Irshad Manji

Irshad Manji
Irshad Manji, 2007
Born	1968 (age 43–44) Uganda
Nationality	Canadian
Notable work(s)	Allah, Liberty and Love, The Trouble with Islam Today, Faith Without Fear
Notable award(s)	Honorary Doctorate, University of Puget Sound, 2008, World Economic Forum "Young Global Leader"
www.irshadmanji.com

Irshad Manji (Arabic: إرشاد مانجي‎ ‘Irshād Mānjī, Gujarati: ઇરશાદ માનજી Irshād Mānji; born 1968) is a Canadian author, journalist and an advocate of "reform and progressive" interpretation of Islam. Manji is director of the Moral Courage Project at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, which aims to teach young leaders to "challenge political correctness, intellectual conformity and self-censorship." She is also founder and president of Project Ijtihad, a charitable organization promoting a "tradition of critical thinking, debate and dissent" in Islam, among a "network of reform-minded Muslims and non-Muslim allies."

Manji is a well-known critic of traditional mainstream Islam and was described by The New York Times as "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare".

Manji’s most recent book, Allah, Liberty and Love was released in June 2011 in the US, Canada and other countries. On Manji's website, the book is described: "Allah, Liberty and Love shows all of us how to reconcile faith and freedom in a world seething with repressive dogmas. Manji’s key teaching is "moral courage," the willingness to speak up when everyone else wants to shut you up. This book is the ultimate guide to becoming a gutsy global citizen."

Manji's previous book, The Trouble with Islam Today (initially published as Trouble with Islam), has been published in more than 30 languages, including Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Malay and Indonesian. She was troubled by how Islam is practised today and by the Arab influence on Islam that took away women's individuality and introduced the concept of women's honour. Manji has produced a PBS documentary, "Faith Without Fear", chronicling her attempt to "reconcile her faith in Allah with her love of freedom". The documentary was nominated for a 2008 Emmy Award. As a journalist, her articles have appeared in many publications, and she has addressed audiences ranging from Amnesty International to the United Nations Press Corps to the Democratic Muslims in Denmark to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. She has appeared on television networks around the world, including Al Jazeera, the CBC, BBC, MSNBC, C-SPAN, CNN, PBS, the Fox News Channel, CBS, and HBO.

Early life and education

Manji was born in Uganda in 1968 to parents of Egyptian and Gujarati descent. Her family moved to Canada when she was four, as a result of Idi Amin's expulsion of Asians. She and her family settled near Vancouver in 1972, and she grew up attending both a secular and an Islamic religious school. Manji excelled in the secular environment but, by her own account, was expelled from her religious school for asking too many questions. For the next twenty years, she studied Islam via public libraries and Arabic tutors. Manji earned an honours degree in the history of ideas from the University of British Columbia. In 1990, she won the Governor General's Medal for top humanities graduate. She is openly lesbian.

Career

Manji worked as a legislative aide in the Canadian parliament, press secretary in the Ontario government, and speechwriter for the leader of the New Democratic Party. At age 24, she became the national affairs editorialist for the Ottawa Citizen and thus the youngest member of an editorial board for any Canadian daily. She was also a columnist for Ottawa's new LGBT newspaper Capital Xtra!.

Manji has since hosted or produced several public affairs programs on television, one of which won the Gemini, Canada’s top broadcasting prize. She participated in a regular segment on TVOntario's Studio 2 in the mid-1990s, representing liberal views in debates with conservative journalist Michael Coren. She later produced and hosted QT: QueerTelevision for the Toronto based Citytv in the late 1990s. Among the program's coverage of local and national LGBT issues, she also produced stories on the lives of gay people in the Muslim world. When she left the show, Manji donated the set's giant Q to the Pride Library at the University of Western Ontario.

In 2002, she became writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto's Hart House, from where she began writing The Trouble with Islam Today. Manji founded Project Ijtihad, an initiative to renew Islam’s own tradition of critical thinking, debate and dissent. From 2005 to 2006, she was a visiting fellow with the International Security Studies program at Yale University. She is currently a senior fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels. In January 2008, Manji joined New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service to spearhead the Moral Courage Project, an initiative to help young people speak truth to power within their own communities.

Manji has received numerous death threats. In a CNN interview, Manji stated that the windows of her apartment are fitted with bullet-proof glass, primarily for the protection of her family.

As a journalist, Manji’s columns appear in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, and the website of Al Arabiya. She writes a regular feature for Canada’s The Globe and Mail newspaper.

"Muslim refusenik"

"Muslim refusenik" is a phrase Manji uses to identify herself as someone who refuses to "join an army of robots in the name of God." "Refusenik" is an English-Russian portmanteau word first used for Russian Jews refused permission to emigrate, and then for Israeli conscientious objectors who refused to do army service on the West Bank.

