Irshad Manji's has addressed: the Oxford Union, the United Nations Press Corps, the Pentagon, the Swedish Defense Research Agency, and the Amsterdam-based Archives of the International Women’s Movement. She is a frequent guest on media as varied as NPR, FOX and the BBC. Her writings can be found in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, OUT, Time and Glamour. Oprah Winfrey recently honored Irshad with her first annual Chutzpah Award for “audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction.” Ms. magazine has named Irshad a “Feminist for the 21st Century.” And this past June, she received the Simon Wiesenthal Award of Valor.

Vibes Editor-in-Chief, Aisha F. Sarwari speaks to Manji about Islamic Feminism, on her own rebellion against the literalist mindset of Muslims, and the seeming contradictions in her book, Trouble With Islam.

VIBES: "Irshad Manji" has become an icon to represent “the Muslim Refusenik,” the one who rejects the established social construct of what it means to be a Muslim woman. But tell us what a lot of people miss out on when they see you only as this person. Who is the real Irshad Manji and what experiences led her to abandon her need to “belong” and claim the refusenik identity?

Irshad Manji: I believe it was Joseph Campbell, the scholar of myths, who said that belonging is the highest level of consciousness. But I’m less sure. The hunger to belong makes people vulnerable to groupthink, and I’m suspicious of groupthink no matter what its source. I guess that’s why I don’t seek to be anybody’s “leader.” As a rational human being, I reserve the right to change my mind based on where the evidence takes me. If you set yourself up as the leader, people will too often feel betrayed when you evolve. That’s definitely a fear of mine. So when young Muslims approach me after public events to say, “Tell me the next step in Operation Ijtihad,” I say: “I’ve got a lot of questions but not a whole lot of answers. What do you think?”

Which brings me to what many people don’t yet get about my motives: I’ve written this book as an act of faith rather than a repudiation of it. Because I believe that Muslims are capable of being more thoughtful and humane than our clerics currently gives us credit for, I call myself a Muslim Refusenik. Let me explain what I mean by that phrase. I don’t mean that I refuse to be a Musliim – which should be obvious because why would I put myself on the front line of so much anger, hate and venom if I was indifferent or hostile to Islam? Rather, by referring to myself as a “Muslim Refusenik” I mean that I refuse to join an army of automatons in the name of God. As a supporter of universal human rights, I applauded the Soviet refuseniks who wouldn’t cooperate with a soulless and totalitarian system. Likewise, I defend the right of Israeli refuseniks to protest the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In the same spirit of conscientious dissent, I am a Muslim Refusenik.

But I’ve never been satisfied merely with criticizing. I always try to be constructive, and I find that many Muslims are so enraged by my critique that they can’t – or won’t – get past their emotion to acknowledge that I also outline a solution based in Islam itself. In this age of instant gratification, public intellectuals and activists are expected to sacrifice nuance at the altar of taking easy, lazing “sides.” However, sloganeering is no substitute for thinking.

VIBES: If you were to prioritize your identity tiers, what would come first? Muslim? Lesbian? Woman? Human?

Irshad Manji: Thinker. That’s first and foremost my “identity.” Being a thinker means that you’re fluid, not confined to pigeonholes. You have the right – and sometimes the responsibility – to change your mind. Being a thinker also means that you avoid fundamentalisms of your own because once something becomes an orthodoxy, you’ve stopped thinking. (I think.)

I relate to a young Muslim woman who recently wrote to me about her transition from a literalist to a liberal Muslim. She confessed her fear that “I’ll become as steeped in my liberalism as my brethren are in the fundamentalism.” But, she added, “if I must dabble in the gutter of uncertainties before I evolve a faith based on conviction and not superstition, then so be it. It is a risk worth taking. And the loneliness which results is a small price to pay.” There’s something to be said for having the courage of your confusions.

VIBES: You haven’t denounced Islam as a way to live, but have redefined what that interpretation could be in a modern context. Why didn’t you simply opt out and deny Islam a link to your identity?

