‘Cartoons can have a positive fallout’

She has been called “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare”, which she takes as a compliment. Muslim, in-your-face and openly gay, Irshad Manji has set off a storm among Muslims with her book “The Trouble with Islam Today”.  Resident in Canada, she has become a poster girl for liberals and a hate figure for many who think she is a poseur maligning Islam to get her 15 minutes of fame. However, she has emerged as an influential commentator on the Islam-West confrontation and how both sides have tackled the relationship. She talks to Sruthijith KK about the cartoon controversy, the prisoners of Abu Ghraib and her desire to visit India.

How has your life changed after The Trouble came out?

Since my book has come out, I cannot afford to have a bad hair day. This is traumatic because I have to spend a good 10 minutes every morning to get my spikes right.  I love to be able to nap on planes, but my hair would wind up flat. As a result, I’m seriously considering wearing the hijab. Muslim women say it spares them the burden to care about their appearance. I’m starting to see the logic.

Which of the three ‘troubles with Islam today’—treatment of women, Jew bashing or slavery in Islamic countries—would you like to address first?

Of course, they all go hand-in-hand. Basic human rights are universal and mistreatment of anybody lowers expectations for the treatment of others. But you’re going to make me choose, aren’t you? In that case, I would tackle the status of Muslim women first and foremost. I believe that liberating the entrepreneurial talents of Muslim women will lift the quality of life for their entire families, which in turn has positive spin-offs for literacy, education and independent thinking in Islam. With more independent thinking, you’ll have women and men who can interpret the Quran in new ways—not always progressive ways, of course, but a healthy competition of ideas is sorely missing in Islam today.  Let us unleash multiple voices so that we can determine who’s worth listening to. Otherwise, Muslims will perpetuate our pattern of submission to the mullahs. Talk about slavery!

Update us on the progress of operation Ijtihad, your call to ‘revive Islam’s lost tradition of critical thinking’.

Many Muslim scholars have emailed me privately to encourage Operation Ijtihad, which is a foundation to create the world’s first leadership network for reform-minded Muslims.  However, most of the supportive scholars are not mainstream.  They’re free-thinkers who don’t worry about their careers, status or popularity among peers. Those who do worry about such things tend to be far less supportive.  Some of them say that I’ll never have the legitimacy to lead a reform movement in Islam. These scholars assume I crave their applause.  I don’t.  The only approval I seek is that of my conscience and my Creator.  All the rest is politics. Fortunately, most younger Muslims understand that. I’m receiving inquiries from all over the world about establishing chapters of Operation Ijtihad.  The “ijtihadists” have gained momentum. You can read more about this at muslim-refusenik.com.

What will prove worse for the deteriorating trust between the Islamic world and the West, the cartoons or the latest Abu Gharib pictures?

That’s an artificial choice.  The Muslim world today is like a huge grassy field where much of the grass is dry.  It takes only one match to be lowered to a blade of grass for the field to catch fire.  Long before the cartoons or the first set of Abu Ghraib photos, the fire was raging.  So even without this latest set of pictures, mistrust between Muslims and non-Muslims would be profound.

Still, I think something positive can come from the cartoon wars. For Europe, the cartoons have lifted the lid on a debate that’s needed to happen for a while.  People in Europe deny any gap between Muslims and non-Muslims.  They insisted it’s a media fabrication or an exaggeration or right-wing fantasy.  What these cartoons have done is shatter the deadly silence. For Muslims, the cartoons have created a space in which alternative voices can be heard.  Without convulsions like  this between the West and the Muslim world, these dissenters wouldn’t have a presence.  That’s because nobody would see reform as an urgent struggle. 

You say Islamic reform must start from the West but your case for reforms, like 9/11 or Taliban, are in many senses, the product of the West.

Violence and human rights abuses happen under every regime. The difference is, there is no shortage of books about the trouble with fascism. No dearth of books about the problems with Christianity, Judaism—even Hinduism! We Muslims have a lot of catching up to do in the dissent department.

Over the last 100 years alone, more Muslims have been tortured and murdered at the hands of other Muslims than at the hands of any foreign imperial power. That’s not to sanitise America’s role in nourishing bandits such as Bin Laden and the Taliban. But I also recognise that in America, you can criticise your country—and your politicians—with the most vicious, hateful statements, yet you won’t be thrown in jail or have your tongue chopped off for doing so.  Similarly, the American press is constantly highlighting the faults of US corporations and the government. So first, for all the hypocrisy of America, freedom of expression lives; and second, everybody knows America is far from perfect.

Do you think your personal identities—resident of the West, female, homosexual, lack of proficiency in Arabic—have come in the way of your message to Muslims?

I confess that these have been used as “weapons of mass distraction”. Those who read my book will appreciate that independent thinking is my message. And that’s entirely consistent with my personal identity, which I define as “thinker.” 

You have reportedly received threats from India.

That’s the main reason I haven’t come to India yet. I’m a dutiful South Asian daughter.  So when my mother says, “Mari beti, mari jaan, don’t take stupid risks,” what’s a girl to do? Maybe I’ll leave it up to your readers to guide me. 

What next?

A film. Then another book. Then sleep. And, for the sake of more sleep, a different hair style.