'I'm Very Much At Peace with Being Gay and Muslim': Irshad Manji - BBC Newsnight

Head to Head – What Is Wrong with Islam Today?

Irshad Manji Head to Head with Mehdi Hassan

Head to Head - What Is Wrong with Islam Today?

Is there really a problem with Islam today? Critics see Muslim women as downtrodden and sectarian conflict dominates the headlines, but for many Muslims this is a gross misrepresentation. In this episode of Head to Head at the Oxford Union, Mehdi Hasan challenges controversial Canadian author Irshad Manji, writer of The Trouble with Islam Today and also Allah, Liberty and Love on the need to reform Islam, the notion of Ijtihad, the problem of Islamophobia and what Muslims need to own-up to.

WIKI: Ijtihad »

Manji: Allah Made Gays and Lesbians, Too
MALAYSIA KINI: INTERVIEW Unapologetic for her defence of the gay and lesbian lifestyle, controversial liberal-Islam author Irshad Manji has challenged critics to explain how Allah, in all His glory, could have made “misfits or abominations”.

“Again, (going) back to the Quran, everybody is a deliberate act of creation on God's part. So even gays and lesbians have been created by God,” the Uganda-born Canadian said in an exclusive interview last week. Read on (log in necessary) » | Hazlan Zakaria | Tuesday, May 22, 2012

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Irshad Manji’s Book to Be Banned If It Contravenes Teachings of Sunnah Wal Jamaah
BORNEO POST: KUALA LUMPUR: The government will issue a ban on Irshad Manji’s book and publication if their content contravened the teachings of the Sunnah Wal Jamaah, Home Ministry Publication and Quranic Text Control Division secretary Abd Aziz Md Nor said.

Irshad’s book, entitled ‘Allah, Liberty and Love”, which was translated into Malay language, had also been forwarded to the Malaysian Islamic Development Department to be studied.

“This is because the book is believed to have contained elements that can deviate Muslims from their faith and elements which insulted Islam,” he said in a statement here. Read on and comment » | Tuesday, May 22, 2012

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Malaysia: Probe Book by Liberal Islamic Activist, Ministry Urged
THE STAR: ALOR SETAR: Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom has called on the Home Ministry to carry out an immediate probe into a book authored by liberal Islamic activist Irshad Manji.

He said the Malaysian Islamic Development Department’s (Jakim) analysis of the book, entitled Islam, Liberty and Love, revealed that it was filled with words insulting Islam.

“The decision to ban the book is the prerogative of the Home Ministry. We (Jakim) can only advise them as our analysis found that the book is dangerous for the Muslims,” he said yesterday.

Irshad, who openly supported Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) lifestyles, was reported to have arrived in Malaysia on Thursday to launch her new book.

The launch of the Bahasa Malaysia version of the book under the title Allah, Kebebasan dan Cinta took place at the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall on Saturday.

She left for New York on Saturday night.

Irshad had also authored a book entitled The Problem With Islam Today which offended Muslims worldwide and contained the same idealism as Salman Rushdie, the author of the novel The Satanic Verses. »

THE JAKARTA POST: Irshad Manji injured in mob attack in Yogya » | The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thursday, May 10, 2012

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Indonésie : au nom de l'islam, les intégristes menacent Irshad Manji
Violences multiples et annulations de conférences
ACTUALITTÉ: Les temps changent, déplore Irshad Manji, auteure canadienne qui se revendique comme musulmane. « Voilà quatre ans, je suis venue en Indonésie, et j'ai rencontré une nation de tolérance, d'ouverture et de pluralisme. Les temps ont changé. » Et pour cause, alors qu'elle devait se rendre dans le pays pour une tournée littéraire, elle s'est heurtée… aux extrémistes religieux.

Alors qu'elle décrivait auparavant l'Indonésie comme une terre de modération importante dans l'islam, elle s'est retrouvée dans un pays de colère et de menaces. Et les différents événements auxquels elle devait prendre part ont finalement été annulés. Son livre est jugé par les extrémistes comme un danger, provoquant des manifestations violentes, où une proche de Irshad Manji, Emily Rees, a été blessée, frappée par une barre de métal.

Avec 204 millions de musulmans, l'Indonésie est le plus grand pays du monde, intégrant une majorité musulmane forte. Or, face aux intégristes, les écrits d'Irshad Manji ne pouvaient pas rencontrer le succès. Prônant un islam progressif, en 2003 avec The Trouble With Islam Today, elle venait cette fois présenter Allah, Liberty and Love, toujours dans la même veine. » | Par Clément S. | lundi 14 mai 2012

Salman Rushdie - Islamic Societies Are Based on "Honour & Shame" and the Repression

The Hour – Irshad Manji: Osama Bin Laden's Worst Nightmare!

Debate: Protecting European Critics of Islam

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age –Paperback, direct from the publishers (UK)

’The Trouble with Manji’
Photo of Irshad Manji courtesy of Tehelka
TEHELKA: Irshad Manji walks a dangerous path, claiming her right as a believer to criticise and interpret Islam. SALIL TRIPATHI talks to her after the release of her new film
Irshad Manji moved to Canada when she was four, a refugee from the tyranny of Idi Amin's Uganda, when Asians were given sixty days to pack up and leave the country. The daughter of an Indian father and an Egyptian mother, Manji settled into her new home, her family seeking the migrant's comfort from the familiar certainties of the community and the faith.



But Manji was a spunky child (and now she is a spunky adult), and she was quick to notice the contrast between her secular, public school, and the religious madrasa which she attended on weekends. Early in her controversial best-seller, "The Trouble With Islam Today," she notices a contrast. A senior teacher disapproves of her locker displaying stickers supporting the Ayatollah's revolution in Iran. He bristles at her insubordination, but does not stop her, or discipline her, grudgingly respecting her right to defy. And then there is the religious teacher, who sternly admonishes her each time she questions particular religious passages that bother her. Hers was not to reason why; hers but to obey and cry. Or else.

When Manji persisted, wanting to know more about a class in which the teacher cites particularly venomous passages criticising the Jews, and insisted on seeing the original text, she was admonished. The mosque had a library but it was accessible only in one part of the mosque (which was of course segregated between men and women) and as she had passed the age of puberty – she had just entered her teens – she could go to the library only at particular hours, after the men present there had vacated the area. And there, she found books in an alien tongue, and an undecipherable script.



She continued to question, and her teacher gave her an ultimatum – accept his command or leave. And she left, seeking refuge yet again in her life, this time in a public library. There, she found an English translation of the Koran, and as she read more into the book, she also came across a concept that her teacher never mentioned. And as she was to discover later in life, it was not only that teacher who denied the existence of that term; so did, it seems, most maulvis and imams and scholars who spoke in the name of Islam.



It was the concept of ijtihad, a term that means you arrive at an independent interpretation of the faith, applying reason. It means yanking Islam from the 7th century to the 21st, fast-forwarding it, making it relevant in present times, removing it from the siege mentality that views the non-believer as an enemy, dividing the world between the unbeliever and the apostate, treating the words in a book as divinely-ordained, and putting to sword anyone who challenges its supremacy. "What was relevant a thousand years ago is no longer relevant today," she says disarmingly.



She is in London promoting her film, "Faith without Fear," about her quest to capture the essence of Islam. She is a senior scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy, and writes extensively on Islam and modernity. At the New York University, she is launching a new project on moral courage, where, she says, her inspiration is the non-violent civil disobedience and passive resistance of Mohandas Gandhi. The Trouble with Manji >>>

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)