A Muslim calls for reform -- and she's a lesbian

(01-19) 04:00 PDT Jerusalem -- It's not hard to see why people react strongly to Irshad Manji. At 35, she's become a ubiquitous fixture on Canadian television, the smartest, hippest, most eloquent lesbian feminist Muslim you could ever hope to meet.

Manji, who is in the Bay Area today and Tuesday to talk about her new book, "The Trouble with Islam: A Wake-Up Call for Honesty and Change," leaves no stone unturned in her attack on the fault lines of her faith. She berates "sclerotic contemporary Islam" for turning its back on human rights, stifling freedom of thought and expression, oppressing women, encouraging slavery and fomenting anti-Semitism. She accuses the religion of standing silent in the face of terror and derides her fellow Muslims for becoming "brain-dead" and "automatons." She calls for an Islamic reformation, replacing jihad, or religious war, with ijtihad -- independent critical thinking for Muslims. And she says this reform most probably will come from places where Muslims are free from the stifling totalitarianism of the Islamic world.

"I am arguing that Muslims in the West have the best opportunity to revive ijtihad because it is here that we already enjoy the freedoms to think, express, challenge and be challenged without fear of state reprisal," says Manji.

"The major reform for which I am calling is all about questioning the divinity of the Koran. This is still the great unspoken taboo within Islam," she says.

Manji argues that crimes are being perpetrated under the banner of a religion which claims more than a billion adherents who have lost the ability to question their leaders.

"Amnesty International has documented that Pakistan sees honor killings at the rate of two per day, often with the name of Allah dripping from the lips of the murderers; that children are hustled into slavery in God's name in Mali, Mauritania and Northern Sudan; that women have to ask permission to travel from the men in their lives in Iran," she says.

"I acknowledge that every faith has its share of literalists but I do not believe that any society, culture, ethnicity or religion should be immune from scrutiny about human rights. I have so much faith in my faith and my fellow Muslims that I believe we are capable of being more humane and more thoughtful than we give ourselves credit for. This book is an act of faith, not a repudiation of it," she says.

Manji says she is driven to voice these concerns by her "passion for universal human rights and discontent with Islam on the basis of the way Muslims around the world continue to violate human rights, particularly for women and religious minorities. "It's not enough to chant that Islam is about peace," she says. "Prove it." She says she has been surprised by the passion - - for and against -- which the book has aroused.

"I have long suspected that there is a latent hunger, a craving for honest talk about Islam," she says. "Not everybody agrees with what I'm saying, but many people across the political and faith spectrum are telling me that they're breathing a sigh of relief that finally someone has stepped up to the plate from inside the faith to say 'We've got to let some air in.' "

But not everyone is inhaling. There is talk of a fatwa. She receives hate- mail and death threats by the megabyte and glories in posting them on her Web site, www.muslim-refusenik.com. She is accompanied by bodyguards at public appearances and has been denounced by her co-religionists for "poor scholarship" and "Muslim bashing." Critics have denounced her reading of Middle East politics. She says the Palestinians have been "betrayed by their own leadership" and accuses prominent Arab Muslims of working with Hitler to destroy the Jews.

In this post-9/11, era, Manji accepts that Muslims face increased problems but argues her book is timely and perhaps part of the solution.