The death threats against Irshad Manji come with numbing regularity. But just as routinely, she shrugs them off.
The 35-year-old author and self-described “Muslim refusenik” is not afraid, even though her mission — to spark a progressive reform movement in Islam — is fraught with danger.
Her book, “The Trouble with Islam,” is a query into the nature of her faith and its authoritarian stance toward women and non-Muslims, particularly Jews. Part autobiography, part political treatise, Manji’s book is a cri de coeur from a moderate Muslim fed up with what she calls “an arid, sclerotic form of Islam.”
While the book has been met with acclaim in many quarters, in others the response has been less than warm.
The sell-out crowd that turned out to hear her at San Francisco State University recently was very receptive but, Manji notes, as usual most of the Muslims who approached her afterward did so timidly.
“I get much support and love from Muslims,” she says, “especially women and young people. The bad news is that most of them say they cannot go public because they fear persecution — physical harm.”
Born in Uganda and raised in British Columbia, Manji is an ethnic Pakistani who rebelled against what she viewed as repressive strictures early on. At age 8 she began questioning teachers in her madrasah (Islamic school), eventually getting expelled for demanding proof of the so-called “Jewish conspiracy.”
“Doubt is the source of growth,” she says. “But we were taught that because the Koran came after the Torah and the Christian Bible, it is the final manifesto of God’s will. But it’s not like God 3.0.”
She went on to graduate from the University of British Columbia and subsequently launched a career in media, including hosting Canada’s “Queer TV.”
Manji’s lesbianism doesn’t sit well in most Islamic circles, yet she says many young Muslim’s cheer her on. “My sexual orientation is not an issue with young people,” notes Manji. “They say I’m a role model for willling to be honest.”
Honesty comes easily to Manji, whose spiky hair, wiry frame and way-cool Buddy Holly eyeglasses contrast with the image of the veil-shrouded Muslim woman. Yet she considers herself “a faithful Muslim. However, I define myself not by tribal bonds but by values, chiefly pluralism.”
That is why she has reached out to other faiths, especially Jews, for whom she feels great respect and admiration. In her book, she deconstructs some of the pervasive myths in the Muslim world regarding Israel (which she has visited), and she rips venerated Palestinian heroes like the notorious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who advocated genocide against Jews.
“I have no hesitation engaging Jews,” she says. “Pluralism is one of my core values and Jews are lovingly a part of the world.”
Sadly, according to Manji, that opinion is not shared by many within Islam.
“The most common insult I get from Muslims is, ‘You’re a Jew, you’re an agent of the Mossad,'” she says.
Some of her co-religionists consider her a “self-hating Muslim,” but Manji rejects the idea. “The trouble with Islam,” she says, ” is that there has been mainstream complicity and denial in the face of terror.”
Her chief objective is to bring Islam back to its moribund tradition of independent thinking — ijtihad in Arabic — which she describes as a “talmudic process engaging the Koran. It is the right of every Muslim to read the Koran for himself or herself.”
From this, she believes, Islam will “liberate women from the yoke of the veil, open Mecca, end the slave trade,” and, perhaps, end the bloody jihad that has caused so much violence against Jews and others.
Until then, the Toronto-based writer plans to continue speaking out. Her book has been translated into many languages, but she’s most excited about the online Arabic translation, which will be accessible to Arabic speakers worldwide.
“I’m more optimistic today than before,” she says. “I wake up every morning thanking God that I live in a part of the world where I can live out my potential.”
“The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith” by Irshad Manji ($22.95, St. Martin’s Press, 240 pages)