Waiting For Fatwa

This is great, Temporal! And glad that its you bringing this to our attention (and not surprised, either :))

If you want to have a long career as the official Chowk spellchecker, then you should not make mistakes like the following:

``Does Islam unjustly favours men?``

``At 23 she became one of the youngest editorial writer at the Ottawa Citizen.``

“Ms. Magazine has named her a “Feminist for the 21st Century”

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I think you forgot to mention the most important thing that will make this book controversial, i.e. I believe Irshad Manji is a homosexual, and quite an outspoken one, with TV shows on the subject. Not that, that should effect anything, if the book itself is good. I just hope, it isn`t a Salman Rushdie inspired book. That guy is just in it, to create controversty and make money off Islam (as are a lot of people) - much like the mullahs.

If it is a constructive book, then it should be worth reading. It it is another author creating controversy around a hot topic, to sell books, which no one would buy if they weren`t about Islam, then I am afraid, it will do more harm than good. Someone suggested to me, I should translate some poetry in English and try to get it published. I realized no one would publish it. Then a thought struck me: If I put some controversial stuff against Islam in the poetry, and mention Salman Rushdie a few times, it is bound to be a best-seller. And if I can get a few mullahs to chase after me, then it should hit the NY best sellers list. That is a sure shot formula, at the moment.

I will check out the book. She seems like a reasonable person, whenever I have seen her on TV. For some reason, I always thought, she was an Irani.

....let me be the first one to cast a stone....... later i will read the book, and then again, maybe i won`t ..........too many words and sentences and paragraphs ........

.........but a fatwa is in order: what the heck is a woman doing calling for ijthehad and all that man stuff ........ imam ghazzali will be turning in his grave ............ if a woman cannot lead the prayers how can she tell us how to interpret the deen and pray ..........sounds like a heretic to me - praying at odd times and all that ........... heck, we won`t even let her pray at a funeral ......... chaley aatay hain or,should i say, chalee aateen hain !

............just thought i`d get that out of my system and open the door for urstruly and the mullah brigade who, i am sure, will be raising cain soon.............also watch the horrible hindoos jump in with their shrill denunciation of all things paki ..........


............sigh!

Interesting topic. I wished that it was an online discussion. Still, an engrossing subject requiring points to ponder.

No need to create panic. Internet has provided an ample opportunity to every kind of riff-raff to start using words like ijtehad etc. to appear somewhat knowledgeable as if they attended a madressa. Internet has created Instant-scholars , so much so that even the english-medium types have started acting uppity.

This is a whimper, despite the trash-womans`s desire to look nasty. The media-hype would become a media mea-culpa and life for majority muslims all over the world would not be affected.

There are `excellent` anti-Islam anti-muslim and anti-religion sites already in full flourish on the net. Muslim sites even link them on their own sites to let the true-seekers visit them.

Your earnest desire alas, for others to notice such trash would go unheeded. Muslims have better and more important things to do..like seeing their children enroll in the sciences and mathematics as subjects of choice and preference. In this day & age soc. pol.sci and litt.(eng) is for the birds or bird-brains. You well know the kind of jobs such paki/indians do in North America even with their western pHDs.

So relax & hyper not.

shrill denunciation of all things paki ..........

shrill denunciation of all things paki ..........

shrill denunciation of all things paki ..........

shrill denunciation of all things paki ..........

shrill denunciation of all things paki ..........

Happy now hamidm2 ?

Would like to see commentary on Islam as long as it comes from people who know what they`re talking about. Not that a woman`s homosexuality is anything to disqualify her from making observations about Islam, but her stance and her position and identity don`t seem to be clear enough to me to understand her agenda and where she`s coming from with all this.

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A self-described moderate Muslim `reformer` is revealed to be anything but

by Peter Stock

IRSHAD Manji is an attractive young Ontario woman of Muslim heritage who loves to talk about society`s intolerance. One of her favourite targets is the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), which is often called upon to speak on behalf of the country`s 252,000 Muslims. But while Ms. Manji poses as an Islamic reformer, she appears to have an agenda that is anything but tolerant.

