by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Controversy is nothing new to 35-year-old Toronto-based broadcaster Irshad Manji. It began with her Islamic religious education at a West Coast madressa, when, at 14, she was expelled for asking her conservative teacher too many questions. And it certainly won't die down now that she's published her most recent book, The Trouble With Islam: A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change.

In it, she charges that Islamic literalists - whom she says compose the mainstream - have committed a host of ills in God's name: the depredations suffered by Muslim women everywhere, from Afghanistan to Richmond, B.C., where she grew up; anti-Semitism, from Saudi Arabia to Toronto; and a close-minded, unquestioning demand of submission and obedience to God's laws, as laid down in the Koran.

She also says, to the outrage of many Muslims and leftists, that Israel is a bastion of tolerance and democracy in the Middle East, and reluctantly backed the war in Iraq. Critics have said her writing is not only heretical, but also based on misinterpretation and lack of context. Excerpts from her book, however, were published in the National Post, and The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The Gazette and Maclean's have profiled her.

Interweaving her book with personal reminiscences, scholarship and reportage, she points an accusing finger at the Muslim establishment for refusing to admit the problems that ail Islam or that it is stifled by victimization neuroses. She exhorts a return to the lost tradition of ijtihad, a spirit of free, independent thought that flourished during Islam's Golden Age between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. The committed feminist, lesbian and struggling Muslim has received several threats on her life.

She sat down with the Mirror last week, accompanied by a bodyguard.

Mirror: Were security worries going through your head when you were writing the book?

Irshad Manji: Sure they were, absolutely. How could they not? Intellectually, I knew that this book would anger a lot of people. But emotionally, how do you come to terms with that? It's always the trick. And if you try to reconcile yourself emotionally and intellectually to the possible risks here, then you probably won't meet your deadlines.

M: When I was reading your book, it seemed that one of your biggest problems was not so much with Islam as a religion in general, but with the [ultra-conservative Saudi Arabian] Wahhabist sect, desert tribalism and Arab chauvinism.

IM: Actually, unlike many Islamic scholars, I'm arguing that the trouble with Islam is much, much greater, because the gates to ijtihad shut tight towards the end of the 11th century. Ultimately, part of the trouble with Islam is that Arab imperialism has become confused with Islam by Muslims.

So much of what uncritically thinking Muslims accept as proper Islam is actually [derived from] the ways of the desert. From the Arabic language, to the chador, to which way we're going to pray - there is too much Arab imperialism in the way Islam is promoted as properly practised.

Defying conventional wisdom

M: You defy certain stereotypes. You're young, you're educated, you live in Toronto, you're cosmopolitan - and yet you seem to be easy on things like the war in Iraq.

IM: I don't think I was easy on it all, to tell you the truth. If by easy you mean that, ultimately I side with the Americans, well, yeah, but I don't think that means being easy on the war in Iraq.

I do say that, in a very imperfect world, and it is a very imperfect world, if the invasion of Iraq should have a human rights spinoff, then I grudgingly support that. Because ultimately, as someone who comes from the political tradition of the left, my heart and my brain are with universal human rights.

M: You say you were illuminated by your trip to Israel. You say that it's a multi-cultural, functioning democracy, but you acknowledge some problems it has, such as being dominated by religious fundamentalists like Ariel Sharon and Netanyahu -

IM: No. No, I wouldn't say that at all actually. The vast majority of Israelis are secular. What I did find is that, yes, Israel is a multi-ethnic, pluralistic democracy in which religious minorities can not just survive but even thrive. I dream of the day when there is a Muslim country that lives up to that level of diversity.

A question of tolerance

M: So what do you think is behind this reluctance to open up a multi-cultural, liberal, human-rights-based, gay-friendly, women-friendly society?

IM: I talk in the book about the neurotic depth of conspiracy-mongering that happens throughout the Muslim world. For example, to take it back to Canada, in the one and only episode of Queer Television [which she hosted] that aired a story about gay and lesbian Muslims worldwide, the most common complaint that I got from Toronto-area Muslims who caught the program was that these people who were on the show weren't Muslims at all. They must have been Jews!

Another element that's certainly related is that, because of the ban on independent thinking for the last 1,000 years, there's a tendency within Islam simply to imitate. And, because of a long-practiced code of discrimination, the Pact of Umar [the eighth century accord that required Jews and Christians under Muslim rule to pay an extra tax, but allowed religious freedoms], the legacy of that is, when you combine the closing of the gates of ijtihad with the long-practiced code of discrimination, what do you get? On the one hand, you get imitation, and on the other intolerance. And ultimately what you get is the imitation of intolerance.

Beyond the chador

M: You say, as does the World Bank, as do feminists around the world, that empowering women is the key to development. What implications would an empowered female half of humanity have on reforming Islam?

IM: What I'm arguing in the book is that Operation Ijtihad, a non-military approach to economic empowerment of women, is crucial to allowing women to question their lot and in so doing transform the really problematic notion of honour. [We need to] transform the notion of honour into the notion of dignity, of reciprocity as individuals. That's the first step.

Media is another key player. Popular images [can be] transformed, young Muslim women can come to realize that it's possible to stand on their own two feet, to contribute to the family wealth, to be part and parcel of a power-sharing arrangement - it's a long-term vision that involves not just the World Bank but also the United Nations and student activists right here in the West. There are many players in all of this, and in many ways, that's what makes it a global campaign for reforming Islam.

The Trouble with Islam: A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change, Random House, PB, 256PP, $22.95