announcements

Charles Le Gai Eaton (1921-2010)

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Mar 14, 2010

A few days ago, I woke up to an email from Leo Eaton, a filmmaker who’d collaborated closely on my PBS documentary, Faith Without Fear.

Leo wrote to tell me that his father had passed away. Now, you should know that Leo’s dad wasn’t just “the father of my friend.” Leo’s dad, Charles Le Gai Eaton, was among contemporary Islam’s most sophisticated thinkers.

I knew of Gai Eaton even before I’d met Leo. As the host of a Toronto TV program in 2000, I dispatched one of my producers to London, UK, where she interviewed him about homosexuality and Islam. After a vigorous back-and-forth with my producer, Mr. Eaton — a Muslim convert, accomplished author and distinguished consultant to London’s Islamic Cultural Centre — summarized why he couldn’t condemn homosexuality: “With a majestic God, anything is possible.”

It wasn’t his refusal to denounce gays and lesbians that stuck with me all these years. It was his refusal to play God. In a handful of unadorned words, Mr. Eaton captured the essence of my  faith in Islam — leaving final judgment to the Almighty rather than the Almighty’s self-appointed ambassadors. In so doing, he paid serious tribute to the Creator, suggesting that any Deity worth worshiping is grand and expansive enough to break the mold that His insecure creatures won’t. Mashallah.

Charles Le Gai Eaton prized intellectual honesty. Hearing nothing but protest against the Iraq war from British Muslims, he went on the record with his differences. “Saddam was such a monster,” Mr. Eaton told a magazine that caters to Muslims in the West. “[M]aybe we were right to interfere in this case. I am very torn either way and I cannot quite make up my mind.” How refreshing to encounter humble ethical uncertainty at a time of cavalier political absolutes.

The writer to whom he made that statement opined that “Eaton despairs at the state of the Muslim world, which he vehemently feels should address the issue of tyrants, injustice, poverty and human rights abuses littering its own backyard…” His moral courage, gently proffered, meant so much to Muslims like me who needed role models like him, and frankly still do.

When Leo emailed me about the death of Gai Eaton, he attached something he’d written. It’s the deeply personal “remembrance” of a son watching his father slip into the next world. Leo had shared it only privately, particularly with members of his dad’s tariqa or Sufi order.

Prepared to be turned down, I asked Leo if he’d allow me to post an excerpt of the remembrance for my international audience. To his credit and my delight, he agreed.

*****

Here’s the passage I’ve chosen:There have been a constant stream of Sufi Brothers and Sisters arriving at this bedside from around the world, and some days they’ve set up an almost continuous chanting of the Koran. It’s beautiful and strangely peaceful, this lovely musical  recitation that goes on any time of the day and night. They venerate him as though he is a saint; a strange way to think of ‘Dad.’

We have been warned that thousands will come to his funeral if given the chance, so leaders of the tariqa are helping us keep it to family and close friends. All this love and respect, based partly on four previous books, especially Islam and the Destiny of Man, which has changed so many lives, but also on my father’s character. In his old age, he had endless patience with young seekers of faith who came to him for advice and wisdom. And if they happened to be beautiful women, so much the better, as his just-published autobiography, A Bad Beginning, makes clear.

When my wife Jeri and I read the initial drafts of A Bad Beginning, drawn from over 75 years of diary entries that my father had written since childhood, we worried about how devout Muslims around the world who so respect his work might take stories of such a scandalous past.I am reminded of a story he tells of his first book, The Richest Vein, published by TS Eliot, that he wrote when he was still in his twenties. A respected clergymen came out from England to Jamaica, where Dad was living, awed by the book and wanting to meet the author, expecting some grey-haired sage. When introduced to my father, sitting with a girl on one knee and a drink in his hand, he exclaimed in horror: “That can’t be the man.”

Perhaps some Muslims awed by Islam and the Destiny of Man or Remembering God may also say “that can’t be the man,” but I suspect the majority will take inspiration from Dad’s circuitous path to Islam, a version of St. Augustine’s prayer, “Oh God, make me chaste, but not yet.”

And in any case, my father has always taken pains to separate the human persona from spiritual work. “God can choose even the most flawed vessel from which to pour out his blessings,” he has often told me. He would be horribly embarrassed to see this outpouring of love and veneration that now surrounds him. Sitting at his bedside these past days, I sense the beginning of a legend. I don’t know if I’m glad or sorry.

Ashhadu an la ilaha illa’Llah (There is no God but God)

*****

Having been privileged to ‘glimpse’ Charles Le Gai Eaton’s final hours, I now pray for him. May he rest in peace for as long as he needs. Then may he raise appropriate hell in heaven.