Irshad Manji: There’s a concrete reason that I’ve chosen to remain within the fold, even if others would rather see me leave. Islam has provided me with a set of values – including discipline – that serves as a counter-weight to the secular materialism of life in North America. I could easily have become a runaway materialist, a robotic mall-rat who resorts to retail therapy whenever she experiences a problem. Islam introduces competing values, and therefore injects a tension that provides an incentive to think and struggle for more balanced existence.

VIBES: Can you empathize, if not support why some Muslims are irked about you still calling yourself a Muslim? Do you use this Quranic verse to support your sexuality: "Such is He who knows all that this beyond the reach of a created being's perception as well as all that can be witnessed by a creature's senses or mind: the Almighty Dispenser of Grace, who makes excellent everything He creates." Quran 32:6-7. If so, isn’t this a little far fetched?

Irshad Manji: It’s understandable why some Muslims – and perhaps more than just “some” – feel irked that I continue to see myself as a Muslim. I suppose it’s a sign of progress that that I’ve been told to leave Islam. In other times, this would have amounted to apostasy, which in turn is punishable for women by imprisonment or flogging. I’m privileged to be given a free pass.

All such talk presumes that Islam is a club whose members must play by the rules. But who makes the rules? First and foremost, the Koran. Okay then, let’s consult the Koran. As I illustrate in my book, the Koran – like all the religious texts – is rife with ambiguities, inconsistencies and outright contradictions. I don’t believe that saying this is a slur against Islam, the Koran or Allah. Suppose the contradictions are intentional as a way to make us think and keep us humble? After all, the verse that you cite – “such is He who knows all that is beyond the reach of a created being’s perception…” – suggests that only God knows fully the truth of anything.

Which is why there’s room for debate and discussion, even about sexuality. I acknowledge that the Koran contains passages implying that homosexuality can’t be tolerated. It also contains passages implying that Allah knows what he’s doing when he designs the world’s breathtaking diversity. In addition to the verse that says, “God makes excellent everything He creates,” there are others that say “God creates whom He will” and that nothing God creates is “in vain.” How do my detractors reconcile those statements with their utter condemnation of homosexuals? Notice I’m not saying that I’m right – I don’t know that I am. The question is: what makes my critics so sure they are right? And in claiming to be right, how do they know they’re not usurping God’s jurisdiction as the supreme judge and jury?

There’s something else worth pointing out. Those Muslims who insist that one perspective must take precedence over another, if only for the sake of social order, neglect another question: how do we know it’s the anti-gay verses that take precedence over all else? Why don’t the pro-diversity verses get that honor? It seems to me that no matter how you slice it, Muslims who wish to live “by the book” have no choice but to make choices about what to emphasize and what do downplay. Selectiveness is inevitable. I recognize my own selectiveness, but at least I’m honest enough to own up to it.

And so I select – choose – to see the bigger point that the Koran makes about diversity: “If God had pleased, he would have made you all one people. But he has done otherwise, that he might try you in what he has given to you. Press forward in your good works.” In my view, what a passage like this shows is not just the virtue of tolerating difference. It shows that pluralism is both divine and deliberate.

If that’s a far-fetched interpretation, then it’s a mistake for which I’ll pay on the Day of Judgment. Meanwhile, I’m not asking Muslims to accept my sexuality. I actually don’t seek anybody’s approval save for that of my Creator. God made me and only God can unravel me. All I do ask Muslims to accept is that the answers are not a given.

VIBES: Anyone who tries to speak their mind about Islam and Muslims has to face a barrage of credibility questions, such as: “do you pray?” and “why do you feel a need to question Islam?” Or simpler fatwas like: “There is no such thing as a gay Muslim!” How do you reconcile the conflict of not taken seriously within the larger Muslim community?

Irshad Manji: Change always starts from the fringe, doesn’t it? There are many Muslims who dismiss my ideas and always will. That’s their right. But the reason I post feedback on my website is to show that there are also many Muslims who DO take these ideas seriously. Whether they’re angered, elated or ambivalent, they’re moved to think – and then to write. If being “taken seriously” means having a passive and intellectually inert following, what’s serious about that?

VIBES: Critics say that there is a credibility issue with your book, The Trouble With Islam, even at an academic level, because yours are opinions and not scholarly research. How would you respond to that?

