Fighting for the Soul of Islam - Page 7

snc128 · 04-19-2007, 04:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ray

Precisely.

But who are those who interpret Islam?

Not George Bush nor me.

It is the Moslems.

So, first thing is stop listening to the Mullahs and invisible politicians in the garb of Soldiers of Islam i.e. mujahideens, Taleban, Osama, Abu Hamza and others.

If terrorist use religion and defame it, then rise and get rid of the terrorists and stop them from using Islam!

Are the Moslems doing so?

No.

They sit on the sidelnes, most clap enthusiastically and some sit on the fence waiting to see which side wins!

what i see after this message is media's power.i dont blame anyone.it is normal that the one who shout will be heard instead of who speaks logically.

e.g.El kaide or Mullahs etc.
but each ppl,either muslims or non muslims have responsibilities.
for example;
we all must be more tolerant ,not aggresive,
we must not behave intuitively.
etc.
victims normally response immediately ,i can understand this,but one must be more tolerant to solve problems.think of a big fire and a smaller one.there is no way to put an end the big fire by using the other fire

besides these,most muslims r not interested in those radical groups.even countries' ppl ,such as Tunisian,Algerian,Turks,Malasians etc, are against those groups.

and the last thing i see in the content of a few posts is generalization illness.i have made this term up.we generalize ppl,as rich ,strong ,weak, etc.if a terrorist would commit a crime in the name of supposedly Islam ,this crime is his fault.neither Islam's fault nor sincere Muslim's...
as i had said,a Muslim cannot be a terrorist or cant be named as Muslim,and a terrorist is not a muslim.

but ,after all these tiring comments even terrorists cannot be accused directly.We have to investigate and define the reasons which caused those ignorant ppl to be deceived and became terrorists.
ACTION REACTION cant be disregarded.nothing arises spontaneously in the social problems.
this is a social problem!

snc128 · 04-19-2007, 04:57 AM

lastly,one must not be forgot that majority of those radical Islamic groups were given birth by US against Soviets.this is the core of the problem.
chaos management,US is failed about managing the chaos voluntarily

Amled · 04-19-2007, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snc128

lastly,one must not be forgot that majority of those radical Islamic groups were given birth by US against Soviets.this is the core of the problem.
chaos management,US is failed about managing the chaos voluntarily

The US might have been a reluctant midwife, but the seed was planted long before.

Ray · 04-19-2007, 09:52 AM

Quote:

in 14/04/2007...in Ankara, capital of Turkey..2 000 000 people protested the PM and his radical islamic actions and his candidature for presidental election...and...

and...the press didnt even mentioned, they are trying they are trying to extenuate this movement...

why??...

If I have understood you right, you meant your national press did not mention it.

The Indian media reported it and so did it report the protest by Pakistanis against a powerful Mullah who had opened his own Sharia Court!

If your national press did not mention it, it means that the ruling party which is of radicals in Turkey has gagged the press.

This is how the radicals are trying to make most Moslem more radical!

Quote:

we all must be more tolerant ,not aggresive,
we must not behave intuitively.

In the beginning all were tolerant. Even now, most are. I am talking about India.

But if every month there is a bomb blast and people are killed, maimed and crippled, how long do you think that tolerance can last?

May I ask why are the Moslems not tolerant themselves instead? Why go beheading, taking captives for ransom or run jihads whenever they are bilious?!

Why do they not dialogue instead like civilised people?

Big K · 04-19-2007, 12:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ray

If I have understood you right, you meant your national press did not mention it.

The Indian media reported it and so did it report the protest by Pakistanis against a powerful Mullah who had opened his own Sharia Court!

If your national press did not mention it, it means that the ruling party which is of radicals in Turkey has gagged the press.

This is how the radicals are trying to make most Moslem more radical!

and this ruling party is supported by outside of Turkey...thats why i dont believe in democracy(i want it actually but....) for us...

how to divide and control a country? part 1

block the education, block the land refoms, ensure that the people stay uneducated...than...send ypur movies...send your culture to this people...
pump money to the capitalist party...pump money to NGO's(in order to bring democracy)
block the researchs(because it cost too much! they sad!)( we experienced it in the sector of automotive(my sector) defense systems and aeronautics= the marshall plan)
stop the national industry...capture all markets(local industry cannot compete with yours of course)
for exemple we have the BORAX mineral(worlds biggest)..but we dont have the bor industry...
and give them money, create an artificial economy which abuting to you...give them debit...to buy your weapons (first create artificial enemys) to buy your goods(new cars..etc..) make them addicted to a higher life standard...(but this is an undeserved one).
than you have a society which is not well educated, unconscious...addicted to a life higher standard(means higher demands from government)
and give them no peace...create uncomfortable minorities(the NGO's)...seed hostility in order to create separatist movements...(but never let them to separate). support these separatists and the national army at the same time with your money, your weapons(PKK is using AK-47 and M16 variants, dutch land mines, there was a US force at ADANA...which helped too much to PKK...I AM AN EYE WITNESS!!!!!!!!!! etc ...)

