What the...?

What the...?

It's not legislation. It's not a nation-wide demonstration. But it's a humble start in the dissent department.

This is what it looks like when Pakistanis speak out against barbarism in their backyard. By "barbarism," I'm referring to the crime of burying women alive, which I blogged about a few days ago.

On a related note, the book that I've been blogging about lately — The Jewel of Medina — contains a story of how the Prophet Muhammad challenged this disgusting anti-woman custom. Written in the voice of a very young A'isha (Muhammad's second wife), the passage reads as follows:

"I'd known Muhammad all my life. He held me in his arms just moments after I was born, blessing me with a special prayer as I'd flailed and rooted against his chest in search of a nipple, hungry from the start. He'd saved my life, my parents told me, by convincing my father to break the Meccan law. Too few boys were being born that year, so the [tribal] leaders had decided that all newborn girls should be buried alive in the desert. "Are not girls also the creation of al-Lah?" Muhammad had said to my father, who wept with relief.

In Muhammad's eyes, girls and women were more than just chattel for men to own and disown depending on their whims. They were valuable in God's eyes, and in his…"

So here's the irony, or tragedy, or both: Despite portraying Islam's prophet in glowing light, this novel gets pulled from publication for potentially offending Muslims. But those pious dudes in rural Pakistan who suffocate women under mounds of dirt, proving themselves offensive, are still free.

As the Prophet might ask, "What the fig?"

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It takes a global village

It takes a global village

As First Lady of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a book called It Takes a Village. A mother and world-traveler, she understood that raising children well demands attention, care and persistence from a sprawling network of individuals beyond the immediate family.

America's right-wing nuts hated her metaphor of the village, interpreting it as an assault on the sanctity of parental power. But having grown up in a violent household myself, I loved Hillary's point that a biological mother and father often ain't enough. It takes a village.

So how ironic that, for many children in the Muslim world, the village is the problem, not the solution. Actually, it's village idiots who are the problem. Let me illustrate.

Village Idiot 1: In Pakistan, Senator Sardar Israrullah Zehri has defended the fact that three girls and two women were buried alive in his remote town. Their "crime"? According to reports, they wished "to marry of their own will."

Senator Village Idiot sees nothing wrong with shooting these girls, then flinging them into dirt pits as their bodies cling to life. He calls the brutality a part of "our tribal custom."

Village Idiot 2: In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai sheds a few tears, fires a police chief every so often, but ultimately tolerates the gang-rape of adolescent girls because, hey, it's tough to rule a lawless country.

In an honor-drenched society, it's equally tough for fathers to step up and admit that their daughters have been violated. But Sayed Nurallah has gone public. From CNN.com:

"Nurallah says that coming forward with his daughter's story makes him a target, which he firmly accepts. He says that seeking justice for his daughter is a matter of integrity.

'She wakes up in the middle of the night screaming,' Nurallah says of his daughter. 'Her arms, legs, her body - she is always tense and frightened.'

Nurallah also pleads for justice. 'I have one question for Mr. Karzai: If this was your little girl, what would you do?'"

President Village Idiot has yet to reply.

Village Idiot 3: There's no name by which to identify this person because it's not one person. It's the formless, faceless web of traffickers — a village in its own right — that exports children from the Bangladeshi borderlands to India for the pleasure of, in the words of one girl prostitute, "bad men."

Recently, the brave British journalist Johann Hari went undercover to capture the story of these village children. Afterwards, he shared with me a passage:

"One tall girl with high cheek bones is singing. She shakes my hand and introduces herself as Shelaka, and says she is 16. Then, confidently, carefully, she explains how got here.

She grew up in a village three hours from Dhaka, and for as long as she could remember, she loved to sing. 'It is the best feeling in the world, to sing,' she says. But when she went through puberty, her fiercely religious parents said it was no longer 'appropriate' for a Muslim girl to sing, and she had to leave these 'stupid dreams' behind.

