multicultural lecturer explains "The Trouble with islam"

Irshad Manji, best-selling author and award winning TV personality, addressed the campus community on March 1 as part of the Multicultural Lecture Series. In her lecture, which corresponded with her book, The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith, Manji explained her concerns with modern Islamic practice while focusing on the question, “How do we treat the other?”

Manji is working with young Muslims around the world to launch a leadership center that will promote the liberal Islamic reformation. She is calling for reform in the way her faith is practiced in the Islamic community and perceived worldwide, hoping to assist Islam to pluralism; that is, the thinking that one religion is not the sole and exclusive truth.

Born into a family of refugees in Uganda, Manji and her family located to Vancouver, Canada when she was a child.  In addition to attending public school, Manji also attended a Madressa school once a week where she was taught Islam. Manji faced her first conflict with the conventions of her faith when she learned that girls could not lead prayer.

“I found this weird because, even as a young girl, I did not feel inferior to any boys,” she said. This was when Manji began posing questions. She wanted hard evidence for everything she was being taught about Islam. “Where is the proof?” she asked. In turn, this questioning caused her expulsion from the Madressa school. She was then faced with the decision of whether or not to abandon Islam completely. 

“Why should my faith be punished?” asked Manji. She took the time to discover her religion for herself and read the Quran, the holy book of Islam.  She also used the Internet to gain insight and interact with others who also were discovering Islam. “What I found fascinating is that it taught positive aspects of my religion. Thank God for freedom of information,” says Manji.

“Freedom of information saved my faith in Islam but it also made me confront my own conscience,” said Manji.  Manji asserted that Islam as a religion is under scrupulous examination from people worldwide.  Her faith in Islam initially caused her to be defensive to this judgment but she said, “As I lowered my defenses I opened my eyes.”

“Human rights violations happen under the banner of every religion, even secular religions.  Literalism is mainstream worldwide,” says Manji.  However, she says, there are distinct differences between literalisms in other religions and literalisms in modern Islam. 

She diagnoses modern Islam with asserting a “supremacy complex” that “disproportionately empowers radicals.” 

Manji proposes that the Quran is ambiguous and that the book itself deems questioning acceptable.  Modern Islam, according to Manji, upholds the Quran literally and this “inhibits reasonable Muslims from asking what happens when faith becomes dogma.” 

Her book has been published internationally, including in Pakistan. Later this year, it will also be published in Turkey, Iraq and India.  In those countries that have banned it, Manji is reaching readers by posting free translations on her Web site. She writes columns that are distributed worldwide by The New York Times Syndicate. She is also producing a PBS documentary about what there is to love about Islam.