Irshad Manji: The Trouble with Islam Today

Canadian Muslim writer riles, counters radical Islam
TORONTO (AP) ?- Irshad Manji has plenty of enemies among her fellow Muslims. Her critique of Islam is frank and fierce. She defends the invasion of Iraq. She sympathizes with Israel. She's a lesbian and doesn't try to hide it.

What has brought this Uganda-born Asian-Canadian to prominence is her book, "The Trouble With Islam Today," just out in paperback in the United States where she has been touring and talking.

It isn't easy to publish a book like this when the religious establishment you're taking on already feels besieged by the West and is hypersensitive to criticism. She still feels pain at the memory of her 60-year-old mother at prayer in her mosque in suburban Vancouver, hearing the preacher declare her daughter to be "worse than Osama bin Laden."

Still, at least the preacher also said a few nice things about the book.

Not so some of the fierce and usually anonymous reactions posted on her Web site, www.muslim-refusenik.com : "I swear by Allah that some brothers are planning to take action against you ... Just as Van Gogh was taken care of. This is your last warning."

Theo Van Gogh was the Dutchman who made a film criticizing the treatment of women under Islam and was stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street in November. His killer left a note threatening others in the name of radical Islam. Manji's Toronto home now has bullet-proof windows.

"Through our screaming self-pity and our conspicuous silences, we Muslims are conspiring against ourselves," she writes. "We're in crisis and we're dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it's now."

Manji maintains that centuries of dark dogma have silenced many followers of Islam, putting them behind veils while mullahs and terrorists claim to speak for Allah.