'If I tried to sing, they would hit me,' she says. 'I didn't think it was fair, because if I was a boy I would be allowed to sing. It doesn't make sense. Why should only boys be allowed to choose their own job? Men make women depend on them, and that's why they are treated badly.'"

Compelled by Shelaka's words, Johann pulled me closer to the rumblings in his conscience: "The next time somebody tells me that feminism is a 'Western' concept, I will tell them about Shelaka. She thought of feminism all by herself, in a village in rural Bangladesh."

Which brings me to some positive news.

For all the village idiots out there, we can also put names to their opposites: agents of moral courage. These are individuals who speak truth to power in their own communities for a greater good.

Shelaka is one of them. Then there's the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, whose members are routinely targeted for busting deadly silences about the treatment of females in "post-Taliban" Afghanistan.

Even in the Pakistani legislature, when Senator Village Idiot justified burying girls alive, the issue only rose to the surface because of a morally courageous woman, Senator Bibi Yasmin Shah. She demanded accountability. Although Senator Shah didn't get far, she managed to have the barbarism of this case officially recorded for future legislators.

"Big deal," some would snort. But in the absence of immediate change, getting it in writing is a big deal. Johann Hari ended his note to me this way:

"I'm slightly — slightly — soothed by the great war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. She had just heard that the novelist Dos Passos had said people shouldn't be wasting their time writing during war. In a letter to a friend in 1941, Martha disagreed. 'If a writer has any guts he should write all the time, and the lousier the world, the harder a writer should work. For if he can do nothing positive to make the world more liveable or less cruel or stupid, he can at least record truly, and that is something no one else will do, and it is a job that must be done. It is the only revenge that all the bastardized people will ever get: that somebody writes down clearly what happened to them."

That's my contribution, too.

If you don't know what yours can be, start with Equality Now. I'm linking you to their "creative ideas" page in English. You can also read their web content in French, Spanish and Arabic.

More than ever, I'm convinced that it takes a global village to transform the local village into a place of dignity for every child.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Personal thanks from Jewel of Medina author

Personal thanks from Jewel of Medina author

Sometimes, the emails I receive are downright ugly. But here's one that's nothing short of beeyootiful.

It comes from Sherry Jones, author of the now-infamous novel, The Jewel of Medina, which tells the story of the Prophet Muhammad's youngest wife, Aisha. Random House bought the rights to release the book in America, only to cancel publication out of sheer fear.

In a column for the Globe and Mail, I spoke my mind about Random House's decision. My commentary ended by celebrating the gutsiness of the first publisher to take a chance on The Trouble With Islam Today. That publisher's name? Random House Canada.

Hours after the piece ran, I found this in my inbox:

"Irshad, your column was priceless. I had goosebumps when I read your final line.

By far, it's the best written account of events I've seen… The irony is that my book, previously deemed of interest mostly to Western women, now has interest all over the world, including in Denmark!

And its impact now extends far beyond the text, challenging us to continue the fight for our freedoms; challenging the moderate Muslim community to stand up and be heard; giving voice to the weariness we are all feeling in the U.S. of living fear-stunted lives.

With voices like yours rising up in defense of my freedom of speech, I do not feel muzzled — not any more."

Nor should readers feel gagged. Fans of this blog have emailed to say that they're buying copies of Jewel online as an act of free conscience. A Westerner working in Pakistan told me that he's already snapped up two copies from amazon.co.uk.

Fabulous. If irshadmanji.com can serve as a launching pad for more sales of Jewel, I'm happy for Sherry.

Even more, I'm thrilled for Aisha.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Self-censorship in the "land of the free"

Self-censorship in the "land of the free"

I promised you the link to my commentary about the novel that Random House New York has cancelled out of sheer fear. Here you go.

In writing my editorial, I asked the book's author, Sherry Jones, about the most important point for people to understand.  She replied, "The feminist aspect of what I'm doing. I wrote [this novel], in part, because I recognize the absence of women's voices in the way Islamic history is told. Women played a huge leadership role in the founding of the faith.  Silencing my voice only achieves more silencing of theirs."