“The Stoning of Soraya M.” now out on DVD

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Feb 27, 2010

Does this man go through with hurling his stone at Soraya?      Watch the movie…

This week, among the most important movies of my generation, “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” comes out in DVD and Blu-Ray. You can order either version here.

“The Stoning,” starring recent Emmy-award winner Shohreh Aghdashloo, dramatizes the true story of an Iranian village wife whose deceitful husband sets her up for execution so that he can marry an unsuspecting girl in the city.

Ultimately, though, this isn’t a tale of female victimhood. Instead, it’s about moral courage. The target of the stoning — Soraya — has an aunt who shows us that even when you can’t stop the crime unfolding before you, there’s always an opportunity to use your mind, conscience and voice for longer-term good. That’s what Aunt Zahra does in this film. I won’t tell you how she does it. You’ll just have to buy the DVD!

Beyond buying it, I hope you’ll screen it in your homes, churches, temples, mosques, classrooms and community centers. The questions unleashed by “The Stoning” will generate amazing conversations.

I should know. My NYU leadership program, the Moral Courage Project, launched a human rights campaign around the film. Thanks to the participation of people worldwide, we won the 2009 Visionary Award from the Women’s International Film and Television Showcase. This couldn’t have happened without student bloggers, Facebookers and Tweeps engaging about what it means to be a global citizen today.

For example, are non-Muslims “allowed” to comment on issues that affect Muslim women — such as the so-called honor killing of Soraya? If you watch a movie like “The Stoning,” are you sticking your nose in “other” people’s business? In an interdependent world, is there such a thing as “other” people?

Aunt Zahra protecting Soraya

To get you into the spirit of hi-octane discussion, here’s what I would say if I were part of the film club that I want you to create once you buy the “The Stoning” DVD:

As a Muslim reformer, I routinely receive heart-wrenching emails from fellow Muslims whose basic human rights are being violated — not by “outsiders” but by members of their own communities. Equally saddening is that self-professed human rights activists in the West often play the purity game, suggesting that you can’t comment if you don’t represent.

Their misguided conviction: Anyone living in the West can’t legitimately expose oppressive practices in cultures elsewhere. Hmmm… Would they say the same to Muslims in the traditional Islamic world who expose America’s human rights abuses at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib? Of course not.

Nor should they. Human rights, being human, are above the politics of identity. As Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out in his Letter from a Birmingham City Jail, “Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, parochial, ‘outside agitator’ idea.”

But it seems that Elise Auerbach, Iran specialist for Amnesty International USA, can more than live with the narrow and parochial. She practices it in her baffling denunciation of “The Stoning of Soraya M.”

Tellingly, Amnesty itself released a January 2008 report that described stonings as “grotesque and unacceptable”. In its press release about the report, Amnesty called on “the Iranian authorities to abolish death by stoning and impose an immediate moratorium on this horrific practice, specifically designed to increase the suffering of victims.”

In her remarkably contradictory review of “The Stoning” — a review in which she acknowledges the report — Auerbach emphasizes that “Iranians don’t need people from outside Iran telling them what is good for them…”

Really? Then why did her own organization dare to tell Iranian authorities what to do in its report against stoning?

And why did Amnesty feature “The Stoning” at its 2009 annual film festival?

Above all, why did Amnesty invite Cyrus Nowrasteh, the Iranian-American director of “The Stoning,” to introduce the film at its festival? Is it because he’s Iranian? If so, then what makes him someone “from outside” according to Auerbach?

Of course, Nowrasteh is American too.  Perhaps that’s the real taboo. In which case, isn’t Auerbach’s employer — UK-based Amnesty — also an outsider? Why does she continue to work for Amnesty and make herself part of the interference that she believes is a problem?

Within its own ranks, Amnesty International needs an intellectually honesty debate about how to realize its motto, “Defending Human Rights Worldwide.” Personally, I can attest that more than a few Amnesty activists worry about the scourge of moral and cultural relativism in their midst. That’s the single biggest concern confided to me when I presented at Amnesty’s 2006 conference in Mexico City.

Delegates disclosed to me that Amnesty International has no clear message about honor-based crimes, including stoning, because nobody wants to be deemed a bigot. As if defending human rights worldwide has ever been a matter of politeness.

It’s 2010 and apparently Amnesty has not resolved its dilemma. Auerbach condemns a movie that spotlights an Iranian heroine — Soraya’s aunt, Zahra — who tries to stop the stoning. Zahra is a Muslim who realizes her faith by speaking truth to power about the non-negotiable need for human dignity.

And yet, according to Auerbach, hapless audience dupes will respond with “disgust and revulsion at Iranians themselves, who are portrayed as primitive and bloodthirsty savages.” Thus, “we” — idiotic Westerners who can’t be trusted to reach independent conclusions — “still have to wait” for a “thoughtful” film about executions in Iran.

