...tunnel in the way we secure...

I am increasingly frustrated by those praising Irshad Manji's eloquence, her well-spoken diatribes. How you say something is never as important as what you say, and when it comes down to it, her claims to make an intellectual contribution to current discourse IS the issue. That is entirely the issue, and the problem is she has consistently failed to make any such intellectual contribution.

I have been fascinated by Irshad Manji for the past year and a half, after first coming across her book at the end of high school. Since then I have also read her other angry manifesto "Risking Utopia". The same biased, confrontational debates dominate that book. Her dismissive tone is evident even in the international titles of her work: Italy - "When you have stopped to think", Quebec - "Muslim, but free", Denmark - "Problematic Islam".

No one will deny that it is important to have dialogue and discussion, to hear all opinions, to have intelligent debate and seek the truth. But that requires participants to, at the very least, be accountable for what they say. Beyond that, it asks that you argue rationally and refrain from emotive statements hurled with pervasive negatism, and to source a broad array of thought rather than inferring generalizations from isolated anecdotes. She contends that she wants to reach Muslims everywhere, to persuade them to think critically about their faith, to ask questions, to seek free thought. With her annoyingly illinformed analysis of both political and historic events in Islam, such poorly supported accusations such as Muslims being complicit in the Holocaust (completely disregarding the efforts in the Second World War of the Palestine Regiment), or Islam being fundamentally based on misogyny and conflict, and her implied dismissal of black Muslims (particularly of East Africa) she alienates the very people she professes to want to reach. More likely, she really only serves to secure many Muslim-bashers in their primitive "Islam bad, us good" mentalities.

For many reasons, The Trouble with Islam is a noteworthy book. Muslims do need to think critically about their faith and how they practise it. Manji says a lot of things worth listening to. Unfortunately, most of her more valid arguments are too often overlooked in the face of her naive and one-sided statements. That kind of poor scholarship is, more than anything, just frustrating in someone so bright who really could have a great impact on the modern practise of Islam if she could just get over her fundamentalist approach, and her attitude that she deserves instant credibility for being a) a woman, b) a lesbian, c) a "reformed" Muslim. Allowing her unquestioned access to the intellectual forum is some kind of perverse affirmative action.

On a side note, it is really interesting to me that Manji quotes Naomi Klein on her book because she has as much disrespect for Manji as many of us do.