Just one of multiple ironies, as you'll see when you read the entire column. (Note: In a few days, the newspaper will make you pay for access to my piece, so read it now.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Screw the experts

Screw the experts

A lot of you are asking for my take on this story: Random House New York has shelved plans to publish The Jewel of Medina, an historical novel about the Prophet Muhammad's second and youngest wife, Aisha. Rest assured that I'm writing a commentary about it and will post the link as soon as it's printed.

But here's what I want you to know right away. Before deciding to pull the book, Random House consulted academic "experts." As if they're objective. Take it from me: so-called scholars can be petty, politicized and, above all, paranoid.

I know first-hand. PBS, broadcaster of Faith Without Fear, sent a rough cut of my film to "academic advisors." Here are highlights of their feedback:

* "She permits a man to dress her."

* "She invites an Imam to her home unaccompanied… This is inappropriate for any 'Muslim' woman."

* "Given the size of the Arab Muslim world, why choose [to go to] Yemen? To mislead."

* "The deliberate juxtaposition between the unpaved roads in Yemen and the paved streets with yards in America speaks to the lack of cultural information. Are all the people of the world to now have houses like Americans?"

And my conspiratorial favorite:

* "A clear signal of animosity to the Muslim audience."

Such "expertise" makes me chuckle because Faith Without Fear has been embraced by Muslims far and wide. On the night of its PBS premiere, my assistant flooded me with forwards. They were grateful responses from young Muslims.

I asked him to send me criticisms, too, so that PBS would get a balanced picture. He told me, "The moment you receive a complaint, I'll make sure to share it. Until then, I'm afraid this is all I can send you."

Since then, Faith Without Fear has launched the Muslim Film Festival organized by the American Islamic Congress. It won Gold at the New York Television Festival. The film scored an Emmy nomination. It's even been screened in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country.

With only an honorary doctorate to my name, I claim no expertise. But allow me to offer a bit of advice to budding writers, filmmakers, and public intellectuals: Screw the experts.

Write.

Speak.

Debate.

Develop moral courage.

