 |
|
|
|
 | |||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
• Cars • Jobs • Travel • Education • Photos • Tickets • Real
Estate • Franchises • Business
Opportunities • More
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
By Yasmine Bahrani, USA TODAY
Irshad Manji certainly has spirit. A Canadian TV talk-show host who grew up in a Muslim family, she wants to change Islam. Among the complaints she mentions in The Trouble With Islam are the subjugation of women, the bashing of Jews and the enslavement of Christians, problems that have been bothering Manji since childhood. Why, she long ago asked her religious teacher, can't girls lead prayer? Because, he answered, "Allah says so."
The book, first published in January, is now in its fourth printing, and Manji is in the midst of a national lecture tour expected to continue through the spring and summer. Most of her appearances have been standing room only. In many ways, Manji's book is a grown-up version of her childhood complaints. Her blunt call for modernization shows courage but in some ways could be an impediment in achieving it. Her views: • "First and foremost, being self-critical means coming clean about the nasty side of Islam, and how it informs terrorism." • In other religions the faithful read and interpret their holy books without harm. However, if Muslims follow the hadiths (the sayings of the Prophet) without doubting them, they are heading "to a destination called Brain-Dead." • Any problems in contemporary Islam are not the result of particular interpreters, clerics, or schools of thought; they emerge from Islam itself. Yet there are Muslims who are sympathetic to modernist reform and who also embrace and respect their faith. They are likely to be put off by Manji's sweeping condemnations. After all, modernist and rationalist schools also are part of Islam's history.
What separates Manji from other modernists is her attitude. "Yes, I'm blunt," Manji writes. "You're just going to have to get used to it." But her tone makes her sound like she's still arguing with her inflexible old madrassa teacher. For example, she writes that following the religion's practices without questioning them "is enough to turn the brightest bulbs into dimwits, and dangerous ones at that." Many Muslims want the changes she calls for, especially an end to the obsession with fantasies of Jewish conspiracies. Similarly, there are many Muslims who have seen their gay friends experience rejection and want that to stop. Manji is an outspoken lesbian who talks openly of her relationship with her Jewish partner. She writes with abundant admiration for Israel, partly for hosting the Middle East's only annual Gay Pride Parade. It's not always clear whom Manji is addressing. The book often sounds as if it's directed less at fellow Muslims than it is at non-Muslim Westerners. But Islamic reform must obviously come from within — from the very readership, in fact, that is likely to be put off by Manji's attitude and tone. At a recent appearance in Washington, D.C., Manji gave Muslims "permission to think." Given such an approach, what many Muslims are likely to think is that they can find a more useful way to reform elsewhere. "You may wonder who I am to talk to you this way. I am a Muslim Refusenik. That doesn't mean I refuse to be a Muslim; it simply means I refuse to join an army of automatons in the name of Allah. I take this phrase from the original refuseniks — Soviet Jews who championed religious and personal freedom. Their communist masters refused to let them emigrate to Israel. For their attempts to leave the Soviet Union, many refuseniks paid with hard labor and, sometimes, with their lives. Over time, though, their persistent refusal to comply with the mechanisms of mind control and soullessness helped end a totalitarian system." |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