if this society make a amalgamation...suddenly...(what a coincidence!!!) change the agenda...kill some of the minorities and impute the fault to somebody(nationalists) else...Buy the Press, BUy the Bank system...buy their economy..so discourage them...overcome their self respect and resistance...

if they try to communicate with their neighbours...(suddenly!!)...an other artificial crisis made by you will affect them...and never ever give them peace of mind...

....

theres too much to say....but these are politics..nations,peoples has nothing to do with this...and anybody can not blame others for this...

please dont take me wrong...integrating the world is what must we do...

but like Ataturk sad: nations never rised with the advises of other nations...history never wrote such kind of thing...(if i ve translated it right)

we are fighting! against the radical islamists, people in Turkey will stay secularist..and continuing to make reforms...but we need that the "supreme powers" leave us alone...

what did i wrote this??...sometimes objects in mirror are closer then they appaear...do you understand me?

regards
Big K

Big K · 04-19-2007, 12:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amled

The US might have been a reluctant midwife, but the seed was planted long before.

i am no enemy of US..

but i think you are a little bit wrong my friend.

the ground was suitable yes...but revival! of radicalsm...rebirth of radical islamists is given by US...

against Soviet danger, radical patriotism and radical islamists are highly supported by US...it is proved...but probably you' ll never believe..but thats OK for me...

it was a strategic move...in a big chesslike game..but hundreds maybe thousends of youngsters...educated youngsters killed...during 60's and 70's students moves in Turkey...

Ray · 04-19-2007, 14:50 PM

Well you should know your country better.

An unfortunate situation is all that I can say.

snc128 · 04-19-2007, 16:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ray

If I have understood you right, you meant your national press did not mention it.

The Indian media reported it and so did it report the protest by Pakistanis against a powerful Mullah who had opened his own Sharia Court!

If your national press did not mention it, it means that the ruling party which is of radicals in Turkey has gagged the press.

This is how the radicals are trying to make most Moslem more radical!

In the beginning all were tolerant. Even now, most are. I am talking about India.

But if every month there is a bomb blast and people are killed, maimed and crippled, how long do you think that tolerance can last?

May I ask why are the Moslems not tolerant themselves instead? Why go beheading, taking captives for ransom or run jihads whenever they are bilious?!

Why do they not dialogue instead like civilised people?

dear ray
i m emphasizing the power of media to inform u about Mullahs' or al Qaide's actions.they shout ,they try every way to show theirselves as the leader of Islam and try to convince everyone that their actions r logical, reasonable.u hear them normally,dont hear the voice of Muslims who behave sensibly.and the society of muslims who behave kindly to the others is the majority.but u hear the who cries frequently and moreover some power groups use radicals to exonerate their actons. this is the problem.i dont blame anyone.even i understand ur pains because we r suffering from PKK terrorism too.
one of the most guilty existence is puppet media who is so talented about mass management.

mad ppl everywhere.we hear all types of crimes committed by various nations' ppl.so,dont try to equate beheading with Islam.

one more thing.Turkish PM is not the topic of this subject anymore.just start another thread if there is anyone who wanna speak about Turkish PM.

as a conclusion,i m against all types of excessiveness.

MUslims r generally kind ppl but somes choose to see radical groups (who constitute only a minority of ppl ),instead of real muslims.

we r suffering from all types of terrorism.

terrorism has not religion.

let peace win.

Quote:

May I ask why are the Moslems not tolerant themselves instead? Why go beheading, taking captives for ransom or run jihads whenever they are bilious?!

Why do they not dialogue instead like civilised people?

pay attention!
those muslims who u accuse as not being tolerant most probably r not Muslims.only Allah knows who hides what in their deep heart.those who kills each other r ignorant,supposedly,poster muslims.

u said that why they did not dialogue.
listen carefully.
if u r not sure about existence of something it does not mean that it does not exist.it may exist but possibly u r not aware of it.

there r countless dialogue studies,apparently u dont know.

i had touched on dialogue on my last writings.

entropy · 04-19-2007, 17:20 PM

Ray,

How bad is the situation in India? I hear a lot about bombings on international news, but you are a more credible source. You mentioned the population being rather tolerant. This is interesting, because in Russia, after a series of rather large events, islamo- and chechenophoby grows in exponential rates.