The critics will howl anyway. Make it worth their while — and yours.

~~~~~~~~~

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Wafers of mass destruction

Wafers of mass destruction

Sigmund Freud reportedly said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But in the Catholic Church, a wafer ain't just a wafer. Once blessed by the priest, it becomes the body of Christ. And if it's not immediately consumed, the Eucharist can ruin Sunday mass. You could say it mutates into a wafer of mass destruction.

That's what recently got a young Catholic dissident in big trouble — to the point of his life being threatened. Here's a news report.

Now here's the skinny: Webster Cook, a student senator at the University of Central Florida, vocally disagrees with school funds going to Catholic and other religious groups. Nonetheless, a few Sundays ago, he brought a friend to campus mass. The friend apparently had questions about Catholicism.

Rather than swallow the wafer that's handed to him during Communion, Cook brought it back to his pal in the pews. At one point, Cook claims, a fellow parishioner used physical force to intimidate him into eating the now-holy cracker.

It didn't work.

According to the local Church, Cook "kidnapped" the body of Christ and, um, held it hostage in a Ziploc bag. Word spread. The parish accused him of committing a mortal sin. Bloggers began pelting Cook with cries of blasphemy. I'm told that he even got death threats.

The following week, Cook returned the wafer along with a letter to parishioners. In it, he took the high road: "I want to thank the individuals who explained the emotional and spiritual pain my possession of the Eucharist caused them to experience. They have demonstrated that the use [of] reason is more effective than the use of force."

I've blogged elsewhere about the rising aggression of the Catholic Church and how that's linked to the "rights" increasingly demanded by organized religions, including Islam. I've also blogged about the humanity of which Catholic leaders are capable and what Muslims can learn from them.

In fact, I've often said that my favorite priest is Father David O'Leary, head chaplain at Tufts University in Boston. Father O is a Catholic refusenik. He embraces intellectual inquiry a la Augustine and Aquinas, while refusing to become a robot in God's name. Not only does Father O challenge various Church edicts; he's got the spiritual spine to question injustices in other religions — the hallmark of moral courage for any contemporary liberal.

That's why Father O has gone out of his way to champion Muslim women as imams. His efforts demonstrate that Catholicism can be revolutionary when solid faith trumps insecure dogma.

So this column isn't motivated by Catholic-bashing. Exactly the opposite: It's about opposing violence. Period.

Which serves as a reminder for all of you to sign my anti-death threat petition. Its language singles out Islamism because the petition originates in a serious death threat that I and 11 other writers received from ummah.com. You'll see that the petition advocates "freedom, equal opportunity, human rights and secular values for all."

I'm happy to say that it's already supported by nearly 3,500 people worldwide, with the most recent signatories coming from Syria, Argentina, Afghanistan, Australia, Venezuala, Indonesia, Portugal, Malaysia, Finland, Canada, the UAE, America and India.

Such vast global scope is appropriate: When the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a bounty on Salman Rushdie's head almost 20 years ago, most Christian and Jewish clerics stayed mute. They wouldn't have threatened their own like this. Still, their silence revealed the universal appeal of dogma.

Wafers of mass destruction are only the latest example of dogma unleashed. I may be crackers for having faith, but my faith welcomes the presence of wafer-smugglers, doubters, even atheists.

God love 'em all, especially when God's self-styled emissaries don't.

**********

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The making of a kafir

The making of a kafir

I recently received this email from Azhar in Melbourne, Australia. It's proof positive that reading The Trouble with Islam Today corrupts good Muslim boys and girls. I'm only sorry that I needed the help of a lousy airline. You'll see what I mean. Enjoy:

"You are rude, arrogant, in-your-face, insane for doing it all, blunt, bitchy and how I love you!

You have brought to light realities that everyone including myself has always wanted to ask but never did. I am a 'brown' Muslim male from Kenya who recently finished studies in Australia.

It is really sad that I only got to read your book on my vacation back home and on the way back to Australia. (Can I just say that Kenya Airways sucks with common TVs and faulty headphone, so the book captured me throughout the flight with next to no sleep as I consumed page after page on that 13-hour trip from hell to Hong Kong.)

I must confess that at times I felt like you were the CIA who had found some way of reading my mind as you continuously raised questions (and gave answers) to 'forbidden' agendas that have tormented my mind for years. People like you and Salman Rushdie have inspired me to step up and ask questions that I have feared all my life and for this I shall forever be endowed to you.

The ignorance, the blame game, the irrationality, the Desert Islam infestation and, most of all, the fear has poisoned this faith for far too long. It is people like you who breath new hope for the future…

On reading your book, I raised a debate back home and was actually shocked to find that educated men and women were outraged by my questions and support of the book. Needless to say, I went from 'welcomed son' to 'kafir' in no time!!!" - Azhar, Melbourne

Irshad replies: Then my work here is done.

