on the road

Heresies, misfits and a film called Fitna

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road on Mar 29, 2008

Wait! Before you send me another link to Geert Wilders’ film, Fitna, let me assure you that I get the hint. You want me to watch it. I now have. And you want me to comment on it. I soon will. Check this space over the coming days for my review.

Meanwhile, I’m in Atlanta, ground zero of America’s civil rights movement. Atlanta could also become a crucible for Islam’s burgeoning reform movement.

This weekend, Muslim misfits are convening here to participate in “A Celebration of Heresy: Critical Thinking for Islamic Reform.” Yep, we proudly deem ourselves heretics — dissidents who work from inside the traditions of Islam. As our conference’s website declares:

Any dissenting idea against the prevailing religious traditions is generally considered heresy. Jesus was accused of heresy by the Jewish high council and handed over to the occupying Romans to be executed. Abraham was thrown into a fiery furnace for heresy, but saved by God. Muhammad, who criticized “the way of their fathers” — slavery, aggression, financial exploitation, racism and xenophobia — was a dangerous heretic according to the tribal courts of Mecca… Heretical ideas have tested the tolerance of a society and in many cases have created the fuel of progress, particularly in the area of religion.

Our conference opened on Friday night. To my ears, the most powerful sentiments came from Fereydoun Taslimi, an Iranian-American who helped created the Noor Foundation. In Arabic, “noor” means “light.”

How fitting for a Muslim misfit. According to Taslimi, “dissent is an act of faith… Discussing abuses of power in Islam does not make Islam inferior to any of the other religions. On the contrary, it shows that we have a level of confidence in our beliefs that allows us to confront these issues squarely and constructively.”

To the inevitable critics, he offered this gem: The Quran tells us that you shall not accept any information unless you verify it for yourself (17:36).

This means relying on lived experience as much as on scholarly theories. Since the conference participants come from around the world — Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Turkey, the Netherlands, Canada, America, Trinidad and India — lived experiences will differ. Therefore, interpretations will too.

That’s as it should be if we’re going to replace intellectual conformity with diversity of thought in the practice of Islam. What binds us all is a rejection of religious violence and a commitment to freedom of expression.

So how would we deal with the film, Fitna? I don’t yet know, but I hope we debate such things over the weekend.

At the conference opening, a Dutch delegate reported that the debut of Wilders’ movie was “a flop.” He promised to share more with us on Saturday. You can follow the conference LIVE.

As for my own take on Fitna? Coming soon.

Read about the morally courageous intellectual who inspired this heresy conference.

The “who the hell are you?” hand grenade

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road on Mar 23, 2008

Packing the hall to discuss Islam and democracy at Syracuse U. (Photo: David Medeiros)

Maybe it was the full house. Or the hot lights. Or my multi-media approach. Then again, it could have been my deliberate use of humor to make difficult conversations less threatening and more engaging for people of varied backgrounds.

Whatever the reason, I recently got scolded at Syracuse University. There, during a sold-out screening of my film, the chair of religion accused me of putting on a “rock star” performance.

Frankly, I took that as a compliment. After all, the topic was “Islam and Democracy: Do They Have a Prayer?” How could I be elitist in communicating the potential to reconcile Islam and democracy? As a faithful Muslim and an observant democrat, wouldn’t I have integrity showing that scholarship should be accessible to ordinary people?

Not to my critic, who complained about never having been invited to appear on CNN. Bingo! In alleging that I’m a “rock star,” she meant to dismiss my credibility. The esteemed professor succeeded in revealing her own snobbery.

Over years of advocating for Muslim reform, I’ve noticed that frustrated academics silence reform-minded Muslims by hurling the “who-the-hell-are-you?” hand grenade. Funny thing is, history abounds with individuals who had no legitimacy in established circles but who pressed forward.

Socrates is a screaming example. His refusal to shrink and slink away ultimately produced a student known as Plato. Not bad for a self-educated lover of questions.

Then there’s Baruch Spinoza, among the greatest modern voices of religious toleration. If we can applaud him for being banished from Holland’s Jewish community by the rabbis, we can be equally impressed that he worked as a grinder of glass.

Closer to our own time, consider Albert Einstein. For years, he toiled as a patent clerk but didn’t let that stop him from publishing some of his scientific masterpieces. Self-appointed arbiters of authority dismissed Einstein at first.

Maybe my favorite example of maverick legitimacy is Rosa Parks, who stayed in her seat on a bus when a white man told her to move back. She didn’t defy him out of naivete; she’d calculated her decision for maximum moral impact. You could call her a tactician extraordinaire.

