walrusmagazine.ca

Irshad Manji wants to stir things up. The author, journalist, and advocate for religious reform opposes the hijab, saying it “makes [women] a billboard for the most chauvinistic aspects of Arab tribal culture,” and was offended by plans to create an Islamic community centre near Manhattan’s Ground Zero. She is committed to her Islamic faith, but is urging all Muslims to ask questions and hold moral stances about things like honour killing and suicide bombing.

Manji’s new book, Allah, Liberty and Love, is out this month. It’s a follow-up to her wildly successful The Trouble With Islam Today, which was banned in many countries. But droves of readers, especially women and youth, reacted positively to Trouble, which has now been published in thirty languages and downloaded more than two million times. In Allah, Manji writes that the imam at her mother’s mosque in Vancouver “declared me a ‘bigger criminal’ than Osama bin Laden. His rationale: among Muslims, my book had allegedly caused more debate.”