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Wanted: reformist Muslims in Obama’s campaign

Wanted: reformist Muslims in Obama's campaign

Forget who he'll pick for vice-president. Barack Obama first has to fill a different job vacancy.

That's because his Muslim outreach coordinator, Mazen Asbahi, has just resigned. I can't say I'm disheartened. He'd been embraced by groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America, renowned for their conservative politics and "moderate" double-speak.

Because Obama's campaign trumpets "Change We Can Believe In," he needs reform-minded Muslims. I mean Muslims who recognize that the Quran has been left in a 7th-century tribal time warp. Its interpretations can and must be updated for the pluralistic context of the 21st century.

In my experience, most Muslim moderates won't go there. They insist that "classical" interpretations are the answer. As if 10th-century Muslims dealt with exactly the same dilemmas that we have today.

Who, then, could Obama tap as his next Muslim outreach coordinator? Without having consulted either of them, I nominate two reform-minded Muslims…

Read the rest of my commentary on The Huffington Post. 

****

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The love that dare not speak its name

The love that dare not speak its name

On this blog a few days ago, I wrote that many Muslims expect better behavior from Americans than they do from the traditional Islamic world. "That's what you call a double-standard," I added.

Some observers would go further, equating Muslim hypocrisy to blatant anti-Americanism. Not me. In seeking to understand, I've realized a dirty secret: Muslims who practice such hypocrisy actually love America.

Armed with this new comprehension, here's my message to fellow Muslims.

Thank you for expecting so much more of the United States. Your great expectations disclose a deeper faith in America than you have in your own Muslim countries. Admit it or not, you respect the ideal of American leadership. I join you in embracing that ideal.

As I recently explained on CNN International, America is still the only country in the world with a universal constituency. Domestic politics in the U.S. have a profound impact in every corner of the globe, helping to determine immigration flows, shaping investment patterns, and even giving leaders and their presumptive heirs the excuses they need to blur the lines between God and government. "If America's doing it," goes the argument, "why can't we?"

The same impact can't be claimed about domestic politics in any other modern, multicultural state today. Not China. Not India. Not Britain. At least not yet.

In short, what happens in America doesn't stay in America. It travels — and sets a precedent for many more nations.

My fellow Muslims, you may act resentful about this reality but it seems that the world welcomes the long reach of US culture. After all, there's a concrete history of American innovations being voluntarily adopted elsewhere.

By "innovations," I'm not referring simply to hip hop or fast food or iPODs or ladies' panties that sport images of Bugs Bunny (which you can buy at any self-respecting souk in Damascus). I'm referring to something much more serious.

In a fabulous book entitled A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America, Anouar Majid writes about the Virginia act, "the first secular constitution in the world." It became the basis of the US Constitution. But even before that, the Virginia Act was "immediately translated in French and Italian and spread throughout Europe."

Of course, as I hinted above, American behavior can also set a negative example for the world. In another exceptional book, Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, philosopher Susan Neiman lets us in on how Nazi Germany justified its atrocities by exploiting US segregation:

"When criticized for his racist policies, Adolf Hitler liked to mention the number of lynchings that regularly occurred in America. In 1939, the SS Journal put out a poster quoting FDR's reaction to Kristallnacht: 'I couldn't believe that this kind of thing could happen in twentieth century civilization.' But rather than showing the bloody Jewish bodies and smashed windows of the German pogrom, the poster depicted black men hanging from Southern trees…

In the short run, Hitler's comparison worked, as similar comparisons do today. Already, repressive measures in China, Egypt, and Malaysia have been defended by local officials who point to the Patriot Act or Guantanamo…"

To their visionary credit, America's founding fathers saw this manipulation coming — and warned all Americans to be mindful. Thomas Paine, the 18th-century revolutionary who prepared the masses for Independence, was explicit: "He that would would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression, for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

My conclusion? The much-maligned idea of "American exceptionalism" doesn't mean that America is excepted or excused from high standards of conduct. Exactly the opposite: America's duty is to live up to the highest standards of all because the globe turns to the US as its role model. That's the burden, and beauty, of American leadership.

My fellow Muslims, understand this: When you announce that American leadership has disappeared in the age of Abu Ghraib, you're contradicting yourselves. You're invoking Abu Ghraib instead of, say, Darfur because Abu Ghraib happened at the hands of America, and America remains the measure of our own potential.

Let me finish by returning to the philosopher Susan Neiman, an American who lives in Europe after teaching in the Middle East. She notes that the "evil of Abu Ghraib" lies in its consequences for idealism. It could make a new generation suspicious, if not cynical, about the very struggle to achieve human rights.