I do wonder how much impact the indian culture have on the tolerance of the people. In Russia, the mentality of "brown? -down!" arose rather quickly, especially after Beslan and a series of racial clashes in Kondopoga and the like. Now, Caucasian (and I refer to people from the Caucasus mountains, not the moronic politically correct term used instead of "whites") marketplace shopholders are beaten up and killed, Nazi skinhead groups (ironic, the country still has a strong spirit of WWII victory, young kids still are "russian" and "german" when they play war) are growing like mushrooms, attacking innocent black students and single peaceful shopowners. The chechen mafia, being more powerful than the russian one (due to heavy connections with the Taleban and presumably even the CIA) grows and is left untouched, because they are afraid. So they bash on innocent people instead.

Tronic · 04-19-2007, 18:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Big K

we are fighting! against the radical islamists, people in Turkey will stay secularist..and continuing to make reforms...

My wishes are with the you! I know Turkey is a tolerant secular nation on the most part, and I know many Turkish people are also secular, but I think the lower classes may be turning radical slowly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by entropy

How bad is the situation in India? I hear a lot about bombings on international news

If I may...

Well, Leaving aside Kashmir, I think over the past 3 years, there have been two bombings in India, both of them train bombings.

Quote:

You mentioned the population being rather tolerant. This is interesting, because in Russia, after a series of rather large events, islamo- and chechenophoby grows in exponential rates.

Well, in India there isn't really a general feeling of Islamophobia which grows. There are already people and parties which are very much Islamophobic and on other hand, huge chunk of population which is pretty much all religious extremism-phobic, and these bombings have only given the Islamophobics another chance to scream out on top of their lungs against Muslims. As a whole, I don't think there is a general feeling among the populace which grows or shrinks. On one side, you have the moderates/secularists (not talking politics here, only general populace), and on the other hand you have got Islamic fanatics/Islamophobics/Religious extremists... and both of these mindsets include people from all religions, not only Islam.

Ray · 04-19-2007, 22:24 PM

Ent,

K P S Gill: Major Islamist Terrorist Attacks in India -- Islamist Extremism & Terrorism in South Asia

Incomplete.

In addition to what Tronic wrote, there was also the action during Shab e Barat.

That Tronic and I have to scratch our memory should indicate how we have got used to it and how tolerant we are.

Ray · 04-20-2007, 13:34 PM

Quote:

Irshad Manji's Flying Leap

A contentious Muslim dissident manages to spark debate both within and outside her faith.

By Madeleine Elfenbein
Web Exclusive: 04.19.07

Print Friendly | Email Article

At the start of "Faith Without Fear," Irshad Manji's hour-long film documenting her quest to "reconcile faith and freedom" as a Muslim living in the West, sirens wail in the distance as Manji stands before her bullet-proof window surveying Toronto at night. "I can't show you where I live," she says, but she shows us her home security system and the lock on her mailbox to prevent letter-bombs. "My journey is about speaking out against injustice, no matter who's offended," she declares. "I won't abandon my God -- or my voice." She ties on her scarf over her pea coat, sets her security panel for "Away," and steps out to face the cold Canadian evening -- alone.

Manji, who began her career as a political aide and speechwriter, was until recently a television host in Canada. She first grabbed the U.S. spotlight in 2004 with a book called The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith. She reassured readers that Islam's problems were serious but fixable, and that the West could play a constructive role in the process of reform. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Andrew Sullivan called The Trouble with Islam a "bracing little book" (of 225 pages) written by the "Lisa Simpson of Islam," and noted that it "does what so many of us have longed to see done: assail fundamentalist Islam itself for tolerating such evil in its midst." The book became an international bestseller and launched Manji as a leading voice of Islamic reform.

In a world with over a billion Muslims, why does Irshad Manji seem so alone? As a critic of Islam at least, she is not. Websites such as Eteraz.org and AltMuslim.com as well as personal blogs by Muslims from all over the world are full of such critiques. They are also full of critiques of Manji, who is often accused of pandering to an Islamophobic mainstream press and focusing the attention garnered by her cause on herself: her religious background, her Canadian diction, her sexuality, her bravery in defying death threats, and her impervious air of righteousness. Arguably, it's the media, or her critics, who focus on these things rather than Manji herself, but they often manage to derail the discussion she wants to have about Islam.

