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Home News Tribune Online 04/21/07

NEW BRUNSWICK — Author Irshad Manji's proclivity to speak up and ask questions has landed her in hot water throughout her life.

When she was 9, the Ugandan-born Muslim dared to tell her father not to lay a finger on her mother. He chased her around their home, threatening to cut her ear off.

At 14, the madressa, or Islamic religious school, she attended on Saturdays while growing up in Canada booted her when they tired of her constant questioning of her Muslim teachers. And three years ago, after the 39-year-old's first book, "The Trouble With Islam Today," went to print, it was the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world who took issue with Manji.

She receives scathing e-mails and death threats on an almost daily basis. Still, she speaks her mind and poses tough questions to her fellow Muslims.

On Thursday evening, Manji engaged an audience eager to hear her views at the Home News Tribune-sponsored Smart Talk Women's Lecture Series at the State Theatre.

"She was brilliant and enlightening," said Edison resident Joyce Andreola. But fellow Edison resident Vered Helfgott came away with mixed feelings after Manji's 50-minute speech and 30-minute question-and-answer session.

"It was positive and sad," said Helfgott, who said she is well-versed in the teachings of the Quran. "It's great that she's not shy and came forward to express her views toward terrorism, but it's just a drop in a bucket. Why can't other Muslims who grew up in liberal countries, like Canada or the United States, speak out? Why is there such a silence?"

Manji, a self-described Muslim "dissident," said she has deep faith in her religion. It's those that "exploit the Quran to justify abuses" that make her scratch her head and ask questions. Manji said she wrote her best-seller to "shake up the status quo" and to ask her Muslim brothers and sisters to take responsibility and speak up.

Her new documentary, which premiered on PBS on Thursday night, "Faith Without Fear," continues where her book left off, as she ventures to the Arabian Peninsula asking much of the same questions.

"More and more Muslim women are quietly approaching me to ask where I found the audacity to speak up," the petite and energetic Manji said while on stage. "I tell them, "Courage is not the absence of fear — it's OK to feel fear. Courage is the recognition that some things are more important than fear.' "

Manji's message is getting out there. The book has been published internationally, including in Pakistan, Turkey, India and Lebanon. And in those countries that have banned the book, which Manji describes as an "open letter to concerned citizens of the world - Muslim or not," free versions on PDF files are available on her Web site in Arabic, Urdu and Persian. The free PDF versions came at the request of young Muslims, Manji said.

How Manji came to be such a controversial yet dynamic figure is an enlightening story of self-awareness.

A refugee from Idi Amin's Uganda, Manji and her family fled to Vancouver, Canada in 1972. Irshad attended public schools as well as the Islamic madressa that later expelled her when she asked questions such as "Why can't a woman lead prayer in Islam? You would think we were Catholic or something," Manji joked on Thursday as the packed audience broke out in laughter. "By asking questions I was able to see what my madressa teachers theories were."

Manji further frustrated teachers by asking questions when they taught her "Jews were treacherous.

"I thought, "What if I'm not being educated but instead being indoctrinated?' " Manji said. "Indoctrination - brainwashing - squelches critical thinking."

After she was expelled, Manji spent some 20 years studying Islam on her own at public libraries. She found that the Quran told the story of a female prayer leader in the prophet Muhammad's time, and that the holy book gives women the right to stay single, Manji said.

"The Quran even says that women are the partners, not the property, of men," she said."Thank God for the freedom of information because it saved my faith in Islam and woke up my conscious.

"My integrity told me it was right to ask questions," Manji said.

Manji, who lives in a house with bulletproof windows, said she must inspect the cars she rides in before turning on the ignition.

"They say I'm a sellout," Manji said, "but the real sellouts are those exploiting the Quran to justify the abuses."

On Thursday, an audience member asked her if there were any way to get moderate Muslims to speak up. Manji said moderate Muslims are part of the problem "because they denounce terrorism but deny that religion is the problem."

"It is reformers that acknowledge religion is being used to inspire the violence," Manji said. "They are the ones that need to speak out."

Gina Vergel:

(732) 565-7228

gvergel@thnt.com

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