I hope we don’t have to wait for thoughtful human rights activists to speak truth to power in their organizations. Dissidents do exist, as I learned at the Amnesty conference that I attended. Will they exercise their own freedom of conscience? Of this, I can’t be sure. Moral courage is always more difficult than self-censorship.

To watch exclusive clips from “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” click here. And to buy the just-released DVD, click here.

The Moral Courage Project screens “The Stoning of Soraya M.” You can too.

What will happen to Habib?

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Jan 08, 2010

Martyr in the making? Habib, as shown in “Faith Without Fear”  (National Film Board of Canada/90th Parallel Productions)

U.S. media is currently marinated in analysis of what propels — or compels — a Muslim kid to become a terrorist. Through recent interviews, I too have contributed to the buzz. But combative exchanges don’t bring out the finer, nuanced, points of any serious exploration. Nor do they equip us to connect the dots.

Let this post help rectify that problem.  Without worry of being interrupted, here’s my step-by-step connecting of several dots:

* While filming my PBS documentary, “Faith Without Fear,” I traveled to Yemen and conversed on-camera with Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard.  Although the Yemeni government identified OBL’s bodyguard as an ex-jihadi, an extremist who’d been rehabilitated, the bodyguard affirmed his commitment to global jihad. In fact, he said he’s making plans for the martyrdom of his 5-year-old son, Habib (see the cutie above).

I knew right then and there that government initiatives to de-program jihadis wouldn’t be enough to defeat the spread of this plague. Even without daddy’s shameless recruiting, Habib is susceptible. He has only to switch on his computer.

* Thanks to the Internet, we’re seeing the globalization of grievance. Jihadis are using and abusing the freedom of the Web to preach a false narrative; one that nonetheless taps into a deep emotional need for young Muslims to belong to something more meaningful than watered-down, consumer society.

* The false narrative being preached is, in a nutshell, that the West hates Islam. After all, goes the story, look at how America and its allies slaughter Muslims indiscriminately.

But the reality is that more Muslims are tortured and murdered by other Muslims than by any foreign power. Last month, researchers — most of them Muslims — released a study proving that in the past two years alone, 98% of al-Qaeda’s victims have been innocent Muslims.

*Jihadis bring spiritual justification to their violence by citing Islam. Take, for example, Mohammad Sidique Khan, ringleader of the July 7 bombings in London, England. He left behind a marytr video. In it, Khan invoked UK foreign policy. But before going there, he proudly declared that “Islam is our religion and the prophet is our role model.”

In “Faith Without Fear,” OBL’s former bodyguard made precisely the same statement about the Prophet. Clearly, religious symbolism plays a role in violent jihadism.

* Moderate Muslims deny this. Reform-minded Muslims acknowledge this and are working from within Islam to fix the problem. We believe it’s our duty. The Quran tells us, “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves.” That’s chapter 13, verse 11. I like to think of it as a 13/11 kind of solution to a 9/11 kind of problem.

* Fear stops many reform-minded Muslims from coming forward.  If you want to know what gives rise to that fear, it’s one word: “honor.”

Honor is the cultural custom that requires Muslims to suppress our individuality in order to become property of the community. Which means your life isn’t your own; it belongs to a wider group of people — the family, the tribe, sometimes even the ummah (global Muslim nation).

In turn, that means when a Muslim is accused of dishonoring or shaming by breaking moral norms, the punishment against him or her must be large enough to compensate the family too.

* Tribal honor is so powerful that it afflicts young Muslim-Americans as much as it does the Islamic world. In 2007, PBS sent me and my mother to Detroit for a screening of “Faith Without Fear.” I was roundly pilloried during the Q & A.

As the night wore on, my mom noticed young Muslims gathering in a corner of the room. At the end of the evening, the now-numerous group approached my mom to say, “Thanks for supporting your daughter.”

Mom replied, “That’s nice to hear, but why didn’t you speak up before the reporters left, so that others who think like you would know they’re not alone?”

The kids glanced sheepishly at each other. Then one of them confided a sad truth. “You guys can walk away from Detroit two hours from now,” he whispered, looking at me and mom. “We can’t. And we can’t afford to be accused of dishonoring our families.” This, from a child of the First Amendment.

* Muslim students give me similar explanations when I lecture at American and European universities.  These institutions of higher learning are supposed to be citadels of questioning. Yet reform-minded Muslims often cower in fear at the intimidation and outright warnings from members of their school MSA’s (Muslim Students’ Associations). During my book tour a few years back, I learned of a particularly threatening email circulated by a Muslim student group at a major U.S. university.

SO WHAT CAN BE DONE?

* Muslims have to challenge the culture of honor within our own communities. This tribal custom comes right out of the desert, which doesn’t reflect the reality of a pluralistic and connected generation.  To boot, the culture of honor pre-dates Islam. Why should contemporary Muslims feel trapped and strapped by a non-Islamic, even un-Islamic, mentality?