Manji's film, which airs tonight on PBS as part of a controversial 11-part series titled "America at a Crossroads," is an attempt to refocus the attention outside herself. Manji leads us on a sweeping tour of Muslim history and geography, introducing us along the way to Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard, a Muslim woman who lost her daughter in the Madrid bombing, a young rapper in one of Amsterdam's Muslim ghettos, and two women who live in Yemen, where the burqa is de rigeur -- Arwa, a dissident writer who resists wearing it, and Lamya, a green-eyed Californian who sees it as a free expression of her religion. Manji is still the star of the film, but it's a new Manji -- not Manji the preacher but Manji the spiritual seeker, one who is genuinely interested in how other Muslims confront the dilemmas posed by their faith.

Ultimately, she takes us back to the North American present and to her ongoing conversation with Imam Syed Soharwardy, the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada and one of her strongest critics. In the process, she makes a compelling case for the necessity of "ijtihad," or what she calls Islam's lost tradition of critical thinking. Without it, she says, Islam will be lost to the literalists and extremists. To further drive home the legitimacy of her critique, she explains: "I'm guided by Chapter 4, Verse 135 of the Qur'an: ‘Believers: conduct yourselves with justice and bear true witness before God, even if it be against yourselves, your parents, or your relatives.' That's a call to heed my conscience." And if some people mix her up with Bernard Lewis, then so be it.

Manji herself is no moderate; she's a self-proclaimed "radical traditionalist" who seeks to find both the origins and the solutions to Islam's problems within the faith itself. And she has little patience for moderates, calling them "part of the problem, not the solution." Throughout the film, as she has throughout her career as a public dissident, Manji ponders, she prompts, she provokes, and she irritates. To Manji, the world's complexity calls for nothing if not a loud and clear message to other Muslims, a message also intended for those outside the faith. As she puts it in an open letter to her fellow Muslims at the opening of her book, "We're in crisis, and we're dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it's now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it?"

For all her "we," Manji admits that she likes to keep "one foot in and one foot out" of the Muslim community, which may account for why she is so often treated with suspicion by other Muslims, especially progressive ones. Manji's critique of Islam is hardly a new one, as the Muslim activist Rafia Zakaria observed. "Young Muslims are very, very aware that Islam needs to be reformed," she told me in a phone interview. "They're torn between their identity and the desire for reform." And they're put off, she says, by Manji's aggressive public criticism of a community that already feels besieged. The problem with Manji, Zakaria has written, is her "prioritization of what Western audiences want to hear over what Muslims need to hear."

Zakaria, a lawyer who studies political science at Indiana University, is active in several human rights organizations and writes frequently in South Asian publications and on AltMuslim.com about the need for reform. She shares the depth of Manji's concerns about Islamic societies, but hesitates before expounding them in American national media outlets, she says, because "the first people who take it up are [right-wing blogs] Jihad Watch and Little Green Footballs."

Calls for reform from within the faith are essential, she says, and she would like to see more of them in every part of the world. But reformers also need to acknowledge the historical context in which Muslim societies have developed and the reality of Islamophobia today. Without that, she says, it's too easy to become a pawn of reactionaries on both sides trying to work up a "clash of civilizations." For Zakaria, the greatest hole in Manji's credibility is her lack of a presence "on the ground," working on campaigns within Muslim communities. "It's not very glamorous to go into a mosque full of immigrants and speak to them," she says, but "those are the people you have to engage with, whose minds you have to change."

Manji would agree with that. What she and Zakaria disagree on, it seems, is how to engage them. Zakaria, for all her militancy, thinks they need to be coaxed, while Manji thinks they need to be provoked. Her spiky hair and wry demeanor notwithstanding, Manji is hardly the Lisa Simpson of Islam. If anything, she has become the Bill Cosby of her faith, specializing in the loud declamation of unpleasant truths and urging a collective self-reckoning on a beleaguered community. Her provocations do get results -- just as Cosby's did -- beyond the predictable raised hackles and the smug nods. They have both captured an audience and grabbed its attention with a masterfully delivered litany of facts and interpretation. Cosby talked about a 50-percent drop-out rate among African Americans, and he talked about pound cake. Manji talks about how Islam gave the world its first university, and follows it up with the fact that more Muslims have been killed in the past century at the hands of Muslim regimes than at the hands of any Western imperial power.

Manji's website, muslim-refusenik.com, receives more than 300 messages every day, most of them, she says, from young Muslims attracted by her boldness and candor. "I'm not denying Western imperialism, but imperialism can come from many sources," she told me. "You know what? In this society, we are agents of change. We have to speak up." She proffers another Qur'an verse: "God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves."

