Need Input, Re: Manji, Irshad.

Maybe you are referring to her film, called Faith Without Fear.

quote: Irshad Manji is the internationally best-selling author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in her Faith. Through a new lens, this questioning Muslim takes a journey to reconcile her faith in Allah with her love of freedom. Along the way, she reveals the personal risks — emotional and physical — that come with such an urgent mission. The result is FAITH WITHOUT FEAR.

Trekking through the Arabian peninsula, Manji speaks with Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard, who explains why he’s willing to turn his young son into a martyr. She also engages a California convert to Islam who now lives in Yemen and says that by covering her body and face, she’s exercising American-style freedom of religion. But is it really freedom if you’ll be punished for not covering? Manji meets one Yemeni woman who faces a steep price for rejecting the rules. Through them, Manji discovers what she thinks has corrupted a religion of justice to become an ideology of fear. She can relate: Her own home has bullet-proof windows.

[ 08 January 2008: Message edited by: triciamarie ]

quote:Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
I have my doubts about her. I haven't read her book but she is a darling of the anti-Islam crowd and I have heard her interviewed. I can't help wondering is she is promoting reform of Islam or promoting fear of Islam in her own economic interests. I think probably part of that question is answered by who is buying her books and seeing her films and what proportion of those people are white bigots looking to reinforce what they already believe and what percentage are Islamic people looking for reform in the way their faith is practiced and perceived.

You are assuming a lot about IM, her book, and the people who read it. Do you have any specific facts about who is seeing her films and reading her books? You insinuate that they are mostly 'white bigots', but it seems to me that such people would not be fans of an 'out' lesbian of Pakistani descent, as is Irshad Manji.
You seem very angry about this, as though you can't handle any criticism of Islamic religion.

Uhhh... although I share FM's preventions, we wouldn't be debating interpretations of alleged insinuations if people would simply read Irshad Manji's book... Any writer deserves that much.

quote: Any writer deserves that much.

I don't agree, anyone can call themselves a writer and get publishe: Ann Coulter for example. I don't need to read one of her book to glean what she's about from interviews and exerpts.

quote: the original post was seeking input on the author rather than her work.

Any author is defined by her/his work.
If the original poster really needed "input re: Manji", the way to get/provide this is clearly to read her writing, listen to her interviews, then criticize, not shirt share prejudice. As it is, readers are only being treated to rhetorical distate, i.e. that one doesn't have to bother with what she actually writes/says. Doesn't make for enlightened discussions...
I have noticed that female writers often get that, regardless of their actual value. A good read about this - for anyone who bothers reading books - is Dale Spender's "Women of Ideas and what men have done to them".

quote:Originally posted by DavisMavis:
She has no problem going on Fox News and shilling for wars of empire, if memory serves me.

I haven't heard her supporting any war. Reference please?

quote: I have noticed that female writers often get that, regardless of their actual value.

Give me a break, Martin. On this site everyone is open for criticism on a fairly equal basis. If you want evidence go start a thread on Al Gore.

quote: Seems an intelligent woman with a genuine desire to fix what is currently wrong with Islam and Muslims

Yes, many, many people want to fix Islam and Muslims. How are the bombs working?

I suspect you would support all and any vilification of Islam.

On the book and Manji:

quote: Unfortunately, like Hirsi Ali, Manji consistently gives individual examples of malfeasance and then extrapolates to the entire body of Muslims. In discussing World War II, for instance, she writes, "Let's be straight about what else happened during the Nazi years: Muslim complicity in the Holocaust." Here she trots out the story of Haj Amin al-Husayni, the mufti of Jerusalem who visited Berlin as a guest of Hitler and approved of his genocidal agenda. But how do we move from one cleric with authority in one congregation to "Muslim complicity"? And if it turns out that there are individual Muslims who helped Jews escape the Holocaust, do we then get to talk about "Muslim resistance" to the Holocaust? After all, Abdol-Hossein Sardari, head of the consular section of the Iranian embassy under the Vichy government, succeeded in convincing the Nazis that Iranian Jews were not Semites, thus saving their lives. He went a step further and issued 500 Iranian passports to non-Iranian Jews in France. Similarly, the Sultan of Morocco flatly refused to hand Moroccan Jews over to the Vichy government that ruled his country. But people such as these do not fit the paradigm of Muslim backwardness and outright evil, and so they go unmentioned.

