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Wanted: A Muslim Luther
Netty C. Gross
Muslim moderates who say that their religion was "hijacked" by the al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001, are themselves guilty of a "whitewash," says Irshad Manji. "The problems are much older and deeper," says the Canadian-Muslim TV journalist, whose book "The Trouble with Islam" has just been published in the U.S. The trouble, she asserts provocatively, is that the faith is fundamentally anti-Semitic, anti-female, racist and homophobic, and only a radical change -- spearheaded by liberal Muslims in the West and assisted by non-Muslims -- can alter it.
Manji, a 35-year-old, spike-haired, openly lesbian talk-show host, is convinced the problem goes back to the end of the 10th century, when Islam abandoned its tradition of independent and critical thinking, known as ijtihad ("It has the same root as �jihad,�" both words referring to a struggle). "And a thousand years later, the world is paying the price."
Her book, a 237-page extended essay, she told The Jerusalem Report during a visit to Israel last summer, is an "open letter from me to Muslims and non-Muslims about why my faith desperately needs to come to terms with diversity of ideas, and how non-Muslims must help them." In building a case against the closing of the Islamic mind, Manji delivers a long list of what�s wrong with Islam: its inferior treatment of women, the "continuing scourge" of slavery, the general state of oppression (in most Muslim countries, for example, marital rape is not a crime) and intra-Muslim bloodletting. She also focuses on anti-Semitism and the mixed message given by the Koran about the treatment of Jews. "But I�m being too polite," she writes. "What�s going on in the Islamic world today, and I say this with painful honesty, is actually Jew-bashing. You know, every faith has its fundamentalists but only in Islam is literalism mainstream."
As far as Manji is concerned, she is offering her critique from within. And when we meet, she quickly puts her religious credentials on the table: She believes in God, she observes Muslim fasts, she doesn�t eat pork or consume alcohol, and she reads the Koran. At the same time, however, she asserts subversively that the Koran that she reads is not a divine document. "I know this is a very sensitive point for some Muslims, but the Prophet Muhammad was an illiterate, and the Koran was written by humans, and is so rife with contradictions and ambiguities that it�s self-evident that its teachings are subject to interpretation." But the absence of debate, she says, has allowed "tribal" and "desert" Arab Muslims to dictate the contemporary Islamic theological and cultural agenda, turning all Muslims into "automatons." "Maybe if [9/11 terrorist leader] Mohammed Atta had been raised to question the existence of those 72 virgins, he might have thought twice about killing himself and committing mass murder." She, for one, accepts the thesis advanced recently by one Arabic scholar, the pseudonymous Christoph Luxenberg, who has argued that the word hur, commonly mistranslated as "virgins," really means "white raisins."
"Even ultra-Orthodox Jews," she goes on, "have continuous interpretation. Not us. Muslims believe in one-time revelation and one-time interpretation. So when abuse happens, most Muslims have no idea how to debate, revise, reform -- and this leads to complacency and horror stories." She attacks Muslim liberals and "sadly, progressive feminists" for launching into knee-jerk blaming of Islam�s wider problems on American imperialism and Israel�s treatment of the Palestinians. And who is to blame, she asks defiantly, for forced Egyptian clitorectomies ("call it what it is: torture"), Jordanian honor killings, Sudanese enslavement of non-Muslims and Nigerian lashings of adulterous women (even if the "adultery" consists of their being raped)? "Muslims are unable to be self-critical. It�s just not in the culture and it�s not allowed."
She cites her experience as a well-known, free-speaking TV journalist who has hosted several programs, including one about gay life. She notes, in the book, that even though there�s a worldwide gay Muslim group known as Al-Fatiha, with chapters across the U.S. and Europe, Muslim gays have never called in to her TV programs to propose a tolerant Koranic interpretation of homosexuality, as have Christian and Jewish gays about their own texts. "Even if many Muslims do not share the prejudices of mainstream Muslims, neither do enough of us create conversation with the mainstream." In the end, writes Manji, "the asphyxiation of ideas" leaves the field open to suicide bombers. "The book hopes to shatter this silence."
