{"id":3453,"date":"2015-12-22T06:25:43","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T12:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=3453"},"modified":"2015-12-22T00:51:28","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T06:51:28","slug":"from-the-library-allah-liberty-and-love-the-courage-to-reconcile-faith-and-freedom-by-irshad-manji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/12\/from-the-library-allah-liberty-and-love-the-courage-to-reconcile-faith-and-freedom-by-irshad-manji.html","title":{"rendered":"From the library: Allah, Liberty, and Love; the Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom, by Irshad Manji"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

From the title of this book, you\u2019d think it\u2019s a replay of Ali-Karamali\u2019s The Muslim Next Door<\/a> from Sunday. \u00a0And Manji and Ali-Karamali believe many of the same things, but Manji is an activist, and a reformer. \u00a0Ali-Karamali has rather rose-colored glasses; she presents her beliefs as mainstream, and Muslims who say otherwise as in the small minority. \u00a0Not so with Manji.<\/p>\n

This book is actually a follow-up volume to her first book, The Trouble With Islam Today, which was published in 2005 and is no longer available at my local library, or even within the interlibrary loan system. \u00a0I suppose I could actually suck it up an pay money for a kindle version, but she gives a synopsis of that first book in this one, published in 2011. \u00a0The original book was something of a diagnosis, of what she saw in the state of the Islamic world in those post-9\/11 years that needed reform. \u00a0Read in isolation, it might have been\u00a0hard to judge the extent to which she was giving a true picture. \u00a0Her new book describes how the first book was received, and aims to be a call to action for fellow Muslims.<\/p>\n

Her basic premise is that Islam needs to return to a \u201cspirit of ijtihad\u201d \u2013\u201cIslam\u2019s own tradition of dissenting, reasoning, and reinterpreting.\u201d (p. xvi). \u00a0This tradition existed from the 9th to the 12th centuries in the Islamic Empire, or more specifically, in Muslim-controlled Spain, where \u201csome 135 schools of Islamic interpretation thrived\u201d (p. 26), until in the 12th century, \u201cMuslim fanatics from Morocco. . . colonized Spain\u201d and \u201cwithin a few generations the gates of ijtihad narrowed\u201d and \u201cout of 135 schools of Sunni thought, \u00a0only four survived \u2014 each of them more or less orthodox. \u00a0The demise of critical thinking legitimized rigid readings of the Qur\u2019an.\u201d \u00a0(p. 26)<\/p>\n

Since publishing her book, she has travelled and lectured, produced a documentary, and has been active via a website and facebook, interacting with supporters and opponents alike. \u00a0And, to be honest, far too much of her book is taken up with e-mails she\u2019s received and her replies \u2014 which certainly does help establish that \u201cmainstream Islam\u201d is not the blissfully tolerant world that Ali-Karamali portrays. \u00a0She tells of a screening of her documentary in Detroit, with an angry audience, and with young girls staying back to voice their support, but afraid to do so publicly, saying \u201cOur families are here. \u00a0We would be accused of dishonoring them\u201d (p. 69). \u00a0She writes of the imam at her mother\u2019s mosque delivering a sermon in which she was called a \u201c\u2018bigger criminal\u2019 than Osama bin Laden.\u201d (p. 47). \u00a0She writes of the Muslim chaplain at Harvard justifying capital punishment for apostasy, and that the Muslim students at the university who condemned him in the student paper requested anonymity out of fear for the reaction of the rest of their community (p. 73 \u2013 74).<\/p>\n

She also lays out an agenda, under the theme of \u201cmoral courage\u201d (which, by the way, she has turned into an enterprise, with logo\u2019d clothing \u2014 an upside-down R, for some reason, at her website<\/a>). \u00a0This includes rejecting relativism, or the fear of criticizing other cultures, as well as group identity-motivated fears of criticizing one\u2019s own culture. \u00a0She\u00a0gives examples of western judges accepting mistreatment of women among Muslim immigrants by shrugging it off as \u201cit\u2019s their culture.\u201d \u00a0She tells of an incident in which an Egyptian immigrant woman in Quebec insisted on wearing a veil to her French-language class, and was ultimately expelled because she couldn\u2019t be properly graded on pronunciation with a veil, and says the answer in such a situation is to simply say, \u201cveiling isn\u2019t a part of Islam, it\u2019s a tribalist practice which I don\u2019t have to accommodate.\u201d \u00a0She addresses the issue of honor killing, and calls on, not just Muslims, but everyone, to oppose it rather than saying \u201cnot my problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

She profiles supporters, and encouraging signs such as the pushback, in Indonesia, against Saudi-backed extremist Muslims, and tells the story of Pakistan\u2019s \u201cGandhi,\u201d Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who, in the years preceding independence from Britain, encouraged education for girls, and opposed veiling and the \u201chonor-drenched\u201d culture. \u00a0But she also raises the issue of Muslims who claim to be \u201cmoderate\u201d but, when it comes down to it, won\u2019t take a stand for justice.<\/p>\n

As an added bonus, she describes a protest at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., in February 2010, which women prayed in the men\u2019s part of the mosque in protest of the separation of the women and their relegation to basements and other inferior places. \u00a0And the protest leader\u2019s name sounded familiar: \u00a0Asra Nomani, who happened to pop up in today\u2019s Washington Post with a article saying, \u201cAs Muslim women, we actually ask you not to wear the \u2018hijab\u2019 in the name of interfaith solidarity<\/a>,\u201d which insists, with extensive background and explanation, that Muslim women are under no obligation whatsoever to cover their hair, and urges:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In the name of \u201cinterfaith,\u201d these well-intentioned Americans are getting duped by the agenda of Muslims who argue that a woman\u2019s honor lies in her \u201cchastity\u201d and unwittingly pushing a platform to put a hijab on every woman.<\/p>\n

Please do this instead: Do not wear a headscarf in \u201csolidarity\u201d with the ideology that most silences us, equating our bodies with \u201chonor.\u201d Stand with us instead with moral courage against the ideology of Islamism that demands we cover our hair.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the title of this book, you\u2019d think it\u2019s a replay of Ali-Karamali\u2019s The Muslim Next Door from Sunday. \u00a0And Manji and Ali-Karamali believe many of the same things, but Manji is an activist, and a reformer. \u00a0Ali-Karamali has rather rose-colored glasses; she presents her beliefs as mainstream, and Muslims who say otherwise as in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom the library: Allah, Liberty, and Love; the Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom, by Irshad Manji<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From the title of this book, you'd think it's a replay of Ali-Karamali's The Muslim Next Door from Sunday. \u00a0And Manji and Ali-Karamali believe many of the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/12\/from-the-library-allah-liberty-and-love-the-courage-to-reconcile-faith-and-freedom-by-irshad-manji.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From the library: Allah, Liberty, and Love; 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