* Non-Muslims should invest in reform-minded Muslims. Consider how the European Foundation for Democracy (EFD) is going about it. The EFD is bringing together Muslim reformers who would otherwise operate in isolation. Besides creating a network for them, the EFD is giving them access to legislators, policy-makers and journalists so that Muslim reformists can finally be heard.  In effect, they’re creating a counter-jihad of ideas.

It remains to seen what will happen to 5-year-old Habib, whose name, in Arabic, means “beloved.” Whatever becomes of him becomes of us. All of us.

Martyr in the making? Habib, as shown in “Faith Without Fear” (National Film Board of Canada/90th Parallel Productions)

Ten (new) commandments for 2010

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Jan 01, 2010

Controversial display of Ten Commandments outside the Texas State Capitol Building (courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)

Hello, Moses and Jesus? Hope y’all threw a great New Year’s Eve party in heaven Thursday night.

May I take just a minute of your eternal lives?  I’m a professor of leadership at New York University’s school of public service. In summer 2009, my program, the Moral Courage Project, launched a blogging campaign to stop the stoning of women.

One of the bloggers was Dana Gallagher. Something she posted about the sanctity of human rights caught my eye. I asked her to expand on it and, upon learning that she’s a Christian, I suggested she turn her initial post into an updated version of the Ten Commandments.

To sweeten the incentive, I promised Dana that I’d feature the new commandments on my website and bring them to my Facebook community for lively debate. Honestly, Prophets, I didn’t think she’d take me up on it. But whaddya know?

Be assured that Dana approaches this experiment with respectable values. She grew up in the American Midwest and graduated magna cum laude from Marymount Manhattan College.

Before we dive into her updated commandments, Dana wants you — and my readers –  to understand where she’s coming from. Here she is, in her own words:

I am a young Christian. I’ve been baptized, raised, and confirmed in the same church, and my experiences there have been among the most formative of my life.

Yet, as it is for so many people, my relationship with organized religion is complicated. The higher power that my soul recognizes and the one presented from the pulpit can be difficult to reconcile.

Over time I’ve learned not to fight the distance between them, but simply to let my faith guide me. And it’s my faith that inspires, even requires, me to re-think the Ten Commandments.

According to the Bible, God wrote the Ten Commandments twice. Moses got so fed up with his environment and the people around him that he broke the first set of tablets, and God had to make him some new ones.

With the challenges that we’ve faced in 2009, the first week of 2010 seems a good time to engage in some tablet-breaking of our own. But instead of destroying, let’s be constructive.  Let’s update God’s guidelines for the coming decade – or longer.

What if the commandments appealed to the best in us and what each of us is capable of, rather than assuming that the only thing keeping us from being lecherous, murderous, backstabbing thieves is endless guilt and the threat of hell?

With that in mind, welcome to my list of 10 for 2010:

I: Love yourself unconditionally. Christ asks us to “love thy neighbor as yourself.” Notice the pre-condition here: to embrace others, you must first make peace with who you are. So much of the hatred we direct towards others is spillover from the disdain we feel for ourselves. Love your whole, perfectly imperfect self.

And when you mess up, recognize that this is a part of the human journey. Feeling remorse is more than natural. It’s your spirit saying that your higher self believes you can do better. You can’t experience redemption if you don’t make mistakes. Forgive yourself, but equally important, pledge to do better. It’s the only way forward.

II: Love others unconditionally. Unconditional love is hard to contain, and if you’re able to cultivate it in yourself it’s likely to extend to the people around you. At the same time, it can be all too easy to shrink into ourselves until our hearts and minds narrow down to a lonely world of one.

Make a conscious effort to recognize the beautiful and, yes,  complicated individuals with whom you share this life. For better or worse, we really are in this together.

III: Don’t confuse loving with shoving. If your particular form of love comes with a big, leather-bound set of beliefs, kindly refrain from smacking innocent bystanders over the head with it. Pushing your beliefs on others isn’t faith; it’s insecurity.

IV: Corruption happens. The Bible has undergone many translations and revisions, often made by people whose intentions were not the purest.

No matter what any Sunday sermon or production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” would have you believe, Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. None of the Gospels refers to her as such, and her bad reputation can be traced to a speech given by Pope Gregory the Great in 591 AD. The Vatican finally issued a quiet retraction in 1969; so quiet that many Christians simply never heard it.

With so much of Christianity being based on the Word, it’s worth taking a closer look and finding out what the Word actually says. There are lots of good books on the subject — Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman, Junia: The First Woman Apostle, by Eldon Jay Epp and the soon to be released And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, by Joel M. Hoffman, PhD, to name just a few.