The progressives watching her, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, wish she would temper her rhetoric to take into account the fact that not everyone feels as much an agent of change in today's world as she does. (Manji flies around the world giving talks to the International Women's Forum and the Royal Canadian Mountain Police, not to mention the Pentagon.) She holds a deep commitment to blunt truth-telling. But as Cosby proved with his speech about pound cake and expensive sneakers, this style of reform comes with an attendant risk of being demonized and lumped with racists. And doing it before an audience of mainstream journalists with dubious agendas may trigger more backlash than effective change.

Manji discounts these arguments with a willful naivete. What bugs her most is not those who demonize her, but those too timid to engage her ideas, whether they are the "moderate" Muslims she decries or well-meaning non-Muslim liberals afraid to criticize Islam. To those who secretly agree with her but fear admitting it, she asks, "Is it popularity or integrity you seek?"

Some of her sharpest critics might find these words ironic coming from the author of a bestselling book with her face plastered on the cover, whose website shows her posing with Eve Ensler, Bono, and Rudy Giuliani. They question the integrity of agreeing to appear in conservative media, as the guest of the right-wing talk-show host Glenn Beck. And in her op-eds, such as the one she wrote in The Times of London defending the Pope after his Regensburg speech and another entitled "How I Learned to Love the Wall" (separating Israel from Palestinians; Manji later asserted that the title of the piece got it wrong and was not what she would have chosen), her critics see rhetorical posturing in order to gain popularity by distancing herself from the majority of Muslims. They observe that her references to the frequent death threats made against her have a funny ring coming from someone who asks Muslims to reject the defensive stance of victimhood.

To Manji, these are all things that need to be said, loudly and candidly. "The more urgent priority right now is intrafaith dialogue," she says. "We need to have Muslims debating each other, and showing the rest of the world that Islam is rich with debate." Her attitude has won her many admirers. But is engagement enough to trigger reform? And does it work when the message is delivered through a medium that distorts, whether it's the Glenn Beck Show or Al-Arabiya?

For those sympathetic to her message but doubtful of her sincerity, the announcement that Manji would attend the Secular Islam Summit threatened to be the last straw. The event took place last month in St. Petersburg, Florida in conjunction with a conference organized by the U.S. "intelligence community" and had many of the same attendees. The list of speakers included ex-terrorists like Ibn Warraq and ex-Muslims like Wafa Sultan, famous for her declaration that "you cannot be American and Muslim at the same time." Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, founder of the interfaith Cordoba Initiative, failed to make an appearance, as did Mike Ghouse, the president of the Foundation for Pluralism, who wrote a blog post explaining the decision: "None of us wanted to become tools in the hands of the anti-Islam extremists." The number of practicing Muslims on the list of speakers could be counted on one hand, and many wondered why Manji would choose to be among them.

But those who followed the events of the conference found themselves surprised. Manji gave a speech that took the organizers and participants to task for not making stronger overtures to practicing Muslims, and urged them to seek common ground with believers. An attendee at the conference filed an admiring report on Manji's speech at Eteraz.org, prompting several community members to declare that their opinions of her had changed. Their case for her was bolstered when reports circulated that she had refused to sign the St. Petersburg Declaration because it didn't include language respectful of Islam as a religion. Ali Eteraz, editor of Eteraz.org, went so far as to give her "props" for that, and judging by the comments to his post, Manji is on her way to entering the good graces of the progressive Muslim community.

Her reacceptance comes not a moment too soon. Manji's next big venture, Project Ijtihad, is slated to launch sometime in the coming year, and its success hinges on her ability to lure progressive Muslims into the dialogue she wants to promote. Manji bills herself as the project's "chief catalyst," but she risks becoming its chief distraction. Raquel Evita Saraswati, who is helping to lead the project and has formed a satellite group of her own called Ijtihad Boston, joked that the group's motto, "ijtihad, not jihad," is informally "ijtihad, not Irshad." To build a network of reform-minded Muslims and engage in productive debate, Saraswati says, "takes time." This sounds patient, conciliatory, and rather unlike Manji.

Manji's "Faith Without Fear" ends, somewhat bizarrely, with a shot of her jumping out of a plane and plummeting toward earth in a tandem skydive. It’s an apt illustration of her exceptional courage, intellectual as well as physical, sprinkled with more than a little hubris. Manji's faith in our ability to hear her out exhibits a kind of canny madness. Death threats don't scare her, and neither does Glenn Beck. From her current perch on top of the media heap, she insists on speaking the same unvarnished truth to everyone, all the time. With nothing but her miraculous self-confidence and those bullet-proof windows to protect her, she is leaping into thin air. Will the world rise up to meet her? It's a risk she's willing to take.

Madeleine Elfenbein is on the editorial staff of The New Yorker.

* * *

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to The American Prospect here.

Support independent media with a tax-deductible donation here.
© 2007 by The American Prospect, Inc.
American Prospect Online - ViewWeb

On IJTIHAD!

