The Trouble with Islam

[pritchke]

Not sure if I should have posted in the book forum as it does apply to current events as well. and it is a descusion about the trouble with Islam not really about the book. A first person account from a canadian muslim.

As refugees from Idi Amin's Uganda, my family and I settled just outside of Vancouver in 1972. I grew up attending two types of schools: the secular public school of most North American kids and then, for several hours at a stretch every Saturday, the Islamic religious school (madressa).

I couldn't quite reconcile the open and tolerant world of my public school with the rigid and bigoted world inside my madressa. But I had enough faith to ask questions -- plenty of them.

My first question for my madressa teacher was, "Why can't girls lead prayer?" I graduated to asking more nuanced questions, such as, "If the Koran came to Prophet Muhammad as a message of peace, why did he command his army to kill an entire Jewish tribe?"

You can imagine that such questions irritated the hell out of my madressa teacher, who routinely put down women and trashed the Jews. He and I reached the ultimate impasse over yet another question: "Where," I asked, "is the evidence of the 'Jewish conspiracy' against Islam? You love to talk about it, but what's the proof?" That question, posed at the age of 14, got me booted out of the madressa. Permanently.

At this point, I had a choice to make: I could walk away from my Muslim faith and get on with being my "emancipated" North American self, or I could give Islam another chance. Out of fairness to the faith, I gave Islam another chance. And another. And another. For the past 20 years, I've been educating myself about Islam. As a result, I've discovered a progressive side of my religion -- in theory.

But I remain a hugely ambivalent Muslim because of what's happening "on the ground" -- massive human rights violations, particularly against women and religious minorities -- in the name of Allah.

Liberal Muslims say that what I'm describing isn't "true" Islam. But these Muslims should own up to something: Prophet Muhammad himself said that religion is the way we conduct ourselves toward others. By that standard, how Muslims actually behave is Islam, and to sweep that reality under the rug of theory is to absolve ourselves of any responsibility for our fellow human beings.

That's why I'm struggling. That's why I'm passionate. And that leads me to what I consider to be the trouble with Islam.


Anyways she just wrote a book, and is getting the usual death threats ect. from the extremists. her website is up again(was hacked last week) very interesting stuff.

http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/the_book_index.html

[ 10-17-2003, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

[johnny]

They put a "Fatwah" on her ?

[Skunk]

"The Trouble with Islam"
Book review: Riad Saloojee

With the media spotlight on Islam, media entrepreneur Irshad Manji's The Trouble with Islam has hit a vein of publicity. Part autobiography, part call for Islamic reformation, the book's value falls short of its fanfare.

A personal narrative, the book begins with Manji’s childhood in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond. In both her community and private life, she experiences the disconnect of a young girl from the religious absolutism around her and learns both the pain and merit of asking questions.

As an adult writer, Manji problematizes much, and justly so: authoritarian structures within Muslim societies; shrunken spaces for women's dignity and participation; attitudes of victimization among many Muslims and a reluctance to engage in self-criticism.

Manji's questioning is not novel. Others, including contemporary Muslim thinkers, have grappled with the same issues. But the similarity ends there.

Far from a multi-dimensional analysis of Muslim malaise, Manji sets her sights unrelentingly on Islam. "Is Islam more narrow-minded than the rest of the world's religions?" she asks. If anything, one might expect a comparative exercise here; instead, her pointed conclusions on Islam are frequently proved by non sequiturs, reductive generalizations and kitschy anecdotes.

For example, she inquires: "Is Islam the uber-oppressor of creativity, dynamism and democracy?" while citing the case of Pakistan, which refused to allow one of its citizens to play on a doubles tennis team with an Israeli. The Israeli faced no similar restriction from his own country. "Surely," argues Manji, "this dichotomy has something to do with each nation's ethical compass," which is, "animated by each nation's religious values." Here Manji makes an unbelievable leap, from a politically motivated Pakistani tennis-team policy to a generalization about a religion’s impact on a society’s values.

Though she insists "on giving Islam a fair shake," her arguments about the Koran come with numerous flaws. Overlooking centuries of vigorous interpretive discussion, diversity and dialogue on the Koran (there are no references to any such scholarship; reading Manji you would think it non-existent), Manji seems to shop selectively for verses, divorcing them from both their context and mainstream interpretations. Without, it appears, any knowledge of Koranic hermeneutical criticism, she creates a caricature of Islam, projecting her own conclusions on the text much like, ironically, the literalism of Bin Laden.

Regarding Islam's alleged dark side – anti-Jewish sentiment, oppression of women, violence and slavery - Manji violates the premier rule of Koranic textual interpretation: that all verses on a subject are to be read together, contextually and coherently. One verse, revealed in one circumstance, might comment on a particular situation and should not be universalized.

In many instances, the Koranic critique of the Jewish community falls into this category: many Koranic passages address conflicts between the early Muslim and Jewish communities that were primarily political. But God is, in Arabic, al-'Adl, the Just, and numerous Islamic texts lay down moral absolutes, like justice and equity in dealing with all people. As well, historical examples of symbiosis and harmony are too numerous to premise Islam being anti-Jewish.