As with Hirsi Ali, Manji's expertise on her subject is incomplete. Take the following statement: "The Koran appears to be organized by size of verse--from longer to shorter--and not by chronology of revelation. How can anyone isolate the "earlier" passages, let alone read into them the "authentic" message of the Koran? We have to own up to the fact that the Koran's message is all over the bloody map." This is simply not true. Each sura of the Koran is identified by whether it is "Meccan" or "Medinan," depending on whether it was revealed early in the Prophet's spiritual life or later on, during his hegira in Medina. Some verses are addressed to specific communities of believers. Others refer to specific historical events. All of these details help establish temporal contextualization. The study of the Koran's chronology is a whole field unto itself. In addition, and despite having written a book called The Trouble With Islam Today, Manji has not taken the trouble of learning to speak, read and write Arabic fluently, nor of visiting any Muslim country. She left Uganda at the age of 4 and has absolutely no experience of what it is like to live in a Muslim country. Would a scholar who has written a book about China without bothering to speak Chinese or visit the country be taken seriously?

Despite its careful sourcing, Manji's book is a narrow polemic, selectively citing events and anecdotes that fit one paradigm only: Muslim savagery, which of course is contrasted with Western enlightenment. Several of Manji's claims about the Arab world are based on articles translated by the nonprofit organization Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which was founded by Col. Yigal Carmon, a twenty-two-year veteran of military intelligence in Israel with the goal of exploring the Middle East "through the region's media." MEMRI focuses on the following areas: Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Palestine, Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey. There are three general observations that can be made about MEMRI's work. One is that it consistently picks the most violent, hateful rubbish it can find, translates it and distributes it in e-mail newsletters to media and members of Congress in Washington. The second is that MEMRI does not translate comparable articles published in Israel, although the country is not only a part of the Middle East but an active party to some of its most searing conflicts. For instance, when the right-wing Israeli politician Effi Eitam referred to Israel's Palestinian citizens as a "cancer," MEMRI did not pick up this story. The third is that this organization is now the main source of media articles on the region of Islam, a far greater and far more diverse whole than the individual countries it lists. The reliance on MEMRI highlights Manji's lack of direct, unmediated exposure to the news media of the area about which she expresses such fierce convictions.

A very long and thoughtful article by another Islamic woman.

Oh, and according to that author and that article, "[Irshad Manji] supported the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the "war on terror."

Because reform is best delivered through genocide, I guess.

[ 08 January 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

Irshad is a shill for the anti-Muslim crowd, plain and simple. She's what we call in the anti-racism biz a "native informant" who simply parrots the mainstream Islamophobic bullcrap and gives said bullcrap legitimacy because she herself is Muslim.

By that definition she ain't no progressive that I can support. I'm with Frustrated Mess and unionist.

[ 08 January 2008: Message edited by: bigcitygal ]

I don't know if Laila Lalami - author of the long Nation article quoted above - is or not a Muslim. She merely identifies as an assistant professor of creative writing. But I like her review - "Beyond the Veil" - of historian Joan Wallach Scott's "The Politics of the Veil", about the hoopla around schoolgirls' headscarves in France, presently being re-played out in Quebec by Christian and secularist hardliners for opposite reasons.

[ 08 January 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

But why is it a Muslim female that bears the brunt of righteous indignation against "warmongering" when so many Christian males get routinely away with "supporting intervention"? Could it be because we're supposed to be doing it "for them"? Marketed as the voice of oppressed Muslim women, she embodies the brass ring, the ideological pretext for the West to invade and occupy Afghanistan for as long as it will take to secure a strategic position, precious oil route – not to mention all that Afghan poppy that must be lining some coffers… As always, women used as avatars, currency for interactions between males that go scot-free when it’s women that are attacked.

[ 08 January 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

I seem to be the only person here who has actually read her book, which by the way is called The Trouble With Islam.

I don't recommend it to anyone who professes to be a "progressive" of any kind. Unionist's description of her politics is quite apt.

quote:Originally posted by martin dufresne:
But why is it a Muslim female that bears the brunt of righteous indignation against "warmongering" when so many Christian males get routinely away with "supporting intervention"?

You've seen unionist and other left-wing babblers let Christian males "get away with" "supporting intervention"? What are you talking about?

quote:Originally posted by martin dufresne:
Just about every Christian editorialist and political leader in Canada is mouthing platitudes justifying our war activities in the Mid-East and the need not to retreat too soon, yet it is a relatively powerless Muslim woman that is being foregrounded and vilified here. I find that worth mentioning and looking into.

You're right. I also forgot to vilify Hitler and Stalin. And Genghis Khan. This is clearly a racist and sexist conspiracy. Well sleuthed, Sherlock!