Irshad Manji: By reminding them that their criticisms are also opinions – highly selective ones. As I make clear on page one, all of my claims are corroborated by sources and contextual notes posted on my website. (I chose not to include them in the book itself because doing so would interrupt the flow of a conversational open letter, as well as adding to the price of the book and killing trees needlessly.) What are my sources? They range from The Koran to United Nations reports to conference proceedings to academic journals to first-person interviews. It’s true that I write in a populist way, which some would call democratic.

VIBES: I would like you to take time and explain how troubling Islam is when it comes to women’s status in society. Is the trouble really with Islam, or with very macho interpretations?

Irshad Manji: These are huge questions – and time is exactly what I’ll need in order to answer them from my perspective! When you ask, “Is the trouble really with Islam or with very macho interpretations?” I immediately choose the latter because Islam is, indeed, open to interpretation. But does that mean macho interpretations are not Islam? How do we know that only female-friendly interpretations are Islam? We can always point to Islam’s feminist dimensions -- that Prophet Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija, was 15 years his senior and a self-made merchant who proposed marriage to him. That in his farewell sermon, the Prophet reportedly declared women to be partners, not property, of men. That the Koran itself contains progressive passages – for example, women may refuse marriage or impose conditions on it.

At the same time, I can’t in all honesty gloss over the Koran’s anti-female verses, and there’s no shortage of those, too. Such as the one that proclaims to men: “Women are your fields. Go, then, into your fields and do as you please.” Do as you please? Isn’t that a rationale for unchecked power? Elsewhere, the Koran says that men, by spending money to “maintain” women, can claim authority over women. This verse has actually influenced a human rights charter adopted by Muslim countries. That charter, known as the Cairo Declaration and adopted in 1990, makes it clear that husbands must be the providers of their families. It doesn’t take a theologian to see that if husbands must be the bread-winners, and if the Koran states that men can lord it over women by virtue of “spending wealth” on them, you’ve got the religious underpinnings of a serious power imbalance.

The bottom line is this: When it comes to women’s equality, the Koran is as contradictory as the Bible or the Torah. Like any other holy text, the Koran contains verses that are both hostile and friendly towards women. It goes back to something I said earlier – that Muslims who wish to live “by the book” have no choice but to make choices about what to emphasize and what do downplay. So if there’s room for female-friendly interpretations – and, yes, I think there is – then why do we overwhelming see interpretations that subjugate women? Why is that choice made over and over again?

This is where we encounter another factor in the contemporary practice of Islam. From what I can tell, it’s one of the least discussed yet most pivotal factors in how Islamic laws get drafted, then applied. That factor is Arab cultural imperialism. Take the hijab or any of its sister spinoffs – the chador, the abaya, etc. These coverings emanate from Arab culture, not from a decree in the Koran itself. Why, then, do women in post-revolutionary Iran have to wear the chador from head-to-toe? A garment designed by a mullah (surprise, surprise) and, to boot, a mullah from the Middle East?

Now let’s consider the effect of another heavy-duty import -- “honour.” Honour is an Arab cultural tradition that requires a woman to sacrifice her individuality in order to protect the reputation of the men in her life. In effect, honour turns women into communal property. Their lives don’t belong to them; their lives belong to their families and their wider communities. So that when they “shame” themselves by breaking a moral code (or “dishonouring”), they’re shaming a larger group of people – with punishments being commensurately large.

Let me emphasize: In principle, honour can and should be separated from Islam. I often hear the warning not to confuse culture with religion. And it’s theoretically quite accurate that Islam and honour need not be synonymous. But in actuality, honour has become enmeshed in the way Islam is widely practiced.

The challenge for all of us is to give Musilm women an incentive to question this honor-bound existence. In my book, I propose a global campaign to do that. I call this non-military campaign, “Operation Ijtihad.” Operation Ijtihad revolves around liberating the entrepreneurial talents of Muslim women by providing them with micro-business loans. When women have money that they’ve earned themselves, they’re more likely to start the crucial task of questioning their lot. They can afford school and – this is sweet – according to the Koran, they won’t have to remain under their husbands’ authority since it won’t be their husbands who are spending wealth to maintain them. In fact, a whole host of Koranic passages can be re-read when Muslim women have assets of their own.