Some non-Muslim reviewers in Canada, where the book was published in September, have argued that the peculiar format and tone of "The Trouble with Islam," in which a serious subject is broken up by lighthearted, irreverent asides ("if any of this embarrasses my fellow Muslims, get over it"), plus the fact that Manji is not herself especially observant (unlike, for example, French Muslim reformer Tarik Ramadan, who is, among other things, an imam), undercut its potential for religious appeal. Others have wondered whether someone as savvy as Manji believes that anyone in the Muslim world would take Operation Ijtihad seriously, after she spends half her book casting Islam�s problems into sharp relief. Manji acknowledges that she does not have the last word on Koranic knowledge. "The Koran is consistent on three points, which offers us plenty of wiggle room: Only God knows the truth; God alone can punish unbelievers; human beings must warn against corrupt practices, but not more than that. As a result, we are free to explore what true faith is." Nor does she have all the answers. "Let the debate begin," she writes.
It has. But so have the death threats, although Muslim critics insist not only that no one wants to kill her, but that it is Manji herself who is responsible for the media hype. Still, before the book�s publication, her publisher was being advised by Canada�s security services. These days she reportedly has bulletproof windows in her Toronto apartment and private bodyguards.
Irshad Manji waS born in Uganda to a family who migrated there from northern India, today Pakistan. The family lived in a Muslim neighborhood in Fort Portal, 10 minutes from Kampala, where her father owned a Mercedes car dealership together with his brothers. In 1972, in response to Uganda military dictator Idi Amin Dada�s decision to oust his country�s South Asians, Manji�s family received political asylum in Can-ada. There, they settled in Richmond, an ethnically diverse, middle-class suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, which Manji says became the backdrop for her own "personal clash of civilization."
During the week, Irshad attended secular public school, eventually getting elected school president; at home, she steered clear of her father, "a religious hypo-crite" who beat her mother and once chased her around with a knife; and, on Saturdays, clad head to toe in a white polyester chador, she went to religious school. "I could never quite reconcile the tolerant atmosphere in school with the bigoted one at the madrasa," she says.
Nor, she writes in her book, could she understand why East Asian Muslim immigrants to a free Canada would opt for such a repressive atmosphere for their children. The religious school was located on the top floor of a mosque, where women "stood behind a wall. When the men banged for food, women, never to be seen, would serve them through a door." Her teacher explained she couldn�t lead prayers because she was a girl. Asked why that was, he said, "Because it says so," a response which Manji says was his mantra. Nor could he answer her question on how to reconcile the Prophet Muhammad�s message of peace with the Koranic commandment to kill the Jewish tribe.
"The mood at the madrasa," she says, "was very stern and strict. We learned why you can�t laugh or celebrate anything; not to make friends with Christians or Jews; that it was evil to pet a dog. The world was filled with imagined enemies." She also learned that there is a "huge minimization of earthly life and a huge emphasis on the afterlife in Islam." At age 14, she was booted out for her cheekiness. "My mother, who is devout without being conservative, knew better than to ask me to grovel. I love her for that."
It's hard not to like Irshad Manji, who, despite her intensity, is funny and friendly, especially if you are Jewish and feel exhausted by Muslim harangues against Israel. Though it�s unclear what sort of impact her jeremiad will have on Muslims, even liberal Canadian ones, Jews (and perhaps Christians) will undoubtedly relish this philo-Semitic Muslim�s searing critique of Islam.
The book, for separate reasons, will also resonate with modern Orthodox readers, especially women, who, like Manji, often find themselves living in two zones -- the halakhic one, in which hair and shape must be covered, and they cannot act as judges, witnesses or prayer-leaders; and the modern one, where the sky�s the limit. It�s amusing reading Manji�s account of her visit during an earlier trip to Jerusalem to the Haram Al-Sharif (Temple Mount) and the Western Wall. At the former she�s furious with Waqf officials who insist she wear a hijab and girdle (required in Islam, she reports, for women and non-Muslims) during her visit to the shrines; at the latter, she�s full of praise for the lack of demands.
Believe me, I tell her, Orthodox women (in particular, I�m thinking about the Women of the Wall) have their hands full with the religious authorities here. She nods sympathetically. But whatever is wrong with Judaism, she says, at least you respect dissent. In the Talmud, she writes in her book, the text is co-joined with commentary offering differing opinions. "Not with us."
Then Manji sighs, "I have spent the past 20 years educating myself and I am pleased to report there is a progressive side to Islam. But I say this with one huge caveat: in theory. Right now there are so many human-rights violations against women, Jews and non-Muslims being inflicted in the name of God and by so many liberal apologists. To sweep it all under the rug is to absolve ourselves. The lies we tell each other are too big."
The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith/ Irshad Manji, St. Martin's 240pp.; $22.95
January 12, 2004
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