V: Keep your laws on your own naughty bits.  It’s strange to obsess over someone else’s sexual behavior, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Everyone is not, however, entitled to force those opinions on other people (see III).

Tend to your own naughty bits, please. Just as self-hatred often manifests as hatred of others, sexual repression often rears its ugly head as judgment and punishment of the sexual behavior of others. Show your body some love and maybe it won’t be so concerned about what everyone else is doing with theirs.

VI: Challenge the “bros before hoes” approach to religion. There is just no good reason to insist that women hold a “separate but equal” role in the church. As we all learned during South Africa’s apartheid years, “separate but equal” is a euphemism for subservience.

As with white supremacy, so with male superiority: most of the Christian arguments for it rely on sketchy Biblical quotes (see IV).  The rest can be boiled down to the schoolyard logic of “girls are stupid.” It’s 2010, and it’s time to grow up already.

VII: Be not afraid of scientists. I refer here to actual research-conducting, fact-checking, history-acknowledging scientists, not to dogmatists who jettison or distort any information that doesn’t align with their worldview.

Real scientists do the life affirming work of finding ways to repair the damage we’ve inflicted on the planet, advancing medicine and shedding light on our place within the universe. Yet they’re often subject to suspicion, oppression and hostility by members of the Christian community.

It’s time to make amends. Doing so does not make you an atheist any more than attending Sunday services strips a scientist of her passion for discovery.

VIII: Polar bears are God’s creatures, too. Just because there were only two polar bears on the Ark doesn’t mean there are only supposed to be two on the planet. We all have a responsibility to take care of the Earth and the life that goes with it. Let’s keep working to leave it in better shape than we found it.

IX: Keep your candle lit. Hope fuels our faith when it looks as though there isn’t any love, unconditional or otherwise, to be had. Each of us has a unique light to offer the world. Why else would our Creator have bothered to bring us into it?

X: Know when to be humble. So we don’t have it all figured out. So what? The wonderful thing about being one small part of a much bigger, much greater piece of work is that we don’t need to have all the answers. That’s the Almighty’s role. Our role might very well be to stop and listen after we’ve made nine brazenly big points.

What are yours? 

*****

Click here to join our Facebook community and engage directly with Irshad and Dana. Or email us your ideas: comments@irshadmanji.com.  However you decide to communicate with us, remember: every orthodoxy began as a heresy…

“Ten Commandments,” as rendered by Lucas Cranach the Elder and displayed in the townhall of Wittenberg, Germany (courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)

Moral Courage Project named Visionary of the Year

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road, Announcements on Dec 04, 2009

With Emmy-winning Iranian actress Shohreh Agdashloo

“Hola!” from Los Angeles, where I’m accepting the 2009 Visionary Award bestowed by the Women’s International Film and Television Showcase.

This award recognizes the human rights campaign that the Moral Courage Project led over the summer. Inspired by the independent film, “The Stoning of Soraya M,” we used the movie and my thousands-strong Facebook community to galvanize people worldwide against the tribal practice of stoning in countries like Iran, Somolia, Afghanistan and Sudan.

According to Iranian actress Shohreh Agdashloo, who stars in “The Stoning,” international pressure has paid off: A few weeks after the film came out and our campaign gained steam, Iranian authorities announced that stoning would no longer be part of Iran’s penal code. Whether the new regulation gets enforced — particularly in rural Iran — is another matter altogether.

Still, we can all take strength that global campaigns work when back-channel diplomacy doesn’t. Just ask Maziar Bahari. He’s the Newsweek journalist unjustly jailed by Iranian authorities.  After 118 days in the notoriously nasty Evin Prison, Bahari was sprung. Last week, he told interviewer Charlie Rose that an international and very public effort by his wife and fellow journalists made all the difference.

In my next book, I’ll offer more examples of people in the West allying with people in the East and triumphing for the eminently universal cause of human rights.

For now, here’s my message: Don’t be silenced by the woe-is-us crowd who insist that we’re merely pawns of The Man.  They don’t know world history or individual agency.  Most tragic, they also don’t know what it means to leave a legacy.  If you want to leave a legacy, then exercise your personal leadership for a greater good.

You can start by joining my Facebook community.  Facebookers form the vanguard of the Moral Courage Project. They’re the ones who propelled the summer 2009 campaign against stoning. They’re the ones who made it viral. They deserve the Visionary Award that brings me to Los Angeles.

I accept it on behalf of them.

If Sarah Palin can have a ghost-writer, dang it…

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Nov 26, 2009

With this post, I’m inaugurating a unique feature on my blog. I call it, “Notes From My Next Book.”