Ray · 04-20-2007, 13:34 PM

Quote:

Irshad Manji's Flying Leap

A contentious Muslim dissident manages to spark debate both within and outside her faith.

By Madeleine Elfenbein
Web Exclusive: 04.19.07

Print Friendly | Email Article

At the start of "Faith Without Fear," Irshad Manji's hour-long film documenting her quest to "reconcile faith and freedom" as a Muslim living in the West, sirens wail in the distance as Manji stands before her bullet-proof window surveying Toronto at night. "I can't show you where I live," she says, but she shows us her home security system and the lock on her mailbox to prevent letter-bombs. "My journey is about speaking out against injustice, no matter who's offended," she declares. "I won't abandon my God -- or my voice." She ties on her scarf over her pea coat, sets her security panel for "Away," and steps out to face the cold Canadian evening -- alone.

Manji, who began her career as a political aide and speechwriter, was until recently a television host in Canada. She first grabbed the U.S. spotlight in 2004 with a book called The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith. She reassured readers that Islam's problems were serious but fixable, and that the West could play a constructive role in the process of reform. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Andrew Sullivan called The Trouble with Islam a "bracing little book" (of 225 pages) written by the "Lisa Simpson of Islam," and noted that it "does what so many of us have longed to see done: assail fundamentalist Islam itself for tolerating such evil in its midst." The book became an international bestseller and launched Manji as a leading voice of Islamic reform.

In a world with over a billion Muslims, why does Irshad Manji seem so alone? As a critic of Islam at least, she is not. Websites such as Eteraz.org and AltMuslim.com as well as personal blogs by Muslims from all over the world are full of such critiques. They are also full of critiques of Manji, who is often accused of pandering to an Islamophobic mainstream press and focusing the attention garnered by her cause on herself: her religious background, her Canadian diction, her sexuality, her bravery in defying death threats, and her impervious air of righteousness. Arguably, it's the media, or her critics, who focus on these things rather than Manji herself, but they often manage to derail the discussion she wants to have about Islam.

Manji's film, which airs tonight on PBS as part of a controversial 11-part series titled "America at a Crossroads," is an attempt to refocus the attention outside herself. Manji leads us on a sweeping tour of Muslim history and geography, introducing us along the way to Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard, a Muslim woman who lost her daughter in the Madrid bombing, a young rapper in one of Amsterdam's Muslim ghettos, and two women who live in Yemen, where the burqa is de rigeur -- Arwa, a dissident writer who resists wearing it, and Lamya, a green-eyed Californian who sees it as a free expression of her religion. Manji is still the star of the film, but it's a new Manji -- not Manji the preacher but Manji the spiritual seeker, one who is genuinely interested in how other Muslims confront the dilemmas posed by their faith.

Ultimately, she takes us back to the North American present and to her ongoing conversation with Imam Syed Soharwardy, the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada and one of her strongest critics. In the process, she makes a compelling case for the necessity of "ijtihad," or what she calls Islam's lost tradition of critical thinking. Without it, she says, Islam will be lost to the literalists and extremists. To further drive home the legitimacy of her critique, she explains: "I'm guided by Chapter 4, Verse 135 of the Qur'an: ‘Believers: conduct yourselves with justice and bear true witness before God, even if it be against yourselves, your parents, or your relatives.' That's a call to heed my conscience." And if some people mix her up with Bernard Lewis, then so be it.

Manji herself is no moderate; she's a self-proclaimed "radical traditionalist" who seeks to find both the origins and the solutions to Islam's problems within the faith itself. And she has little patience for moderates, calling them "part of the problem, not the solution." Throughout the film, as she has throughout her career as a public dissident, Manji ponders, she prompts, she provokes, and she irritates. To Manji, the world's complexity calls for nothing if not a loud and clear message to other Muslims, a message also intended for those outside the faith. As she puts it in an open letter to her fellow Muslims at the opening of her book, "We're in crisis, and we're dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it's now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it?"

For all her "we," Manji admits that she likes to keep "one foot in and one foot out" of the Muslim community, which may account for why she is so often treated with suspicion by other Muslims, especially progressive ones. Manji's critique of Islam is hardly a new one, as the Muslim activist Rafia Zakaria observed. "Young Muslims are very, very aware that Islam needs to be reformed," she told me in a phone interview. "They're torn between their identity and the desire for reform." And they're put off, she says, by Manji's aggressive public criticism of a community that already feels besieged. The problem with Manji, Zakaria has written, is her "prioritization of what Western audiences want to hear over what Muslims need to hear."

