshe, with Israel’s highest (Righteous Gentile) award for non-Jews. It would be a wonderful gesture and a powerful message to the world if Zakir, too, was similarly honoured.

Our humble Shalom to Gavriel and Rivkah for having made their home a happy New Jerusalem in which Zakir and Sandra could bring up their little boy.

How tragic their deaths, how monstrous their killers.

What I said at the Apollo Theater

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Q & A on Dec 17, 2008

All smiles with the Rev. Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook, pastor of the Bronx Christian Fellowship and host of “Harlem Hallelujah.” (Photo: Michael Stroude)

My Allah loves the Apollo.

That’s where I gave the opening prayer for “Harlem Hallelujah,” a Christmas concert which I blogged about the other day. I started my post by exulting that “my Allah ain’t got nothing against Christmas.”

Seems a lot of you dig this sentiment. Here’s one of a dozen emails you sent me about it:

“Love this statement – ‘My Allah ain’t got nothing against Christmas.’ For someone who is involved in interfaith initiatives, is it possible to get a copy of the prayer that you delivered?” - Almoonir

Ask and ye shall receive:

In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.

In his Letter from Mecca, Brother Malcolm said, “On this pilgrimage, what I have seen and experienced has forced me to re-arrange my thought patterns, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions.

I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand-in-hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.”

Sisters and brothers, this afternoon let us embark on a pilgrimage of our own, allowing the music to lift us up — and out — of stale thought patterns. Like the Bible, the Qur’an tells us: “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.”

We have already proven that yes, we can change — at the top. But the foundation of justice is always built from the bottom. You with me?

So sing, dance and shout in full faith that with a commitment to gratitude, with purity of intention and with discipline of devotion, we will emerge from this place — and this year — as more intelligent seekers of Truth. Ameen.

Harlem Hallelujah!

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Dec 14, 2008

My Allah ain’t got nothing against Christmas.

This afternoon, I’ll be delivering a prayer in the opening moments of “Harlem Hallelujah,” a hi-octane holiday concert at New York’s Apollo Theater. That’s the world-famous home to a young Ella Fitzgerald and an aspiring musician named Jimi Hendrix.

Today’s performers include the Canaan Baptist Church chorus, tenor Victor A. Morris and the Cocolo Japanese Gospel Choir.

But for me, the star attraction has to be the Rev. Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook, who’s hosting Harlem Hallelujah. I’ve often appeared with her on CNN and let’s just say the sister knows how to inspire.

Book your last-minute tix, throw on your scarf and hop the uptown train for a 3 pm start.

Reform-minded Muslims are getting vocal

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 10, 2008

Today, on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it would easy for me to rail against the massive abuses of dignity that we Muslims continue to inflict on each other.  I could call on Muslims — yet again — to dig deep into our own consciences before pointing fingers at the West for this or that transgression.  And make no mistake: I’ll persist in conveying those messages until the problem is addressed once and for all.

But on this, the International Day for Human Rights, I’d rather share good news with you.

For starters, tens of thousands of Indian Muslims have been rallying against religious terrorism. Galvanized by the leadership of Muslims for Secular Democracy, a Mumbai-based group headed by my friend Javed Anand, the number of protestors has exceeded even his expectations! Javed writes:

“When we came up with this idea less than a week ago, we told ourselves we should mobilise at least a hundred Muslims in Mumbai. It is really a very happy sign that everyone who heard of it also wanted to participate and by Sunday scores of organisations participated in 11 different cities cutting across sectarian divides.”

Javed tells me that in the coming days, he’ll be posting more photos and newspaper reports chronicling these Muslim anti-terrorism demonstrations. For now, if you could do with a dose of hope, get familiar with Muslims for Secular Democracy. You’ll see why I have faith that not all is lost.

“But what’s happening in the alleged home of the Mumbai terrorists?” you might wonder.  “Where are the reformist Muslim voices of Pakistan?” Let me assure you that progressive Pakistanis abound. We rarely hear about them. All the news that’s fit to print apparently doesn’t make it into the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or Guardian as often as it should. Just the other day, I emailed a Muslim woman to thank her for writing an excellent piece about honor crimes — and writing it in the Pakistani press.

She’s not alone.  Take, as another example, Ferhan Mahzer, Chairman of Rays of Development Organization in Sargodha, Pakistan. Just the other day, he sent me a commentary published in Chanan, an Urdu-language publication.  The commentary’s title: “Even after 1400 years, burying women alive remains our tribal tradition.” I’m re-printing it here:

At last a few Senators in Pakistan have refused to remain silent on the live burial of three girls and two women. Senator Yasmeen Shah took the initiative, and the rest of the senators joined her later. When a Israr Zahri, the Senator from Balochistan stood up and said that burying women alive in this manner was a private matter for Baloch tribes, everybody in the Senate was shocked. The last blow was given by the acting chairman of the senate, Jan Muhammad Jamali, who said that the journalists in Islamabad are ignorant of these tribal norms and traditions which allow men to bury their female relatives alive.