My next book will be a leadership guide for a new generation of progressives. By “progressives,” I don’t mean left-wingers or right-wingers. I mean those of us — those hundreds of millions of us worldwide — who believe that progress comes from the moral courage to be honest about all that we are, since that’s when we replace lying with living.

Building on the success of The Trouble with Islam Today, I’ll show that the mission of reform-minded Muslims contains leadership lessons for anybody who hungers to make positive change inside his or her community.

* Are you desperate to marry the love of your life, who’s not from your faith tradition, but who deserves a chance from your ultra-traditional parents?

* Are you a Christian who’s sick of the prosperity preachers reducing faith to net worth, and wants to do more than complain about it?

* Are you an atheist who’s disgusted by the intolerant scientific supremacy of Richard Dawkins and his ilk, and is equally disgusted by your continued silence about his missionary atheism?

* Are you a Jew busting to call out the hypocrites who coo about Israel’s democracy but won’t let secular Jewish women in Israel get proper divorces?

* Are you an African-American girl who craves to shout from the mountaintop, “Why is it that when a white man calls me a nappy-headed ho, he’s racist but when my Black brothers pull the same shit, they’re entertainers?!”

* Are you a money manager interested in learning how to convince Wall Street that free-market fundamentalism only corrupts the capitalist project?

* Are you a reporter troubled by your boss’s refusal to hold certain ethnic, cultural, or religious leaders accountable in order to avoid offending and losing ad dollars?

* Are you a European (or Aussie, or Kiwi, or Canuck, or Yank) whose conscience screams when you hear about the latest stoning in Somalia yet screams even louder when you’re told that “it’s none of our business because we’ve done enough harm to Third World people”?

* Are you a closeted Muslim reformer dying to emerge from the shadow of fear so you can finally speak your truth and be one with Allah?

Then my next book is for you. All of you.

Non-conformity invites backlash from dogmatists in every conceivable camp: liberal, conservative, religious, atheist, queer, homophobic, socialist, capitalist, feminist, misogynist, nationalist, multi-culturalist, you name it. After all, purity disdains honesty.

Tough. My motto: “I don’t mind being a pariah. I do mind being a liah.” (Imagine delivering this with a New York — excuse me, a New Yawk — accent.)

In the same spirit, my next book will demolish the profound dishonesty driving today’s geo-politics, international relations and cultural debates.  Among other things, I’ll reveal:

* What inter-faith marriage can mean both for personal happiness and for social policy. 

* Why Muslim moderates are part of the problem, while reform-minded Muslims are part of the solution.  I’ll also explain why Martin Luther King would have agreed that moderation is an extreme cop-out in times of moral crisis.

* Who inspired Gandhi’s approach to non-violent resistance, and how these inspirations prove that your identity is not nearly as important as your integrity.

*  Where the Statue of Liberty was really born. (Hint: It’s neither America nor France.)

* How we can be pluralists — people who appreciate multiple perspectives — without becoming relativists — people who fall for anything because they stand for nothing.

I could go on and on about the myths, mysteries and misunderstandings that the next book will tackle, and that’s why I’m launching “Notes From My Next Book.” This new feature will bring you into my writing process.  What big ideas am I grappling with?  Why do they matter to our world — and to your life? How can you use this information to live with greater purpose every day?

As an author, I know that whenever I sit down to write, I embark on a winding, even tumultuous, journey. That’s if I’m being honest with myself.  Now, you get to be part of that adventure. With “Notes from my next book,” you’re invited for the ride.

More than “riding” with me, though, you’ll be writing with me: I want you to comment on the ideas that I’m posting. If your comments strike a nerve with me, I’ll use them to refine my drafts.  Usually, too, I’ll post these ideas on my Facebook fan page. There, you can discuss them with fellow Facebookers, helping me clarify my thoughts that much more. If Sarah Palin can have a ghost-writer, dang it, why can’t I get a little help from my friends?

You never know — your comments could produce the final title of my book.  I’ve got a working title, but you’re bound to come up with a better one. In fact, I hope you do.

This could be fun. At the very least, it’ll be a fascinating experiment, pushing the parameters of social networking.  So please return to this site every few days for a new post under the banner, “Notes From My Next Book.”

The End.  For now.

Islam’s reformers are such punks

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Oct 18, 2009

Now in theaters…

This weekend, an intriguing documentary opened on the big screen in Toronto — and it takes the movement for Muslim reform another step forward.

“Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam” is based on the book by Michael Muhammad Knight and directed by the award-winning Omar Majeed, who happens serve on the board of my charitable foundation, Project Ijtihad.

Rock on, I say.

Because, at rock bottom, Islamic punk is about more than smashing guitars and stereotypes; it’s about internal spiritual reform. Reading a recent New York Times story about the Islamic punk scene, here’s the quote that leaps out at me:

“‘As Muslims, we’re not being honest if we criticize the United States without first criticizing ourselves,’ said Mr. Kamel, 23, who grew up in a Syrian family in Chicago. He is lead singer of the band al-Thawra, ‘the Revolution’ in Arabic.”