Zakaria, a lawyer who studies political science at Indiana University, is active in several human rights organizations and writes frequently in South Asian publications and on AltMuslim.com about the need for reform. She shares the depth of Manji's concerns about Islamic societies, but hesitates before expounding them in American national media outlets, she says, because "the first people who take it up are [right-wing blogs] Jihad Watch and Little Green Footballs."

Calls for reform from within the faith are essential, she says, and she would like to see more of them in every part of the world. But reformers also need to acknowledge the historical context in which Muslim societies have developed and the reality of Islamophobia today. Without that, she says, it's too easy to become a pawn of reactionaries on both sides trying to work up a "clash of civilizations." For Zakaria, the greatest hole in Manji's credibility is her lack of a presence "on the ground," working on campaigns within Muslim communities. "It's not very glamorous to go into a mosque full of immigrants and speak to them," she says, but "those are the people you have to engage with, whose minds you have to change."

Manji would agree with that. What she and Zakaria disagree on, it seems, is how to engage them. Zakaria, for all her militancy, thinks they need to be coaxed, while Manji thinks they need to be provoked. Her spiky hair and wry demeanor notwithstanding, Manji is hardly the Lisa Simpson of Islam. If anything, she has become the Bill Cosby of her faith, specializing in the loud declamation of unpleasant truths and urging a collective self-reckoning on a beleaguered community. Her provocations do get results -- just as Cosby's did -- beyond the predictable raised hackles and the smug nods. They have both captured an audience and grabbed its attention with a masterfully delivered litany of facts and interpretation. Cosby talked about a 50-percent drop-out rate among African Americans, and he talked about pound cake. Manji talks about how Islam gave the world its first university, and follows it up with the fact that more Muslims have been killed in the past century at the hands of Muslim regimes than at the hands of any Western imperial power.

Manji's website, muslim-refusenik.com, receives more than 300 messages every day, most of them, she says, from young Muslims attracted by her boldness and candor. "I'm not denying Western imperialism, but imperialism can come from many sources," she told me. "You know what? In this society, we are agents of change. We have to speak up." She proffers another Qur'an verse: "God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves."

The progressives watching her, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, wish she would temper her rhetoric to take into account the fact that not everyone feels as much an agent of change in today's world as she does. (Manji flies around the world giving talks to the International Women's Forum and the Royal Canadian Mountain Police, not to mention the Pentagon.) She holds a deep commitment to blunt truth-telling. But as Cosby proved with his speech about pound cake and expensive sneakers, this style of reform comes with an attendant risk of being demonized and lumped with racists. And doing it before an audience of mainstream journalists with dubious agendas may trigger more backlash than effective change.

Manji discounts these arguments with a willful naivete. What bugs her most is not those who demonize her, but those too timid to engage her ideas, whether they are the "moderate" Muslims she decries or well-meaning non-Muslim liberals afraid to criticize Islam. To those who secretly agree with her but fear admitting it, she asks, "Is it popularity or integrity you seek?"

Some of her sharpest critics might find these words ironic coming from the author of a bestselling book with her face plastered on the cover, whose website shows her posing with Eve Ensler, Bono, and Rudy Giuliani. They question the integrity of agreeing to appear in conservative media, as the guest of the right-wing talk-show host Glenn Beck. And in her op-eds, such as the one she wrote in The Times of London defending the Pope after his Regensburg speech and another entitled "How I Learned to Love the Wall" (separating Israel from Palestinians; Manji later asserted that the title of the piece got it wrong and was not what she would have chosen), her critics see rhetorical posturing in order to gain popularity by distancing herself from the majority of Muslims. They observe that her references to the frequent death threats made against her have a funny ring coming from someone who asks Muslims to reject the defensive stance of victimhood.

To Manji, these are all things that need to be said, loudly and candidly. "The more urgent priority right now is intrafaith dialogue," she says. "We need to have Muslims debating each other, and showing the rest of the world that Islam is rich with debate." Her attitude has won her many admirers. But is engagement enough to trigger reform? And does it work when the message is delivered through a medium that distorts, whether it's the Glenn Beck Show or Al-Arabiya?

For those sympathetic to her message but doubtful of her sincerity, the announcement that Manji would attend the Secular Islam Summit threatened to be the last straw. The event took place last month in St. Petersburg, Florida in conjunction with a conference organized by the U.S. "intelligence community" and had many of the same attendees. The list of speakers included ex-terrorists like Ibn Warraq and ex-Muslims like Wafa Sultan, famous for her declaration that "you cannot be American and Muslim at the same time." Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, founder of the interfaith Cordoba Initiative, failed to make an appearance, as did Mike Ghouse, the president of the Foundation for Pluralism, who wrote a blog post explaining the decision: "None of us wanted to become tools in the hands of the anti-Islam extremists." The number of practicing Muslims on the list of speakers could be counted on one hand, and many wondered why Manji would choose to be among them.

