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 Irshad Manji, 2007. Photo by Raquel Evita Saraswati. | |
| Nationality |  Canadian |
| Notable works | The Trouble with Islam Today, Faith Without Fear |
| Notable awards | Honorary Doctorate, University of Puget Sound, 2008 , World Economic Forum "Young Global Leader" |
| Website | |
| http://www.irshadmanji.com/ | |
| This article is of a series on |
| Criticism of religion |
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Irshad Manji (born 1968) is a Canadian author, journalist and an advocate of reform and progressive interpretation of Islam. Manji is director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University, which aims to teach young leaders to "challenge political correctness, intellectual conformity and self-censorship." She is also founder and president of Project Ijtihad, a charitable organization promoting a "tradition of critical thinking, debate and dissent" in Islam, among a "network of reform-minded Muslims and non-Muslim allies."
Manji is a well-known critic of traditional mainstream Islam and was described by The New York Times as "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare".
Manji's book, The Trouble with Islam Today (Initially published as "Trouble with Islam"), has been published in more than 30 languages, including Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Malay and Indonesian. Manji has produced a PBS documentary, "Faith Without Fear", chronicling her attempt to "reconcile her faith in Allah with her love of freedom". The documentary has been nominated for a 2008 Emmy Award. As a journalist, her articles have appeared in many publications, and she has addressed audiences ranging from Amnesty International to the United Nations Press Corps to the Democratic Muslims in Denmark to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. She has appeared on television networks around the world, including Al Jazeera, the CBC, BBC, MSNBC, C-SPAN, CNN, PBS, the Fox News Channel, the CBS Evening News, and Real Time with Bill Maher.
Biography
Early life and education
Manji was born in Uganda in 1968 to parents of Egyptian and Gujarati descent. Her family moved to Canada when she was four, as a result of Idi Amin's expulsion of Asians. She and her family settled near Vancouver in 1972, and she grew up attending both a secular and an Islamic religious school. Manji excelled in the secular environment but, by her own account, was expelled from her religious school for asking too many questions. For the next twenty years, she studied Islam via public libraries and Arabic tutors. Manji earned an honours degree in the history of ideas from the University of British Columbia. In 1990, she won the Governor General's Medal for top humanities graduate. She is openly gay.
Career
Manji worked as a legislative aide in the Canadian parliament, press secretary in the Ontario government, and speechwriter for the leader of the New Democratic Party. At age 24, she became the national affairs editorialist for the Ottawa Citizen and thus the youngest member of an editorial board for any Canadian daily. She was also a columnist for Ottawa's new LGBT newspaper Capital Xtra!.
Manji has since hosted or produced several public affairs programs on television, one of which won the Gemini, Canada’s top broadcasting prize. She participated in a regular segment on TVOntario's Studio 2 in the mid-1990s, representing liberal views in debates with conservative journalist Michael Coren. She later produced and hosted QT: QueerTelevision for the Toronto based Citytv in the late 1990s. Among the program's coverage of local and national LGBT issues, she also produced stories on the lives of gay people in the Muslim world. When she left the show, Manji donated the set's giant Q to the Pride Library at the University of Western Ontario.
In 2002, she became writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto's Hart House, from where she began writing The Trouble with Islam Today. From 2005 to 2006, she was a visiting fellow with the International Security Studies program at Yale University. She is currently a senior fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels. In January 2008, Manji joined New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service to spearhead the Moral Courage Project, an initiative to help young people speak truth to power within their own communities.
Manji has received numerous death threats. In an interview with Glenn Beck, Manji stated that the windows of her apartment are fitted with bullet-proof glass, primarily for the protection of her family.
"Muslim refusenik"
"Muslim refusenik" is a phrase Manji uses to identify herself as someone who refuses to "join an army of robots in the name of God." "Refusenik" is an English-Russian portmanteau word first used for Russian Jews refused permission to emigrate, and then for Israeli conscientious objectors who refused to do army service on the West Bank.
The Trouble with Islam Today
Main article: The Trouble with Islam TodayManji's book The Trouble with Islam Today was published by St. Martin's Press in 2004. It has since been translated into more than 30 languages. Manji offers several translations of the book (namely Arabic, Indonesian, Urdu, Malay and Persian) available for free-of-charge download on her website. To date, the Arabic translation alone has been downloaded more than a quarter of a million times. The book has been met with both praise and scorn from both Muslim and non-Muslim sources. Several reviewers have called the book "courageous" or "long overdue" while others have accused it of disproportionately targeting Muslims or lacking thorough scholarship.