Notice that the point of Operation Ijtihad is not merely economic development, though that, in and of itself, ain’t such a bad goal. Rather, the point is economic development with a twist; economic development that unleashes an incentive to think critically about the Koran by focusing on that group of Muslims who are most oppressed by a rigid reading of the Koran – women.

VIBES: Do you think Muslim women look toward a male savior to give them their rights? And why is it that no Muslim women in their power reign were unable to do much for women’s empowerment in their countries?

Irshad Manji: Many Muslim women don’t look toward a mortal male saviour at all – they consider their rights to be God-given. (And, as we know, God is considered to be gender-free in most interpretations of Islam.) Other Muslim women do look toward a male saviour, in the incarnation of a mullah, for example, to tell them what their rights are. You then ask why no Muslim women leaders have been able to do much for women’s empowerment in their countries. I’m sure that Jordan’s Queen Noor and now Queen Rania would take great umbrage at that premise! I’ve heard close friends of their s argue that because of their influence, micro-credit for Muslim women is thriving in Jordan while the country’s penal code has been reformed to punish honour killings. What I think is indisputable is that there hasn’t been enough empowerment of Muslim women under their female leaders.

I don’t pretend to have the full answer as to why. But something an Italian journalist recently told me does make sense. She said that in her “religion-drenched” and “machismo-driven” culture, women accepted their second-class status until popular images of their rights changed. She specifically cited their soap operas. When these TV programs began promoting female heroines with an almost divine defense of their rights, women all over Italy started standing up to husbands who beat them. I don’t know that any Muslim woman leader has gone out of her way to promote Islam’s heroines – from Khadija, without whose advice the Prophet would have never been convinced to accept his mission, to Aisha, whom some quietly describe as the first caliph, to Rabi’ah, the former slave who decided that she didn’t need a husband to be whole. Islam’s history has the raw material to ensure women’s empowerment. We’re still waiting for a female (or male) leader who’s willing to risk power in an effort to publicize that far and wide.

VIBES: Did the “Trouble With Islam” accentuate or perhaps even begin after 9/11? Do you believe the Quran does advocate violence as self-defense in this context?

Irshad Manji: As I see it, the trouble with Islam is that only in Islam is literalism going mainstream – worldwide. In my book, I make the case that this problem began well before 9/11. Was it 25 years ago, when the Iranian revolution took off, when the U.S.-backed Zia al-Haq began the “Islamicization” of Pakistan, and when the the PLO began marinating Palestinian textbooks in militant religious language? Was it 30 years ago, when oil began gushing from the sands of Saudi Arabia and petro-dollars became a source of global jihad? Was it 150 years ago, when the Ottoman empire failed in its attempt to end forced veiling, the Muslim role in the African slave trade, and the banning of Christians and Jews from the Prophet’s homeland? Was it 600 years ago, when the Arab-Muslim empire fell into the hands of non-Arabs, at which point the Damascus-based intellectual, Ibn Tammiya, popularized the “purity” of rigid Islam? Was it more than 800 years ago, when the gates of ijtihad or independent reasoning were deliberately slammed shut, when 135 schools of thought in Sunni Islam were whittled down to four schools, and when scholars risked execution by questioning, never mind overturning, existing fatwas?

I give all this detail because it helps explain why 9/11 cannot be seen as the launch of the trouble with Islam – of literalism going mainstream.

To this day, we Muslims, including those of us in the West, are routinely raised to believe that because the Koran comes after the Torah and the Bible – chronologically and historically – it is the final and therefore perfect manifesto of God’s will. That it’s not given to the kinds of inconsistencies and ambiguities and human corruptions like those other revelations. No, even moderate Muslims will affirm for each other that the Koran is not like any other holy book. It’s the summit of spirituality and none shall come after it.

This supremacy complex is dangerous because when abuse happens under the banner of Islam, the majority of Muslims don’t yet know how to debate or dissent. After all, most of us have never been introduced to the possibility, let alone the virtue, of asking questions about our holy book. The same, I would humbly suggest, cannot be said of moderate Christians and Jews today.