But those who followed the events of the conference found themselves surprised. Manji gave a speech that took the organizers and participants to task for not making stronger overtures to practicing Muslims, and urged them to seek common ground with believers. An attendee at the conference filed an admiring report on Manji's speech at Eteraz.org, prompting several community members to declare that their opinions of her had changed. Their case for her was bolstered when reports circulated that she had refused to sign the St. Petersburg Declaration because it didn't include language respectful of Islam as a religion. Ali Eteraz, editor of Eteraz.org, went so far as to give her "props" for that, and judging by the comments to his post, Manji is on her way to entering the good graces of the progressive Muslim community.

Her reacceptance comes not a moment too soon. Manji's next big venture, Project Ijtihad, is slated to launch sometime in the coming year, and its success hinges on her ability to lure progressive Muslims into the dialogue she wants to promote. Manji bills herself as the project's "chief catalyst," but she risks becoming its chief distraction. Raquel Evita Saraswati, who is helping to lead the project and has formed a satellite group of her own called Ijtihad Boston, joked that the group's motto, "ijtihad, not jihad," is informally "ijtihad, not Irshad." To build a network of reform-minded Muslims and engage in productive debate, Saraswati says, "takes time." This sounds patient, conciliatory, and rather unlike Manji.

Manji's "Faith Without Fear" ends, somewhat bizarrely, with a shot of her jumping out of a plane and plummeting toward earth in a tandem skydive. It’s an apt illustration of her exceptional courage, intellectual as well as physical, sprinkled with more than a little hubris. Manji's faith in our ability to hear her out exhibits a kind of canny madness. Death threats don't scare her, and neither does Glenn Beck. From her current perch on top of the media heap, she insists on speaking the same unvarnished truth to everyone, all the time. With nothing but her miraculous self-confidence and those bullet-proof windows to protect her, she is leaping into thin air. Will the world rise up to meet her? It's a risk she's willing to take.

Madeleine Elfenbein is on the editorial staff of The New Yorker.

* * *

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to The American Prospect here.

Support independent media with a tax-deductible donation here.
© 2007 by The American Prospect, Inc.
American Prospect Online - ViewWeb

On IJTIHAD!

04-19-2007, 17:20 PM	#99 (permalink)
entropy Senior Reader *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 03-19-07 Location: Belgium Posts: 1,628 Country:	Ray, How bad is the situation in India? I hear a lot about bombings on international news, but you are a more credible source. You mentioned the population being rather tolerant. This is interesting, because in Russia, after a series of rather large events, islamo- and chechenophoby grows in exponential rates. I do wonder how much impact the indian culture have on the tolerance of the people. In Russia, the mentality of "brown? -down!" arose rather quickly, especially after Beslan and a series of racial clashes in Kondopoga and the like. Now, Caucasian (and I refer to people from the Caucasus mountains, not the moronic politically correct term used instead of "whites") marketplace shopholders are beaten up and killed, Nazi skinhead groups (ironic, the country still has a strong spirit of WWII victory, young kids still are "russian" and "german" when they play war) are growing like mushrooms, attacking innocent black students and single peaceful shopowners. The chechen mafia, being more powerful than the russian one (due to heavy connections with the Taleban and presumably even the CIA) grows and is left untouched, because they are afraid. So they bash on innocent people instead. __________________ If memory serves...

04-19-2007, 22:24 PM	#101 (permalink)
Ray Postmaster General *Military Professional* Join Date: 08-20-03 Posts: 28,276 Country:	Ent, K P S Gill: Major Islamist Terrorist Attacks in India -- Islamist Extremism & Terrorism in South Asia Incomplete. In addition to what Tronic wrote, there was also the action during Shab e Barat. That Tronic and I have to scratch our memory should indicate how we have got used to it and how tolerant we are. Last edited by Ray : 04-19-2007 at 22:27 PM.

04-19-2007, 04:57 AM	#92 (permalink)
snc128 Contributor Join Date: 11-03-06 Posts: 663 Country:	lastly,one must not be forgot that majority of those radical Islamic groups were given birth by US against Soviets.this is the core of the problem. chaos management,US is failed about managing the chaos voluntarily

04-19-2007, 14:50 PM	#97 (permalink)
Ray Postmaster General *Military Professional* Join Date: 08-20-03 Posts: 28,276 Country:	Well you should know your country better. An unfortunate situation is all that I can say.