Awards
Manji was awarded Oprah Winfrey's first annual Chutzpah Award for "audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction." Ms. Magazine named her a "Feminist for the 21st Century," and Immigration Equality gave her its Global Vision Prize. In 2006, The World Economic Forum selected her as a Young Global Leader. She has also been named a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the American Society for Muslim Advancement. In May 2008, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound.
Works
- Books
- The Trouble with Islam Today, 2004, ISBN 1-84018-837-5
- Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali appearance at the 92nd Street Y on The Trouble with Islam, audiobooks, 2006. ( ISBN 0-312-32699-8 )
- The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith, 2005, ISBN 0-312-32700-5
- Risking Utopia: On the edge of a new democracy, 1997, ISBN 1-55054-434-9
- Film
- Irshad's PBS documentary, Faith without Fear, follows her journey to reconcile faith and freedom. Released in 2007, the film depicts the personal risks Manji has faced as a Muslim reformer. She explores Islamism in Yemen, Europe and North America, as well as histories of Islamic critical thinking in Spain and elsewhere. . In 2007, it was a finalist for the National Film Board of Canada's Gemini Prize. It also won Gold at the New York Television Festival in 2008. In the same year, Faith Without Fear launched the 2008 Muslim Film Festival organized by the American Islamic Congress.
See also
References
- Irshad Manji
- http://www.irshadmanji.com/project-ijtihad
- Krauss, Clifford (2003-10-04). "An Unlikely Promoter of an Islamic Reformation". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2006-07-11.
- ^ Irshad Manji blog and official website » the-book
- America at a Crossroads . Faith without Fear | PBS
- YouTube - IrshadManjiTV's Channel
- http://www.irshadmanji.com/wp-content/files/2008/05/jakarta_post_weekender.pdf
- YouTube - Irshad Manji on Imran Siddiqui's VOA TV (Pakistan)- Part 2
- "Article on her homosexuality"
- Dale Smith, "Looking back on issue #1 of Capital Xtra!. Capital Xtra!, February 11, 2009.
- Irshad Manji's Official Website
- Irshad's Myspace Page.
- freeSpeech: Irshad Manji Sept. 18, 2006
- Who We Are
- Irshad Manji blog and official website » moral-courage-project
- http://www.irshadmanji.com/photos/death-threat-ummah-com.jpg
- Irshad Manji blog and official website » Memo to YouTube: Don't censor death threats
- Glenn Beck. 2007-02-13. CNN.
{{cite episode}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters:|episodelink=and|serieslink=(help) - [World: 'Muslim Refusenik' Irshad Manji Urges Thoughtful Piety] - [Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty © 2008]
- Calling all believers to a conversation on Islam-Book Mark-Sunday Specials-Opinion-The Times of India
- The Trouble with Islam January 25, 2004. Book review of "The Trouble with Islam".
- Debate with As'ad AbuKhalil at Democracy Now.
- The Only Good Muslim is the Anti-Muslim by M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
- The Chutzpah Awards
- Sept/Oct 1997 issue of Ms, p. 104
- 2007 Annual Benefit, New York City
- The Forum of Young Global Leaders
- Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow
- http://www.ups.edu/x27840.xml
- Irshad Manji calls on her fellow Muslims to reform
- NFB - About the NFB| 2007 Gemini Awards
- 2008Muslim Film Festival - Think-Different Women
External links
- Irshad Manji's media coverage page containing links to articles, reviews and interviews
- Guernica Magazine
- What Word Comes to Mind? at Library and Archives Canada
- Literal, Latin American Voices - Interview with Irshad Manji
- Interview with Irshad Manji: No Compulsion in Islam
- It's time for all of us to embrace ijtihad
- 1968 births
- Canadian feminists
- Canadian journalists
- Canadian Muslims
- Canadian women writers
- Criticism of Islam
- Feminist writers
- Free speech activists
- Canadian people of Indian descent
- Islamic feminists
- Lesbian writers
- LGBT Muslims
- LGBT writers from Canada
- Living people
- Muslim reformers
- Social democrats
- People from Vancouver
- Canadian writers of Asian descent
- Canadian people of Egyptian descent