Am I allowed to blurt, “Rock on!” twice in one blog entry? Wait. It’s my blog, dammit. I’ll do what befits my character — as long as it respects the dignity of my fellow human beings. And I won’t let anyone tell me I’m less Muslim for insisting on everyone’s freedom of expression. That’s the message of Islamic punk.

Check out this video trailer. You’ll love what you see. But what you’ll hear is at least as compelling — and I don’t just mean lyrics or drum beats. I mean the words spoken by Michael Mohammad Knight, author of The Taqwacores. His poignant narration lends the video a philosophical edge:

“I stopped trying to define punk at around the same time I stopped trying to define Islam. They aren’t so far removed, if you think that both began in tremendous bursts of truth and vitality, and seem to have lost something along the way…”

I saw a previous version of the trailer, too.  In it, Knight added that both Islam and punk music “have suffered from sell-outs and hypocrites, but also from true believers whose devotion has crippled their creative drive. Both are viewed by outsiders as unified, cohesive communities when nothing could be further from the truth…

But the most important similarity is that, like punk, Islam itself is a flag; an open symbol representing not things, but ideas. You can’t hold punk or Islam in your hands. So what could they mean besides what you want them to?”

Which brings me to a related point.  Last year, I had dinner with Melvin Van Peebles, the director who revolutionized American pop culture with a low-budget, indie flick entitled Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. His film inaugurated the “Blaxploitation” genre, putting young African-Americans on notice that culture was theirs for the shaping.

With Baadasssss director Melvin Van Peebles (Photo: Lem Lopez)

Melvin’s advice to this generation: Whatchoo waitin’ foh? Whatevuh you got to do, sheeet, go do it!  He did, and the intersection of art and politics has never been the same. Just ask President Barack Obama.

Thanks in part to Islamic punk, Muslim reformers are doing what need to get done. Because sometimes, sweet badasses, you have to slam-dance your way to freedom.

Learn more about the documentary — and where you can catch it — right here.

An underground railroad out of Iran

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Sep 27, 2009

 Arsham Parsi, champion of moral courage

With Iran back in the news, this is the perfect time to tell you about a compelling post that’s featured on the Moral Courage Project’s website — a post bound to inspire hope, thanks to an unlikely hero.

Entitled “Moral courage champion fights for gay Iranians,” this blog entry profiles a young Iranian-Canadian named Arsham Parsi.  He’s risking his neck to run an underground railroad of sorts, helping other gay and lesbian Iranians flee their country’s oppressive regime. Consider it a 21st-century version of the underground railroad set up for American slaves so they could escape to freedom.

By the way, the blog is one of many features on the newly designed site of the Moral Courage Project. You’ll discover oodles of video — including moments from my own class, with one student complaining that he develops a headache after each moral dilemma posed.  (”No Tylenol allowed!” I warn him. Yep, you don’t want me as your prof.)

You’ll also find the curriculum of my course, Public Leadership and Moral Courage, so you can read the assigned texts on your own.

Above all, you’ll have opportunities to engage in meaningful conversation with me and many other advocates of moral courage.

Here’s just a sample of the discussion already generated:

“I was quite moved when reading about Mr. Parsi’s plight… Gay or not, I think every person can learn not only from his courage, but also from his perseverance… What I’m curious about is whether Mr. Parsi has expanded his underground railroad for aiding non-gays as well. I mention this because Iran is in dire condition. It’s difficult, especially for men, to seek refuge. As a first generation Iranian-American, I know this from the men in my family who still live in Iran.” — Shahrin

“Hi Shahrin – Irshad Manji here. In suggesting that Arsham Parsi could be helping heterosexual Iranians too, you raise a question for me: What do you say to those who argue that ‘Western’ Iranians like Arsham and you have no business aiding ‘authentic’ Iranians?”

“When a regime threatens basic human rights, it is a threat to the entire global community, regardless of nationality, religion, etc. Therefore, it is not my business to ally with indifference, ignorance, or denial. As Elie Wiesel once stated, ‘Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.’” – Shahrin

“There is a temptation to ask why strong people like Arsham don’t do more. However, the point of these posts is to demonstrate the power that we each have to make a difference. My hope is that this blog will encourage readers to see how they, themselves, can do the things we look to others for; how we can live moral courage.” — Janice (campaign manager for the Moral Courage Project)

“Re: being ‘authentic’ versus ‘Western.’  It doesn’t matter what kind of person you identify as. We are all interlinked.  When a gay man suffers, the ability to love freely suffers. When an Iranian is told he is not authentic, the freedom to determine one’s sense of self suffers. Women’s rights affect men’s rights affect disabled rights affect LGBT rights affect immigrant rights…