And what kinds of questions can we be asking? Like the one you just did: is it possible that the Koran does advocate (or, more precisely, justify) the violence of a 9/11? It is possible. I realize that such a statement will outrage Muslim lobbyists, who already feel on the defensive and might very sincerely believe that the Koran does no such thing. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we heard various Muslim spokespeople claim that the Koran is crystal-clear about when violent jihad can and can’t be pursued, and that the terrorists unquestionably crossed the line.

Let me quote one Muslim American scholar who typified this perspective: Allah “says in unequivocal terms that to kill an innocent human being is like killing entire humanity.” But the verse that he describes as “unequivocal” is actually more vague. Here’s how it fully reads: “We laid it down for the Israelites,” meaning those who believe in one God, “that whoever killed a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all mankind.” The clause starting with “except” can be used by militant Muslims to fuel their jihads.

That’s precisely how Nicholas Berg’s executioners justified their travesty. It’s also how bin Laden rationalized his call for a holy jihad against the United States and Israel in the late 1990s. Of course, you can argue that this passage is being politically exploited – and, indeed, it is. The point, however, is that it can’t be exploited if it didn’t exist in the first place.

Just as moderate Christians and Jews acknowledge the nasty sides of their holy texts, modern Muslims ought to come clean about how our sacred script can be used to inform terror. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to effectively question the actions that flow from certain readings of it. All we’ll be doing is chanting that the terrorists broke the rules, without
coming to terms with where they got their concept of “the rules”. In which case, we’ll only be sanitizing what we’d rather not hear.

VIBES: What is the gist of your message to Naseeb Vibes, educated, computer literate and politically aware Muslims of this generation, for many of whom, this is their first introduction to you?

Irshad Manji: Because I hear from so many young Muslims, both in North America and around the world, I know that there’s a lot of support for these ideas. Yet there’s even more fear about going public with that support. Many young Muslims tell me that they’re afraid of persecution – violence against themselves and their families from fellow Muslims. Others tell me that they’re afraid of creating tension among their parents, their peers or their ideological allies. With that in mind, my message to Naseeb Vibes is the one that Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

King’s fellow clergymen – broad-minded, “liberal” Christians – wanted him to stop fomenting needless tension in their town of Birmingham, Alabama. King told them: “I must confess that am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, non-violent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so we must see the need for non-violent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.” King didn’t run away from epithets, labels and smears. Neither should Muslims who uphold the universality of human rights.

VIBES: What does the concept of Ijtehad mean to you? Is there any room for reform in Islam?

Irshad Manji: Ijtihad is Islam’s lost tradition of independent reasoning. If the Koran wasn’t clear on an issue, and if the hadiths didn’t offer a ready answer, then ijtihad could be invoked to reason our way through a dilemma. In the early decades of Islam, 135 schools of thought flourished thanks to the spirit of ijtihad. In Muslim Spain, scholars would teach their students to abandon ‘expert’ opinion if their own conversations with the ambiguous Koran came up with better evidence for their ideas. And Cordoba, one of the most sophisticated cities in Muslim Spain, housed 70 libraries. That rivals the number of libraries in many cosmopolitan cities today. When I or Naseeb Vibes emphasizes ijtihad, we’re not asking our fellow Muslims to import a foreign virtue into the faith. We’re asking Muslims to re-discover the very tradition that once allowed Islamic civilization to lead the world in curiosity, creativity, cultural interdependence and, ultimately, innovation.

Based on that precedent, I do believe that there’s room for reform in the practice of Islam. But reviving independent thought will first mean helping progressive Muslims transcend their fear of persecution. I’m working with a number of them to do just that.

VIBES: Tell us about 2-3 role models who had the most significant influence on your life and belief system?

Irshad Manji: You mean besides the Soviet refuseniks of the previous generation and the Israeli refuseniks of today? I would say Socrates, who championed the value of asking questions, MLK Jr, who believed in jolting all people out of complacency, and Khadija, whose private and public leadership might be a touchstone of any liberal Islamic reformation.

Which teases out an idea: What do your readers think of producing an epic film about Khadija? Who should play the leading role – and is it possible (even necessary) to depict this woman in film, or would that amount to promoting idolatrous imagery? Questions, questions…