A Muslim Refusenik

By DIANE RAVITCH
Ms. Ravitch is author of “The Language Police” (Alfred A. Knopf) and several other books.

In the aftermath of September 11, many people wondered out loud “Where are the moderate Muslims?” When would we hear from thoughtful Muslims who were as offended by the poisonous hatred of fundamentalist Islam as the rest of us? Judging from Irshad Manji’s “The Trouble With Islam,” that near-deafening silence now may have ended.

The trouble with “The Trouble With Islam” is that its author is the unlikeliest of moderate Muslims. Irshad Manji is a woman, a Canadian citizen who was born in Uganda, from which her family fled in 1972 when Idi Amin expelled his country’s Asians. More than that, Ms. Manji is a lesbian, a vivacious woman in her 30s who has her own television show in Toronto.

Although Ms. Manji has not yet been burdened with a fatwa for her heretical views, as Salman Rushdie was, she nonetheless has received numerous death threats and must be constantly attended by a security guard. But perhaps only someone as offbeat as Irshad Manji could write as bluntly, honestly, and humorously as she does about deeply ingrained problems in Islam.

A self-declared “Muslim refusenik,” Ms. Manji wrestles throughout the book with her religion. She refuses to give it up. Instead, she wants to persuade her coreligionists that the Koran does not require them to suppress women or to hate Jews. Anyone who claims that it does,she says,is telling “a big, beard-faced lie.”

This is not a wonky policy book. It is a funny, lively account of her personal efforts to grapple with religious leaders who will not, she says, permit their followers to think for themselves. Ms. Manji writes in a tone that is conversational and sometimes irreverent.“Islam is on very thin ice with me,”she confesses in a letter to fellow Muslims. “I’m hanging on by my fingernails,in anxiety over what’s coming next from the selfappointed ambassadors of Allah.”

She recalls her weekly sessions at a madrassa in Canada, where she was rebuked for asking questions about her faith, where she was able to use the library only if a male friend gained permission for her, and where she chafed against the polyester headcovering she was forced to wear and the other restrictions placed on her because she was a female. Every barrier served to increase her spirit of rebellion, not to dampen it. When she was 14, she was expelled from the madrassa for her impudence.

As an adult, Ms. Manji found herself unable to reconcile the ideals of her religion with what she knew was happening in Islamic countries,such as Nigeria, where a woman who had been raped was sentenced to 180 lashes for committing adultery.Or Pakistan,where “an average of two women every day die from ‘honor killings,’ often with Allah’s name on the lips of the murderers.” Or Mali, Mauritania, and Sudan, where slavery still persists. Or Saudi Arabia, where religious police arrest women who wear red on Valentine’s Day.

Ms. Manji insists that the Koran does not sanction these actions. The Koran, she says, is ambiguous and can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The choice to be tolerant and pluralist and openminded is ours. Throughout the book she rages, with wit and candor, against the clerics who have closed the doors of critical thought. Islam, at the height of its greatest glory, encouraged debate, dissent, and independent thinking, she writes. Until that freedom of thought is recovered — until there is a reformation — Islam will continue to be alienated from the modern world.

Ms. Manji believes the Muslim world should not continue to blame its problems on the United States: “The cancer begins with us.” It begins with those nations that school their children in “mullah-mauled schools” that “breed imbeciles.” It continues when their citizens are taught that the answer to every question can be found in the Koran, which can be learned by memory and recitation but not by discussion and debate.

The greatest barrier to the liberation and advancement of people in the Islamic world, Ms. Manji says, is the rule of the mullahs. These men have imposed on Muslims worldwide a narrow and intolerant reading of the Koran. Worse, they have nearly blotted out ijtihad, the Islamic tradition of independent reasoning. That tradition must be revived or the Muslim world will continue to be poor, illiterate, and backward.

Ms. Manji’s message about the values of freedom, pluralism, and intellectual dissent should be heard. Muslim societies must recognize the importance of developing the talents of all their citizens, or they will continue to stagnate (as two consecutive reports from the United Nations Human Development Fund have warned). The United States must aid incipient movements for democracy and human rights in the Muslim world and support those who advance the equality of women, modern education, political freedom, and intellectual freedom.

Ms. Manji believes that Islam can change, but that it can fully participate in the world of ideas only if it can recover its own traditions. Will that happen? We must hope so. It would be a shame if this plea for political and intellectual freedom were not heard everywhere — not only by Ms. Manji’s fellow Muslims but by Christians, Jews, and people of every other faith.

Hers is a youthful Canadian Muslim voice to be appreciatively heard and absorbed.