I was shocked to hear someone connect disability with environmental affairs, but 50% of children suffering malnutrition go blind! The more we learn how interlinked everything is, how we are not just labels given to us, but individuals with desires and needs, then may we find an end to prejudice.” – Tom

“I want to comment on Shahrin’s point about the need for humanitarian intervention overseas. This afternoon, as part of researching my next book, I’ve been reading Defying Hitler: A Memoir, written by Sebastian Haffner and published in 1933. Let me share a relevant excerpt from the introduction:

This is the story of a duel. It is a duel between two very unequal adversaries: an exceedingly powerful, formidable, and ruthless state and an insignificant, unknown private individual…

Throughout, the individual finds himself very much on the defensive.  He only wishes to preserve what he consider his integrity, his private life, and his personal honor. These are under constant attack by the government of the country he lives in, and by the most brutal, but also often clumsy, means…

The state is the German Reich and I am the individual…

One might well consider my case as typical. From  it, you can easily judge the chances for mankind in Germany today. You will see that they are pretty slim. They need not have been quite so hopeless if the outside world had intervened.

It is still in the world’s interest, I believe, for these chances to be improved. It is too late to avoid a war, but it might shorten the war by a year or two. Those Germans of goodwill who are fighting to defend their private peace and their private liberty are fighting, without knowing it, for the peace and liberty of the whole world.

Haffner’s words give me goosebumps, frankly. And they heartily attest to Shahrin’s point. Problem is, these days humanitarian intervention immediately invites accusations like, “you’re a neo-con.”

I couldn’t care less about the smears thrown at me — being used it by now — but I know that the fear of being tarred this way prevents plenty of good-hearted, open-minded people from expressing themselves. Anybody have ideas for how to combat that fear? This is the essence of moral courage…” – Irshad

“I think the fear can be combated by understanding the purpose of that type of rhetoric.  It is not innocent language but actually part of a discourse intended to keep people from engaging. It loses some of its power when recognized as such. At core, find what is worth the risk to you and make your acts of moral courage to be conscious choices that you willingly accept the fallout from — with ‘informed consent.’ I don’t think the fear ever fully goes away, but you can find causes that are more compelling than fear, and that is empowering.” – Amanda

“Fearing backlash or consequences from offending people does indeed appear ‘innocent,’ when really, it is a comfortable and convenient state for people to be in. Fear separates us from humanity…” – Karys

“Amanda, your answer to my question almost perfectly echoes the statement that graces the top of my personal website: ‘Courage is not the absence of fear; courage is the recognition that some things are more important than fear.’” – Irshad

Get the picture, folks?

But it’s not all warm and fuzzy. In fact, right now, a vocal debate is percolating about the hijab: Can wearing it really be an act of free will?  Boy, oh, boy. Oy, oh, oy.

I invite you to join our conversations on moralcourage.com. And if you’re motivated to become a regular blogger for the new site, let me know.  It’s a great way to develop your own platform without having to maintain a full blog. You also get to be part of a focused and passionate community.

Eager to see your comments posted on the new site. Meanwhile, follow us on Twitter.

Where you can find me this summer

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Jul 13, 2009

Ah, the joys of writing! (Photos: Terkel Borg)

Dear all: This summer I’m taking a break from my blog to begin writing my next book. You can still engage with me on my Facebook fan page and Twitter feed, where I’ll be discussing my ideas for the book even as I write it.

Engaging students at New York University

I’ll also be responding to posts on moralcourage.com, where my New York University students and I are conducting a summer-long human rights campaign revolving around a brilliant film.  It’s called The Stoning of Soraya M.  The movie is now playing at these US theaters.

In Canada, the film opens on July 17 at these theaters.

If you’re overseas, or you can’t get to a theater to watch The Stoning of Soraya M., then here’s the official trailer as well as extra clips that you can view for free.

Please join our discussion on moralcourage.com. Guest bloggers are updating content all the time. Your replies to the posts will help me clarify ideas that I’ll be writing about in my next book.

So, you have three ways to stay in touch: Facebook, Twitter, and moralcourage.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Happy summer and wish me luck in meeting my deadlines for the first few chapters!

Yours,

See the movie, spread the movement

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Jul 08, 2009

(Courtesy: Mpower Pictures)

My latest newsletter focuses on a compelling new film called “The Stoning of Soraya M.” It recently opened in select theaters throughout the United States and will come to Canada on July 17. Distribution to the Middle East is also planned.

You can read more details about the movie — and the movement — in my newsletter.

Please spread the word about Soraya. Simply email your friends this link: http://www.irshadmanji.com/newsletter

Thanks for your support. It means the world. Because at the end of the day, it’s about the world.

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