Senators Jamal Laghari and Abdul Ghafoor Haidri should be applauded because they protested against this barbaric act and highlighted that there is no such law in tribal tradition which allows to the live burial of daughters and female relatives.The leader of the opposition, Senator Kamal Ali Agha also should be condonded for his stance against this inhuman act.

It remineds me of another story which I reported three years ago. If Senator Kamal Ali Agha had not intervened for three female victims of violence, I could not have been able to do anything for them.

The earthquake of October 2005 gave an unique idea to two brothers, residing in Gujjar Khan. They went to Mirpur Azad Kashmir and kidnapped the son of an overseas employee for ransom. They brought the child to Gujjar Khan and told their family that the parents of the lad had been lost in the earthquake.

The women of their home started to take care of the child. Two girls of this poor family had already donated their dowry to victims of the earthquake. Both brothers discouraged their sisters to develop any affection with the child.

After recieving the ransom both brothers handed over the child to his parents.  The Mirpur police raided the house in Gujjar Khan on the direction of the child who had been in that home for many days. The mother and her two daughters, who were not aware of anything, were busy in preparing the dinner for the family when police raided their home and took all the family into custody, and subjected them to torture.

The father, mother, two sisters, one aunt and a brother of the kidnappers were locked up in a room in the Mirpur police station. The father and an eight-year-old sister were released on the condition that they should bring the kidnappers so that they can get their prisoners freed. Both the brothers had fled, and police had only one way to bring them back: to keep their women locked up and  to continue to torture them. These women remained in custody for 26 days, with only the clothes they were wearing.

When I learnt of this horrific story I went to the Mirpur police station to report a story for my newspaper, where these innocent women were in detention without any legal charges  or legal proceedings. I was astonished to hear from the police that until both brothers surrendered they would not free the women of their family. The police admitted to me that they knewn these women were innocent and unaware of the kidnapping. The police also told me that for this reason they had not registered an FIR against these women. The father of the kidnapped boy also agreed that these women were innocent but said he was helpless before Pakistan police investigation methods.

Mean while I came to know that the DSP of the Mirpur police had taken these women to his residence several times for investigation. At his home one day, when the DSP was busy torturing these women in his drawing room, his own daughter came into the room upon hearing their screams. He pushed her also out of the drawing room. Everybody I talked in Mirpur accepted that these women were innocent but to capture the kidnappers they beleived it was essential to keep their women under custody.

I contacted IG Police of Kashmir; he defended the methods of police and said “What else we could do?”

That night I came back from Mirpur with thinking that men have designed so many ways to torture women. Firstly, these two men didn’t think for a second that by kidnapping a boy  about what pain they were plotting for their mother and sisters. These women paid the price of the crime of their menfolk and about which they were totally ignorant. In this male-dominated society the police punished these women  although they were hundred percent sure that they were not involved in the crime.

When I filed this story in my news paper about the illegal detention and torture of innocent women for the past 26 days in Mirpur police station it caused a wave of shock. At that time, Senator Kamal Ali Agha, although he was sitting in government benches took up their case in the Senate. I was also threatened by the Mirpur police with a fake case of abduction against me. In their point of view, by writing in support of these women I had also participated in the crime of the kidnapping of the child. The Minister of Interior at that time also showed keen interest in this case. After the publication of this news in the media, Mirpur police tactically registered an FIR against these women in dates before they had detained them.

At last after the involvement of Senators like Kamal Ali Agha, these women were set free after 26 days of torture and illegal detention.

Now after three years, once again I see Senator Kamal Ali Agha protesting against the  live burial of five women in Balochistan. I wonder in my heart for how long I will be writing stories of violence against women and for how long Senators like Kamal Ali Agha, Yasmeen Shah, Jamal Laghari and Abdul Ghafur Haidri will protest against this kind of barbaric acts. Most of the stakeholders in the government are those who agree with such tribal norms which allow violence of this intensity against women.

It was very easy for them to claim that the journalists like me, sitting in Islamabad, are not familiar with the traditions of tribes which include the live burial of women and girls, as if we don’t have the right to write about such heinous acts. After hearing such remarks I am forced to think that if such traditions are so sacred for them, then why they have joined the democratic system of this country?

1400 years ago, before the advent of Islam the tribes of Arabia used to bury their female infants alive. The Holy Prophet (PBUH) also urged for the rights of women in the face of this brutal tradition. The only difference we have observed after 1400 years is that we bury the female members of society only after they have been educated and reached puberty. 

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