Change in offing for Muslim faith

By Kevin Ferris

It’s encouraging to see that not all the talk of change and hope is about getting votes. It is also about getting things done.

For Irshad Manji, the words define her work of the last five years, since the publication of her book “The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith.”

The change she seeks is enormous. Manji is challenging the moderate Muslim majority to breathe new life into Islamic practices, taking the spotlight from violent jihadists who distort the faith.

For her efforts, Manji has been called, at a minimum, angry and confrontational. Death threats are a daily fact of life. Her mother often tells her, “I live with my heart in my throat every day.”

And yet, amid the dangers, Manji finds hope. This week she returns from Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, where she launched the latest translation of “The Trouble with Islam Today.” Young Muslims are embracing her message — so far half a million worldwide have downloaded translations of her book from www.irshadmanji.com.

Manji herself has changed. The young girl who was booted out of her madrassa in Canada for asking too many challenging questions has followed up her no-holds-barred book with a documentary, “Faith Without Fear,” that premiered on PBS last year.

“The film represents my evolution in my own faith in Islam,” she says. Her strong opposition to the human-rights violations committed in Islam’s name hasn’t changed. But she is more optimistic about the potential for reform among Muslims.

“I’m no longer challenging Islam,” she says. “I am challenging Muslims to live up to the best spirit of Islam.”

It’s a challenge she accepted, too, during the three years of filming “Faith Without Fear.” Along the way, she discovered how Muslims can renew their tradition of ijtihad (IJ-tee-had).

“That word sounds frighteningly like jihad,” she acknowledges. “It comes from the same root — to struggle. But ijtihad is not a struggle of the sword. It is a struggle of the mind to comprehend the wider world.”

Relative tolerance

A thousand years ago, Manji says, Islam led the world in curiosity, creativity and innovation. In an empire that stretched from Baghdad to Madrid, there was relative tolerance of people, religions, ideas — relative compared with today’s violent jihadists. Manji makes no claims of a one-time Islamic utopia.

What went wrong? Some scholars would single out the Spanish reconquista or the Catholic Inquisition. Not Manji. She says the rot started from within. In the face of too many challenges to his authority, the Baghdad-based caliph cracked down. Many interpretations of the Quran were reduced to a few. Libraries were closed. Critical thinking was discouraged. Fatwas became unquestionable.

“The first culprits to dim the golden age of Islam were Muslim extremists,” Manji says.

Taking Islam back from the modern-day extremists requires a rejuvenation of ijtihad. Moderate Muslims need to speak freely, and criticize when necessary. That could start with Muslims in the West.

“We have the precious freedom to debate without fear of government retaliation,” Manji says. “What are we doing with this precious gift? This gift of freedom?”

Manji was asked that same question after the publication of her book. Young Muslims from countries where the book is banned wanted translations into their languages. They told Manji: You have the freedom and opportunity to make this available. Why don’t you?

She and Random House did. The book can now be downloaded free in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Malay and Indonesian.

Why not use the Web to promote ijtihad? Manji asks. Islamists aren’t shy about going online to promote their jihads.

“This is a war of ideas,” Manji says. “Digital technologies are vital to spread the word about critical thinking. Even my documentary, ‘Faith Without Fear,’ is making the rounds of the Iranian underground thanks to new file-sharing techniques.”

The response of young people to her film and book, the recent welcome in Indonesia, all contribute to Manji’s optimism that moderate Muslims will heed the call for reform. That call, Manji says, echoes the Quran itself, Chapter 13, Verse 11:

“God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.”

Manji calls it a 13/11 kind of solution to a 9/11 kind of problem.

X Kevin Ferris is commentary page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.