And who was Rosa, anyway? A seamstress. A tailor’s assistant. By today’s career standards, a veritable nobody. Yet a simple and strategic act of conscience, animated by a love of justice, made her the mother of America’s civil rights movement.

At Rosa’s funeral, another “unqualified” upstart spoke. His name is Barack Obama.

Which brings me back to the struggle of reform-minded Muslims today. I’m by no means the only one who faces the who-the-hell-are-you hand grenade. So does Zia Sardar, a British Muslim, journalist and public intellectual who blogs about the Qur’an from his liberal point of view.

Not long ago, Sardar responded to a fellow Muslim who accused him of lacking the proper tools and thus interpreting the Qur’an for “mere five minutes of fame.” Sardar’s response should be read fully; here’s a taste:

“In the end, the issue of authority comes down to power and territory. For too long, a group of narrow-minded, ill-educated elite have usurped the power to comment on the Qur’an and defended this territory with the rhetoric of fire and brimstone. It is time ordinary Muslims took this power back to where it belongs: with all Muslims, whatever their background, whatever their state of knowledge…

Rather than being told what to think, concerned Muslims everywhere need to get back to the religious duty of actively participating in interpretation — which can only come from lively debate.”

Supposedly inclusive professors can be no less dogmatic than puritan imams in defining the limits of legitimate conversation, let alone debate. As the chair of religion at Syracuse U announced, I’ve undone “decades” of scholarship in a 45-minute appearance!

While thrilled to wield such power, I’d rather use it to ask a question: Who needs conservative mullahs when you’ve got the progressive priests of academe?

But there I go again believing I’m allowed to question. She might wonder what gives me the right to speak. I wonder what gives me the responsibility not to.

View the entire video of my rock star performance.

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!

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?

Download this: Protecting civilians from terror

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road on Nov 12, 2007

Readers of this blog are a bloody demanding lot. If you’re not asking for new translations, you want more podcasts and the video of my latest speech. How’s a girl supposed to meet her deadlines, dammit?

But you know I love you (including the cruelest of my critics, for love drives you crazy) and I’m happy to oblige whenever I can.

Voila, the video of my presentation at a compelling conference entitled “Overcoming Extremism: Protecting Civilians from Terrorist Violence.” Its sponsor, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in DC, invited me to shed light on community responses to religious extremism.

Watch the video and you’ll also see a spirited exchange between me and Dr. Hany El-Banna, head of the international humanitarian group Islamic Relief. He’s a moderate Muslim whereas I’m a reform-minded one. And that makes a world of difference.

Which is also why I engage in a feisty volley of views with a Syrian scholar. He embraces the message of renewing ijtihad, Islam’s tradition of critical thinking. But he says that there’s already an Islamic “consensus” about important issues.

I tell him that until many more Muslims get over the fear of expressing themselves, any “consensus” is illusory because it’s determined by the privileged few who feel safe enough to speak. Call it the consensus of the confident.

The scholar shakes his head. I’m not surprised. He’s of the elite that naturally wants to protect its vice-grip on voice. Sadly, mullahs aren’t the only ones that reform-minded Muslims need to challenge.

Other conference highlights captured on video:

* Aryeh Neier, Executive Director of the Open Society Institute, addresses the failure of moral leadership on the part of civilians and not just political leaders, especially in the midst of genocide.

* Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, brilliantly explains why Americans have to keep human rights at the forefront of their agenda. It’s not just for their own integrity. It’s also because other countries take U.S. indifference as a license to absolve themselves of power abuses.

She tells the story of her recent meeting with Russian premier Vladmir Putin. When she questions his misuse of authority, Mr. Putin says only two words: Guantanamo Bay. The “export value” of a dirty conscience, she concludes, is devastating. That’s a slammin’ point.

On the lighter side, I met a young Sudanese blogger at the conference. Here’s his entry about our encounter. No, he’s not an agent of the Mossad.  I’ve double-checked with my Israeli masters.

Intervening in Afghanistan

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road on Nov 02, 2007

The debate is raging in various NATO countries - especially Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada - about how much longer to leave Western troops in Afghanistan. I’m sure I’ll be asked (or challenged) about the issue tonight, when I appear at a major bookstore in Canada’s capital, Ottawa.

Let me do my many critics a favour by tipping my hand. In a nutshell, here’s why I support humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan:

* Many Afghanis say they need NATO troops. Shall I pretend that the locals suffer from “false consciousness”? That they don’t know their lives the way that I, as a public intellectual, do? Doesn’t such haughtiness only replicate the neo-imperialist approach in which a distant elite lords it over the people on the ground?

