The Trouble with Islam: A Wake-Up Call for Honesty and Change

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

The Trouble with Islam is a fresh, bold portrait of totalitarianism in
mainstream Islam, and of one woman’s war on the mentality that
imprisons and enslaves Muslim women in the Occupied Territories of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip east of Israel. Irshad Manji calls herself
a “Muslim Refusenik,” a phrase adapted from the original
refuseniks—Soviet Jews who fought for religious and personal freedom
when their communist masters refused to let them immigrate to Israel.
Manji sees Islam’s totalitarianism as violating the human rights of
both women and religious minorities.

Her rebellion began in a Vancouver high school when she realized that
the Koran was not perfect and that it allowed for the exercise of free
will. After the trauma inflicted on Muslims in general by the September
11, 2001, bombing of the World Trade Center in New York by Muslim
terrorist Osama Bin Laden, Manji began to learn about “ijtihad,” the
Islamic tradition of independent reasoning. Research revealed the
limitations on free thought imposed by the “mufti” or lawyer-priest.
Manji, by then an independently minded journalist and the producer of
“Queer Television,” found such restrictions intolerable.

In the summer of 2002, her work earned her an invitation to visit not
only Israel but also the Occupied Territories and the Gaza Strip. The
trip, which deepened her knowledge of Arab history, tribalism, and the
longstanding antagonism between Jews and Arabs, was a revelation. The
resulting book poses two queries: Why are we all being held hostage by
what’s happening between Palestinians and Israelis? And why are we
squandering the talents of women, fully half of God’s creation?

Manji’s practical suggestions for changes that could empower women,
promote respect for religious minorities, and encourage new ideas are
true to Islam’s tradition of independent thought. She boldly admits
that parts of the Koran incite hatred of Jews, and criticizes this
element of her faith along with the totalitarian impulses that she
observes in mainstream Islam. The Trouble with Islam, an unusual book
and a true wake-up call, deserves library space and a wide readership.