the trouble with irshad manji

Recently Time magazine named Ayaan Hirsi Ali as one of the world's 100 most influential people. Ali is a Somalia-born member of the Dutch parliament who had worked with Theo Van Gogh to make a short film called Submission which featured, among other things, verses from the Quran super-imposed on the bodies of naked women. Irshad Manji comes up in all this because Time chose Manji to write about Ali for the magazine... presumably to evoke some kind of "heretic" to "heretic" vibe. One significant difference between the two women is that Ayaan Ali has disavowed Islam, while Irshad Manji, in spite of being the author of a book called "The Trouble with Islam" still identifies herself as Muslim.

But I doubt I'm alone in thinking to myself: With friends like her, who needs enemies?

Because she says she's Muslim, Irshad Manji has been given a unique kind of soap box but what is she doing with it? Whenver I've heard her speak or read her work she sounds like a secular westerner who tacks on "but I'm Muslim" at the end of her words (kind of like the Seinfeld character who converted to Judaism soley to be able to tell Jewish jokes). For example, she doesn't seem to make much, if any, distinction between Islam per se, and the various far-from-ideal practices which exist in so-called Muslim countries. So she doesn't seem to convey to the reader the sense that there is actually much which is salvageable in Islam. But if she finds Islam so "trouble"some, it is not clear why she is sticking around.

In her Time magazine piece she writes:

I met Hirsi Ali, 35, last year during a book tour. Because I have written a blunt call for reform in Islam, a Dutch newspaper assigned her to interview me - heretic to heretic. The difference is, she has left Islam. I asked her if she thought I was naive for sticking with Allah. "Don't go" she told me "Islam needs you."

Aside from the hubris of suggesting that Islam needs her (rather than all of us needing Islam) she seems to distance herself too much from basic Islam to be very effective as a reformer. On top of that she seems to simply ignore the many people in the Muslim ummah who already recognize the shortcomings of the community and actively do what they can to make things better. Irshad Manji lives in a kind of limbo for me. In content and tone she seems to have too negative an opinion of Islam for me (or many Muslims) to identify with her. But then on the other hand, I wonder why she doesn't make a clean break (like Rushdie, like Ayaan Ali, like Taslima Nasrin). At least that way she would have the respect deserved by the heretic who fully follows the courage of their convictions. (In fact I am still baffled by what exactly she feels is the meaning of "being Muslim" when she writes about how as a younger girl she was given a "Most Promising Christian" award or when she went on a trip to Israel and put a prayer in the Wailing Wall.)

To her credit, on her own website she is actually willing to include several articles very critical of her views. (One from the president of CAIR, another from Z magazine)

Also to her credit, she seems to have changed the title of her book from "The Trouble with Islam" to "The Trouble with Islam Today", allowing for the possibility that Islam will be less troublesome and improve "tomorrow". Here's to hoping that she will too.

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Some recent comments about an appearance of hers at Stanford