"When you torture and kill in the name an ideal, it's the ideal that suffers most. Those who excuse the abuses at Abu Ghraib as better than other abuses, and necessary to win the war on terror, have forgotten an old refrain. Remember when the evils of socialism were better than the evils of capitalism, and in any case, necessary to the final struggle for liberation?

If the ideal of human rights is destroyed by the violations that were said to be needed to realize it, our children will pay the price. Many of them are already paying, for they believe in next to nothing."

How ironic — no, tragic — that the country most ardently dedicated to a proposition might leave a legacy of nihilism. Not because of its own indifference but because all of us, everywhere, neglected to tell Americans the real reason that we're hardest on them.

The reason is: We have more faith in Americans than we have in ourselves.

*******

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To be understood, first seek to understand

To be understood, first seek to understand

This is a memo to my fellow Muslims. There's something about Americans that you need to know: They love to be liked.

Maybe that's why, for all my travels throughout the world, nowhere do I experience a deeper desire to understand others than I do in America. Especially in the "heartland."

Recently, I received two emails that capture this point. The first comes from Frank:

"I am a 40-something white male living in the Midwest. I just watched your interview about the Pakistani-American father in Georgia who allegedly killed his daughter out of 'honor.'

I was impressed by your very clear and concise explanation of the reason this man feels he is not guilty. Perhaps more important was your explanation of how his thinking in this matter is culturally based and not religious in nature. Adding even more to your credibility is that you stated in this country, this is murder even if it is not considered so in other countries.

In only a few minutes, your information gave me a clearer understanding of Islam than I have ever had and actually left me wanting to understand more.

As in so many instances, fear of something is often a result of lacking knowledge. I think in the United States that could not be more true as it relates to Islam or for that matter some other religions too.

I thank you for presenting a clearer picture for me and all those watching."

Now to an email from Fred:

"I think you've hit the nail on the head with ijtihad.

Every 10th grader should know the 'Cradle of Civilization' is at the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the Fertile Crescent. Every 10th grader should know that if it wasn't for the libraries in Moorish Spain, the knowledge of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and the other Ancients would have been lost forever at the hands of the Roman Church.

Muslims seem to be in their own Dark Ages. No thought, no opinion, just submission. That's what it was like in Medieval Europe. Zillions of serfs were ordered to keep tilling the land, pay your taxes, and do what you're told. The big pay-off was in the 'next' life, where 'the first shall be last and the last shall be first.' Today that's called The Mushroom Theory, you know, keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em bullshit.

Good luck with ijtihad, you'll be saving zillions over the next thousand years from an impotent, dreary, lifeless existence. Thanks for your efforts, from a member of the Planet."

It makes my heart soar when non-Muslim Americans learn about ijtihad and cite its transformative potential. Or when they say that young Americans should be taught how Islamic civilization saved Western civilization a millennium ago.

What makes my heart sag is that I never hear traditional Muslims express an interest in understanding American customs. Too many simply reduce Americana to materialism, consumerism, or decadence.

That's revealed in a new book, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. (A billion Muslims?! With a sample like that, you can see that I'm not taking my conclusions exclusively from personal experience.)

I debated the book's Muslim co-author recently, and was struck (but not surprised) by one of her more cavalier assumptions: namely, when mainstream Americans fail to fathom traditional Muslims, it's Americans who must change. Full stop. But when Muslims misunderstand Americans, it's not Muslims who must change. It's not Muslims who must take responsibility to educate themselves bout the complexity and nuance of American life. Nope. It's Americans who must do all the heavy lifting to improve perceptions about themselves.

I think that's what you call a double-standard.

Let's be honest, people: Reconciliation between "Islam" and "the West" can't happen without reciprocity. Understanding, by definition, has to be mutual.

Even the Quran promotes Muslim introspection, wisely reminding us that "God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves." That's Chapter 13, Verse 11. When applied to both America and the Islamic world, it just might be a 13:11 solution to a 9/11 problem.

I can already anticipate the objections to my argument. One of them will be that America wields a hell of lot more power than the Muslim world, and therefore deserves to be held to a higher standard.

Normally, I'd fight this counter-argument by exposing the racist premise that Muslims aren't capable of acting as civilized as Americans.

But this time, I'm humoring the counter-argument. More than humoring it, I'm reflecting on it. Because I seek to understand.

And new heights of understanding are helping me appreciate that, far from hating America, those who treat the US as The Problem subconsciously love America.

I'll explain in my next blog entry.

***************

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