According to Geneive Abdo, "Muslim Zionist" is a label which Manji "would no doubt accept". In fact, Manji is a Muslim pluralist. In her 2011 book, Allah, Liberty and Love, she writes about the "occupations of both Israeli soldiers and Arab oligarchs," asserting that each occupation needs to be fought nonviolently. In a recent column for Globe and Mail, she applauded young Palestinians who issued the Gaza Youth Manifesto for Change, which calls for freedom and warns that "we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel [and] beaten up by Hamas...There is a revolution growing inside of us..."

The Trouble with Islam Today

Main article: The Trouble with Islam Today

Manji's book The Trouble with Islam Today was published by St. Martin's Press in 2004. It has since been translated into more than 30 languages. Manji offers several translations of the book (namely, those in the Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Malay and Indonesian languages) available for free-of-charge download on her website. To date, the Arabic translation alone has been downloaded more than a quarter of a million times. The book has been met with both praise and scorn from both Muslim and non-Muslim sources. Several reviewers have called the book "courageous" or "long overdue" while others have accused it of disproportionately targeting Muslims or lacking thorough scholarship.

In the book, Manji says that Arabs have made a mistake by denying that Jews have a historical bond with Palestine. Manji writes that the Jews' historical roots stretch back to the land of Israel, and that they have a right to a Jewish state. She further argues that the allegation of apartheid in Israel is deeply misleading, noting that there are in Israel several Arab political parties, that Arab-Muslim legislators have veto powers, and that Arab parties have overturned disqualifications. She also writes that Israel has a free Arab press, that road signs bear Arabic translations, and that Arabs live and study alongside Jews.

Tarek Fatah, a fellow Canadian Muslim who originally criticized The Trouble With Islam, reversed his stance saying that Manji was "right about the systematic racism in the Muslim world" and that "there were many redeeming points in her memoir".

Allah, Liberty and Love

In Allah, Liberty and Love, Irshad Manji invites Muslims and non-Muslims to transcend the fears that stop many from living with integrity: the fear of offending others in a multicultural world as well as the fear of questioning our own communities. Since publishing her international bestseller, The Trouble with Islam Today, Manji reconciles faith with freedom, describing a universal God that loves us enough to give us choices and the capacity to make them.

Among the most visible Muslim reformers of our era, Manji draws on her experience to share stories that are deeply poignant, frequently funny. What prevents young Muslims, even in the West, from expressing their need for religious reinterpretation? What scares non-Muslims about openly supporting liberal voices within Islam? How did we get into the mess of customs, such as honour killings, and how do we change that noxious status quo? How can people ditch dogma while keeping faith?

Awards

Manji was awarded Oprah Winfrey's first annual Chutzpah Award for "audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction." Ms. Magazine named her a "Feminist for the 21st Century," and Immigration Equality gave her its Global Vision Prize. In 2006, The World Economic Forum selected her as a Young Global Leader. She has also been named a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the American Society for Muslim Advancement. In May 2008, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound.

Works

Books

• Risking Utopia: On the edge of a new democracy, 1997, ISBN 1-55054-434-9
• The Trouble With Islam: A Wake-up Call For Honesty and Change First edition, Random House Canada - Sept 16, 2003 ISBN-10 0-679-31250-1
• The Trouble with Islam Today, 2004, ISBN 1-84018-837-5
  • Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali appearance at the 92nd Street Y on The Trouble with Islam, audiobooks, 2006. ISBN 0-312-32699-8
• The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith, 2005, ISBN 0-312-32700-5
• Allah, Liberty and Love: The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom First edition, Free Press - June 2011, ISBN 1451645201, ISBN 9781451645200

Film

• Manji's PBS documentary, Faith without Fear, follows her journey to reconcile faith and freedom. Released in 2007, the film depicts the personal risks Manji has faced as a Muslim reformer. She explores Islamism in Yemen, Europe and North America, as well as histories of Islamic critical thinking in Spain and elsewhere. In 2007, it was a finalist for the National Film Board of Canada's Gemini Award. It also won Gold at the New York Television Festival in 2008. In the same year, Faith Without Fear launched the 2008 Muslim Film Festival organized by the American Islamic Congress.

See also

• Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im
• Asra Nomani
• Islam and modernity
• Liberal movements within Islam

External links

• Irshad Manji's media coverage page containing links to articles, reviews and interviews
• Guernica Magazine
• What Word Comes to Mind? at Library and Archives Canada
• Literal, Latin American Voices - Interview with Irshad Manji
• Interview with Irshad Manji: No Compulsion in Islam
• It's time for all of us to embrace ijtihad