more about irshad

today's sunday times has an article in it entitled "the lipstick Lesbian daring to confront radical imams". it's about - of course - irshad manji, the canadian radical muslima and her book. you can visit irshad's own website at muslim-refusenik.com.

No wonder Irshad Manji has received death threats since appearing on British television: she is a lipstick lesbian, a Muslim and scourge of Islamic leaders, whom she accuses of making excuses about the terror attacks on London. Oh, and she tells ordinary Muslims to “crawl out of their narcissistic shell”. Ouch.

Manji is a glamorous Canadian television presenter whose book, the trouble with islam [today], has made her so famous in America that she won something called the Oprah Winfrey Chutzpah award. Even at a conference in Oxford last week she felt unsafe — despite extra security — with police sifting through “disgusting e-mails” and threats after her appearance on Newsnight.

[snip]

The underlying problem with Islam, observes Manji, is that far from spiritualising Arabia, it has been infected with the reactionary prejudices of the Middle East: “Colonialism is not the preserve of people with pink skin. What about Islamic imperialism? Eighty per cent of Muslims live outside the Arab world yet all Muslims must bow to Mecca.” Fresh thinking, she contends, is suppressed by ignorant imams; you can see why she has been dubbed “Osama’s worst nightmare ”.

“The good news,” she insists, “is it doesn’t have to be like this.” She wants a reformation in Islam, returning it to its clever, fun-loving roots. “The world’s first ‘feminist’ was an 11th-century Muslim man. Baghdad had one of the first universities in the 9th century; the Spanish ‘Olé!’ comes from ‘Allah’; Islam even gave us the guitar.”

while popular, this explanation of the origin of the term olé is questioned by scholars, but there are tons of other examples that are well-known: like alcohol, algebra and many, many other words (some, like adobe, came from ancient egyptian through arabic).

But now it gives us the suicide bomber: why? She does not rule out alienation and all those Muslims-as-victims explanations, but thinks the Muslim Council of Britain is negligent for “not even acknowledging religion might also have played a role”. Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, said terrorists could not be Muslims but Manji hits back: “The jury is out on what Islam is.”

The dispute centres on whether the Koran justifies suicide bombers. Manji argues terrorists can find succour in the holy book: “It says anyone who kills a human being, except as punishment for murder or villainy in the land, shall be regarded as killing all mankind.” The caveat is crucial; Bin Laden invoked it when America imposed sanctions against Saddam, so after the war in Iraq “four young men could decide to punish British taxpayers for re-electing a government that went to war there” — endorsed by the Koran.

[snip]

“In continental Europe people of faith are regarded as second-class citizens. In America Muslims are allowed to earn their status by competing. In Europe, Britain included, your past establishes your identity much more than your future. If you don’t have the lineage here people might well feel disaffected.” She points out that American mosques display signs proclaiming: “God bless America”; inconceivable here.

If we are at fault for not encouraging Muslims, they fail to “celebrate the precious gift” of British freedom: “Why do they protest against France for making it illegal to wear hijabs, but not against Saudi Arabia for making it illegal not to wear them?”; more Muslims, she contends, have been killed in recent years by fellow Muslims than by westerners.

Manji thinks Muslims should take tolerant parts of the Koran and ignore the hellfire. Does this, I ask, include Koranic references to “lewd acts” of homosexuality? She offers counter examples of its tolerance but they seem faintly absurd — should it matter what a bunch of people over a millennium ago made of homosexuality, or indeed anything else? She, not unlike the fundamentalists, picks and chooses the bits that suit her.

[snip]

Britain, she says, has been slow to introduce tests for imams on their mastery of the Koran. She recalls asking Mohamed al-Hindi, political leader of Islamic Jihad, where the Koran glorifies martyrdom; he insisted it was there, but even after looking up books and phoning colleagues, he couldn’t find one reference.

“His translator suggested I better go if I wanted to leave alive,” she recalls. “I asked why he had even given an interview, and the translator said, ‘Oh, he assumed you would be just another dumb westerner’.”

Muslims, adds Manji, must find positive role models rather than jihadists: “Martyrs are the rock stars of the Muslim world, shown on the internet against a background of funky music. They feed on the self-esteem crisis of young Muslims.” That could be addressed by history lessons paying greater tribute to the Muslim contribution to the Renaissance.

She denounces terrorism and the response to terrorism, which is not sufficiently robust. It is no good, she argues, for respectable Muslims to say “violence is not the Islamic ideal” if violence has become Islamic practice. And she attacks the proposed religious hatred laws, saying: “Society needs people who offend, otherwise there will be no progress.”

Indeed. But can Manji and her followers provoke Muslims into progress?

it's an interesting article, well worth the whole read; she's quite well-loathed even in liberal muslim circles, as are essentially mainstream feminist voices like asra nomani. but i think she makes a lot of excellent points. i don't see her, as is repeatedly endlessly on even the most liberal websites, as a tool of the pro-israel establishment; in fact, i think statements like that just make her own case for her!

i'm too braindead now to provide decent exegesis of this article, but i hope at least some of this is interesting.