* Yes, the mission in Afghanistan is marked as much by combat as by peacekeeping. But isn’t that what a soldier should expect? For the public to go limp when some of our uniformed women and men die (as 72 Canadians already have in Afghanistan) is to live a faithless fiction — and one that the Taliban loves to exploit. Religious fanatics rely on the international community’s rudderlessness. The less we stand for something, the faster we’ll fall for anything.

Soldiers, by and large, are proud to take a stand. Individuals sign up to the army knowing that they might be deployed to dangerous places and come home in coffins. Who exactly is the public fooling by denying this possibility?

* You can be anti-war and pro-intervention at the same time. Don’t take it from me. Take it from Ambassador Swanee Hunt, a noted feminist who teaches at Harvard and co-authored This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace. Read what Ambassador Hunt says in Newsweek’s special issue on “Women and Leadership”:

“When I studied World War II, I always wondered about the policymakers sitting behind their big mahogany desks as Hitler overran Europe.

Then, during the Bosnian war, I was the U.S. ambassador in Vienna. Suddenly, I was behind a big mahogany desk of my own, hearing horrifying reports from embassy personnel who were interviewing the refugees pouring into Austria.

The responsibility was awesome. I couldn’t sleep at night. I wondered if I should resign my position to protest the fact [that] my country was not intervening.

I decided I could do more by working inside than I could by leaving, but it was a terrible, terrible moral dilemma for me. I used every bit of connection I had to try to convince the president to intervene. And when Clinton finally intervened, the war was over very quickly. Meanwhile, 200,000 people died needlessly.”

Now, I realize my critics will pounce on Ambassador Hunt’s words, “the war was over very quickly.” That, they’ll proclaim, is the difference between Afghanistan and the Balkans.

But, in fact, strife in the Balkans is not over. Ambassador Hunt was referring to the genocide, not the reconstruction effort afterwards. Given the reality that peace and stability haven’t yet arrived in Bosnia or its environs, should intervention have been avoided? Is the 200,000 Balkan body count a fair price for sparing Western soldiers the opportunity to do their jobs?

If so, let’s come clean and simply declare Western lives more worthy of protection than the lives of women, children and minorities elsewhere. We owe ourselves — and the world — a modicum of honesty.

Hanson and hope

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road on Oct 28, 2007

 

Irshad, Isaac and Taylor Hanson, and Michelle Douglas

Last week, I blogged about speaking to a stadium full of students, all pumped by their potential to become champions for human rights. Dubbed “Me to We Day,” the event had the unmistakable feel of a rock concert, complete with, well, rockers.

At the after-party, the Tulsa-based band, Hanson, sent an emissary to me and my best friend, Michelle. “They want to meet you,” the emissary breathlessly whispered, chasing us down with a look of concern about why we’re bolting early. (Hey, I’d flown overnight to make the event; sleep dep had set in with attitude.)

Figuring it’ll be a five-minute hello and how y’all doin’, I happily stuck around. Twenty minutes later, the Hanson brothers were still engaging me and Michelle about social justice. Isaac almost foamed at the mouth. A flick of spittle hit my face. I embraced it, a sign that these guys are passionate agents of change.

Note to cynics: If Tulsa can give hope to Toronto, isn’t that a reason to salivate?

Since the event, hope has came in equal measure from students and teachers who attended Me to We. Here’s a sample of their emails to this site:

• No one ever said that “going against the grain” would be easy but you have truly motivated my students to get involved and speak out for those without a voice. - Michelle, 7th grade teacher

• Please continue to challenge common beliefs… It is time for religious reform. Most of the major religions are too archaic in their thinking. - Adam, 14-year-old student

A 14-year-old who knows the word “archaic” and uses it in a sentence: Yet another reason for hope.

If you want to watch the presentation I made, it’s streamed on MTV’s Me to We site. Look for “Me to We: On Demand,” then move your cursor over “19 segments.” A menu will pop up. Scroll down and you’ll find my video in three consecutive segments.

I walked away from the entire experience affirming that real education is about indie thinking. Hanson, an indie band that ditched the constraints of a corporate label, sealed my sentiment. To the entrepreneurs of the school, studio and stage, I submit a final thought: Rock on.

Imagine a stadium full of students…

Posted in On The Road, Announcements on Oct 18, 2007

… and they’re not drunk on anything but their capacity to change the world for good.

Sound like a Christian rock concert or a visit from the Pope? Well, maybe we progressives should learn a thing or two from the religious types.

