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Your letters - posted September 16, 2005

Posted in Q & A on Sep 16, 2005

Posted September 16, 2005

Dear Friends and foes: One of the Middle East’s most popular news sites, www.alarabiya.net, has conducted the definitive interview with me. I say “definitive” because it covers so much territory. Click here to read the interview in Arabic. Below this box, I’m posting it in the original English. I’m sure many of you will tell me where I’ve gone wrong. Awaiting your enlightenment…

1. You are a Canadian, lesbian, feminist and Muslim at the same time. How is that happening?

Irshad answers: Well, the Prophet himself was a Muslim and a feminist, so I do not think that is such an odd combination. As for my nationality, my mother’s family comes from Egypt and and my father’s from India. I was born in Uganda. How did I wind up in Canada? Uganda’s Idi Amin - a Muslim - expelled thousands of others Muslims from our native land. I take pride in being a refugee. Again, the Prophet himself experienced the joys and pain of migration. I am happy to have landed in a country where, as a Muslim woman, I can dream big dreams and realize most of my potential.

Now to the really controversial part: lesbian. I could have been dishonest and hidden that part of myself. But as a creature of Allah, I decided it is better to pay tribute to God’s wisdom. I acknowledge that the Quran contains passages implying that homosexuality can not be tolerated. It also contains passages implying that Allah knows what He is doing when he designs the world’s breathtaking diversity. In addition to the verse that says, “God makes excellent everything He creates,” there are other verses that say “God creates whom He will” and that nothing God creates is “in vain.” How do my critics reconcile those statements with their utter condemnation of homosexuals?

Notice I am not saying that I am right – I do not know that I am right. The question is: what makes my critics so sure they are right? And in claiming to be right, how do they know they are not usurping God’s jurisdiction as the supreme judge and jury?

There is something else worth pointing out. Those Muslims who insist that one perspective must take precedence over another, if only for the sake of social order, neglect another question: how do we know it is the anti-gay verses that take precedence over all else? Why don’t the pro-diversity verses get that honour?

It seems to me that no matter how you slice it, Muslims who wish to live “by the book” have no choice but to make choices about what to emphasize and what to downplay. Selectiveness is inevitable. I recognize my own selectiveness, but at least I am honest enough to admit it.

And so I select – I choose – to see the bigger point that the Quran makes about diversity: “If God had pleased, he would have made you all one people. But he has done otherwise, that he might try you in what he has given to you.” In my view, what a passage like this shows is not just the virtue of tolerating difference. It shows that pluralism is both divine and deliberate. If that is a far-fetched interpretation, then it is a mistake for which I shall pay on the Day of Judgment.

Meanwhile, I am NOT asking Muslims to accept my sexuality. I do not seek anybody’s approval except for that of my Creator. God made me and only God can unravel me. All I do ask Muslims to accept is that the there is room, even in the Quran, for debate about this and many more issues.

2. In The Trouble with Islam Today, you say that “we’ve got to end Islam’s totalitarianism, particularly the gross human rights violations against women and religious minorities… If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it’s now…” How could this reform come? Do you want it come by foreign hands?

I would prefer that change come from within the Ummah [worlwide Muslim nation]. The Quran tells us that “God changes not what is in a people until they change what is in themselves.” We all know that Muslims must begin taking responsibility for the mistakes we have made. And the fact is, Muslims have made plenty of mistakes. In the last one hundred years alone, more Muslims have been tortured and murdered at the hands of other Muslims than at the hands of any foreign imperial power. That is not to deny Western imperialism. I am pointing out that imperialism comes in many skin colors. Look at what the Arab militias, backed by the government in Sudan, are doing to both Muslims and Christians in Darfur. When we Muslims take ownership of our problems, the people we are first and foremost helping are other Muslims. There is nothing anti-Islamic about that.

In Chapter 7 of my book, I outline a global campaign for positive change in Islam — a change that will revive Islam’s own tradition of critical thinking, or ijtihad. I call this NON-military campaign “Operation Ijtihad.” It consists of two main aspects: first, liberating the entrepreneurial talents of Muslim women through micro-enterprise loans. I speak regularly with people who work with poor Muslim women, and they consistently tell me that these women are ready, able and willing to accept such loans, as well as the social obligations that go with them – such as becoming literate, teaching their own children to read and write, and even starting their own schools. That is actually happening in parts of Kabul today. Women are starting schools where you can read signs that say, “Educate a boy and you educate only that boy. Educate a girl and you educate her entire family.” The thirty-year track record of the micro-lending movement shows that when Muslim women have the resources to start small businesses, not only to do they fulfill for goods and services in their communities, but they can lift the quality of life for villages or neighborhoods.