Manji makes similar mistakes when discussing women (Her interpretations are certainly not those shared by the ever-increasing number of educated Western women converting to Islam.) And, certainly, most mainstream Islamic scholars would differ with her portrayal of Koranic passages dealing with physical Jihad (as opposed to Jihad as a spiritual struggle) as providing a licence for violent acts against non-Muslims.

An oddity of the work is that although Manji accuses Muslims of using Israel as a lightening rod for their own malaise, much of the book is a sentimentalized apologetic for Israel. Sounding more like a publicist than a critical thinker when discussing Israel, the self-proclaimed I-pull-no-punches Manji is not recognizable.

Critical projects are best when infused with realism, refined analysis and love. Tareq Ramadan's To Be a European Muslim, and Noah Feldman's After Jihad are two fine examples.

By contrast, Manji's work, seemingly interested primarily in hamstringing traditional Islam, cripples itself by its profound failure to consider both centuries of Islamic scholarship and the many secular influences, both political and social, that have had a hand in shaping the Muslim world.

Justifies Manji: "I know I'm oversimplifying, but oversimplification runs rampant in the development of God-awful laws.” Unfortunately, her book suffers from the same flaw. Better had she heeded the words of Gandhi: Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Montreal Gazette, 4/10/2003

[B_part]

Originally posted by pritchke: Liberal Muslims say that what I'm describing isn't "true" Islam.

Orginally posted by Skunk (citing an article): "Is Islam more narrow-minded than the rest of the world's religions?"

First of all let me say that my knowledge of Islam is quite shallow, and, hence it might be seriously distorted. I believe, however, that this will not influence what I am about to say in my post:

my opinion is that there are no narrow minded religions, but only different interpretations given to them. Take for example what the Catholic church was in the middle ages and what it is now: once the popes waged holy wars against the muslims, burned erethics at the stake, persecuted jews and deposed emperors. And needed a council to decide, in 1545 (council of Trento), that women indeed had a soul; nowadays pope John Paul II cries for peace, tolerance and friendship.
The Bible hasn't changed, it's those who interpret it who have changed their minds. Once they chose some passages to justify their misdeeds, now they ignore those lines and concentrate on others.
I believe the same applies to Islam: you can find pretty much what you want to find in the Koran, and you can be a terrorist, a man seeking dialogue and peace or anything between these two extremes.
It will be external factors to decide which one of the two views of Islamic faith will win.

Edit: HTML tags and spelling

[ 10-18-2003, 01:48 PM: Message edited by: B_part ]

[WillowIX]

Let's just say I think the time for this book release reeks of opportunism.

I don't know of any religion. I prefer to remain a person without religious ties. Why? There are those leaders who tend to interpret the religion from their own perspective. Thus, not as accurate as the original founder, nor as compassionate perhaps. IMO it's not the religion, but the leadership that interprets it makes the religion either as compassionate & open OR discriminating & narrowminded.

[Azred]

There isn't anything wrong with Islam, in and of itself. The "problem" with Islam is that it, like many older religions, was formulated to help bring several disparate groups together into a relative cohesive society; in this instance, nomadic tribes in the Middle East.
At its core, Islam is a religion of peace, but it was formed during very turbluent times and in a society that has trouble adapting itself as the centuries pass. Socially, Islam is at a point now where Christianity was during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation--splintered into factions who thoroughly dislike one another, each claiming that the others are "wrong". This is the source of comments such as "that person is not following true Islam".

I have known people who were devout Muslims; I have been in their homes and been their friends. It pains them to see people using Islam as a front to further their own political ends, because no one really believes that some gun-wielding suicide bomber or his leader have anything to do with anything other that hatred and death.

In any case, at least the author is trying to get across some valid viewpoints; I commend her efforts, even if her work is "less than perfect".

[Sir Kenyth]

Originally posted by WillowIX: Let's just say I think the time for this book release reeks of opportunism.

Hmmmm......*sniff*....I smell it too!

[BaRoN NiGhT]

Just by looking at the threads subject already makes me feel offended. And more, after reading inside this thread. Pritchke, you should've chose your thread more carefully. How is your feeling if suppose I post a thread about your religion and say that it has troubles? And you know what, you don't have to humiliate others religion if you think there is some 'trouble' with any religion. And I think there is no trouble with any religion in this world, especially mine.

[ 10-26-2003, 09:42 PM: Message edited by: BaRoN NiGhT ]

[Azred]

[img]graemlins/erm.gif[/img] Pritchke was neither insulting Islam nor intimiating that Islam is rife with "trouble". He was merely posting a thread to give us a "heads-up" about a book this woman has written....

Originally posted by BaRoN NiGhT: And I think there is no trouble with any religion in this world, especially mine.

All religions have trouble. All the fighting in the Kashmir region between Muslims and Hindus, the bickering between moderate and conservative Espicopals vis-a-vis to appointment of an openly gay bishop, etc. I have even expressed the opinion that Islam is in a stage where Catholicism found itself after the Renaissance, when Protestantism was beginning to develop; that is, several major groups are vying to try and determine what the "true" Islam is. It is this conflict that is troubling Islam right now and what is truly the cause of so much unrest. This does not imply that there is any fundamental flaw or trouble with Islam itself.