I’m happy to report that we are learning. On Friday, I and other evangelists for human rights will speak to thousands of Toronto students and teachers about transforming our society. The event is called “Me to We” and you can watch it - LIVE - on MTV online starting at 9 am Eastern time.

The line-up of speakers includes Romeo Dallaire, former head of peacekeeping forces in Rwanda. He repeatedly warned the United Nations about an impending genocide. Under Secretary General Kofi Annan, the UN ignored him. But that didn’t stop Dallaire’s mission of compassion. He’ll be on around 10:30 EST.

With Betty at “Students Effecting Change” conference

As for me, I’ll go on at about 12:50 pm EST. My theme? Tune in and find out! You can grab a hint - but it’s only a hint - by reading the Toronto Star.

By the way, I’m taking a red-eye flight to Toronto so I can arrive at the event on time. The reason I care so deeply is that I’m moved by students like this, who recently wrote to me:

im a 14 year old girl and i find everything you do and have done with your studies amazing. you will be speaking on october 19 at me to we day and i greatly look forward to it. i also have your book the trouble with islam today and im constantly reviewing it. i am serbian croation and bosnian and my backgrounds fight like there is no tomorrow about stupid issues. i love the fact that you are out-spoken. - andrea

She’s a powerhouse of leadership potential. I, for one, will do everything I can so that percolating potential becomes kinetic energy.

Critical thinking: a right (and duty) of all Muslims

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road on Oct 11, 2007

Last night’s sold-out film screening at NYU drew a number of young Muslims who are genuinely struggling with Islam. One girl cried in my arms. Another wrote these words to me:

As a devout (but not extremist) Muslim myself, your documentary Faith Without Fear really touched me deeply. I think that it is important for Muslims who are frustrated/oppressed by extremist Islam to know that it is ok to follow the faith that is within their souls. Muslims need to know that instead of abandoning their faith or Allah, they can and should turn to ijtihad.

“Ijtihad” is Islam’s tradition of critical thinking, debate and dissent. To restore this progressive tradition to the practice of Islam, I and other reform-minded Muslims have launched Project Ijtihad.

Of course, our critics are loud and legion. They insist that ijtihad can only be exercised by “scholars.” In that case, they ought to read a scholarly paper written by Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, Ph.D.  To download the paper, click here, then go to the “Read and Learn” box at the right-hand side of the page.

Dr. Abd-Allah points out that ijtihad is a “duty of the first magnitude” for ordinary Muslims and not just for the elites. Throughout Islamic history, says Dr. Abd-Allah:

“… even the common people were required to perform their own type of ijtihad by striving to discern the competence of individual scholars and selecting the best to follow, a principle emphatically asserted by the majority of Sunni and Shi’i scholars and their schools.”

Today, he suggests, Muslims in North America are well-poised to revive ijtihad on behalf of Muslims everywhere:

“Like our counterparts in Canada, considerable sectors of the American Muslim community, in contrast to many of our co-religionists in the European Union, are highly educated and constitute, per capita, one of the most talented and prosperous Muslim communities in the world. Moreover, American Muslims, at least for the time being, enjoy a relatively favorable socio-political context with extensive freedoms and political enfranchisement. Few Muslims in the world today are in a more advantageous position to comprehend the essence of modernity and post-modernity and to formulate new directions for ijtihad in keeping with the best traditions of Islamic thought and the imperatives of an interconnected pluralistic world.”

I concluded last night’s event with a similar sentiment: We ijtihadists aren’t asking our fellow Muslims to import a foreign tradition or an alien virtue into the faith. We’re reminding Muslims that Islam itself once exhibited a tradition of indie thinking.

What in God’s name are we doing with that tradition now?

Tonight, Faith Without Fear at New York University

Posted in On The Road, Announcements on Oct 10, 2007

Note to New Yorkers: I’d love to see you tonight at NYU’s Cantor Film Center (36 East 8th Street). That’s where I’ll hold a screening and discussion about my PBS documentary Faith Without Fear.

We’ll watch the film from 7-8 pm, followed by my on-stage interview with the Wall Street Journal’s foreign affairs columnist, Bret Stephens. After grilling me, Bret will moderate questions from the audience. I’ll wrap the night by signing books and DVDs.

The event is co-sponsored by NYU’s Center for Global Affairs and the School of Continuing/Professional Studies’ Programs in Writing, Humanities and Arts. Seating is free but limited, so show up by 6:45 pm if you want a good space. Need more information? Here you go.

By the way, I’ll soon be joining NYU to initiate and direct “The Moral Courage Project.” To find out more, sign up to my confidential mailing list through the GET UPDATES box on the right-hand side of this page.

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