Why will this help make ijtihad popular? Because when women become literate, they can read the Quran for themselves and identify those verses that mullahs and imams usually do not tell them about. Like the verses that allow women to negotiate their own marriage contracts.

The second aspect of Operation Ijtihad focuses on Muslims in the West. It is in North America and Europe that Muslims are best positioned to restore ijtihad because it is there that Muslims already enjoy the precious freedoms to think, express, challenge and be challenged –- all without fear of state reprisal. Yes, Muslims in the West are often targeted for harassment, profiling and other forms of discrimination. Indeed, I, myself, had that experience during the first Gulf War, when I was unceremoniously marched out of a government building for no stated reason. Still, if we Muslims dare to to engage in debate about the Quran, it is in the West that we need not fear being imprisoned, maimed, raped, tortured or murdered by the government for doing so. What in God’s name are Muslims in the West doing with these precious freedoms?

3. You narrate your story with Mr. Khaki, who told you “believe or get out.” Do you want to say that Islam is so “believe or get out”?

Not at all! When Mr. Khaki said “believe or get out,” what was he ordering me to believe? Lies. Lies about the supposed inferiority of women and about the inherent evil of Jews. These are lies and they should not be perpetrated in the name of Islam. If the choice I was given was to believe in lies or leave the madressa, then there was no contest. For the sake of integrity, I had to leave the madressa.

But as I remind my wonderful mother, just because I left the madressa does not mean I left Allah. After Mr. Khaki expelled me, I had a crucial choice to make: I could have abandoned Islam, as many Muslims quietly do. Or I could have given Islam another chance AND asked Islam to give me another chance. Out of fairness to my faith, I took time over the next twenty years to study Islam on my own.

I am so glad I did, because that is when I learned that Khadija, the Prophet’s beloved first wife, was a self-made merchant and most important advisor to the Prophet. She became a very positive role model for me. I also learned about Aisha, the Prophet’s last wife, who made so many important decisions on the battlefield and behind the scenes that many Muslims silently consider her to be the “real” successor to Prophet Muhammad. I also learned about Rabiya, the Sufi Muslim and ex-slave. According to Islamic tradition, Rabiya was given her choice of suitors. After interviewing the smartest among them, she decided he would remain single — just as the Quran gives her the choice to do! Finally, and maybe most impressively, it was during this time of self-study that I learned that the first European feminist may very well have been a Muslim man. In 12th century Islamic Spain, the philosopher Ibn Rushd told the religious fanatics of his day — mostly Christians — that “women’s ability is not known because they are relegated to the business of procreation, child-rearing and breast-feeding.” He went on to say that “treating woman as if they are a burden to men is one of the reasons for poverty.” Many Muslim countries could use that lesson today!

You see, I would not have learned any of this at my madressa. But I certainly did learn it at the public library. Thank God for freedom of information. The very freedom that Mr. Khaki thought would corrupt me has actually managed to save my faith in Islam! So, Islam is not a believe-or-get out religion. The fact that I remain in the faith is evidence of that.

4. Some will say you wrote a book “in love with the Jews” when you selected the worst story from your teacher when he said “they worship moolah, not Allah.” Why didn’t you mention any good stories?

Mr. Khaki never told us any good stories about Jews. Not once. Yet I knew in my heart that it is not right to promote Jew-hatred in the name of Islam. That is why I questioned him. And that is why he kicked me out. I would humbly suggest it is not my objectivity that needs to be challenged; it is that of the madressa teachers who pump poison into the minds of their pupils.

By the way, I do love the Jews, Christians, even Hindus. As the Quran says: those who believe in one God and the final day “have nothing to fear or regret.” We Muslims cannot keep chanting that “Islam means peace” and remain silent when our so-called educators condition us to hate non-Muslims.

The interview continues here…
http://www.irshadmanji.com/news/alarabiyanet-05-09-14.html#q5