In a May 8 National Post column entitled, ``Canada`s Muslims must drop old prejudices,`` Ms. Manji writes that many Muslims ``choose to be stuck in patterns of self-pity,`` and need to be freed ``from the enfeebling habits of victim-hood.`` She offers no evidence for either criticism, but is certain the CIC will not support her efforts for emancipation.

Instead, Ms. Manji believes the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC), a group recently started by a few of her friends, may solve the problems she describes. ``Here`s a group that interprets Islam as a progressive, liberal, pluralistic and democratic religion,`` she enthuses. She adds, ``If the [Muslim] teens and twenty-somethings disclosing their religious struggles to me are at all representative, these kids could enter Canada`s mosques as honest, curious and intellectually innovative imams.``

But just as members of the group Catholics for a Free Choice (which calls on the Church to support abortion) routinely fail to reveal they are not actually practising Catholics, Ms. Manji`s piece leaves out some salient personal points. These include her career as a lesbian activist, most notably as host and producer of Queer TV. In addition, Ms. Manji recently admitted to Jewish World Review that she disavowed her Islamic faith when she was nine. Furthermore, she told Herizons magazine in 1995 that she had only somewhat re-identified herself with the faith through SALAAM, a homosexual advocacy group for Muslims.

Understandably, CIC vice-president Wahida Valiente believes Ms. Manji is not an authentic voice for Islam. ``She doesn`t know Islamic history, and she only has the most basic knowledge of the faith,`` Mrs. Valiente says. As for Ms. Manji`s hostility to the CIC, ``she brings in her anti-Islamic views because she feels rejected by mainstream Islam.`` After all, says Mrs. Valiente, ``the Koran clearly states that sexual relations are between men and women.``

Mrs. Valiente suspects the Post published Ms. Manji`s article because it wanted to appear tolerant. If so, the plan backfired. ``If they truly wanted to be multicultural, they should occasionally publish some of the items we send to them,`` she says. (Last December, a CIC study of nine Canadian newspapers ranked the Post as ``worst by far in its persistent use of anti-Islam terminology.``)

Ultimately, it can be said that groups pressing religions to liberalize in the name of pluralism are actually working to eliminate the truly pluralistic and replace it with a single, politically correct viewpoint. ``What we are seeing in Canadian society,`` observes Iain Benson, senior fellow at the Institute for Cultural Renewal, ``is an attempt to force one viewpoint on all contested issues.``

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Fight Back
Terrorist front group?

by Jeff Goodall
The Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) is an obscure group of dubious legitimacy and a disturbing agenda that is playing some very dangerous games. For example, Amina Sherazee is an MCC member who describes herself as a ``civil rights lawyer.`` She is quoted in the August 28th Toronto Sun as demanding that the RCMP apologize for the ``racist`` detention of 19 Pakistanis suspected of having terrorist connections. She accuses the RCMP of `racial profiling`, and accuses Canada of `creeping fascism` in connection with the detentions and ongoing investigations. Her allegations are receiving a great deal of media play, and they are infuriating and offending thousands, if not millions, of Canadians.


`Muslim Canadian Congress` is an inclusive and official-sounding name, which could easily be construed as that of an umbrella group representing hundreds of thousands of members of the various Muslim organizations in Canada. But, a quick trip to its web-site would seem to indicate otherwise. For a start, the homepage introductory paragraph tells us that ``The Muslim Canadian Congress is a grassroots organization that provides a voice to Muslims who are not represented by existing organizations``, (emphasis added), which organisations are described as being ``sectarian or ethnocentric, largely authoritarian, and influenced by a fear of modernity and an aversion to joy.`` Interestingly, the MCC also includes the Canadian Charter of Rights and the Canadian Human Rights Act, along with the Holy Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad, among their inspirations and guiding principles.


The Muslim Canadian Congress web-site lists sections headed Home, About, What’s New, Contacts, and Links. Of these, About, What’s New, and Links are under construction. Contact just has a phone number and an e-mail address. No names, no list of officers, no street address, not even a post office box number. ``Home`` consists of one page only, headed ``What is the Canadian Muslim Congress?`` giving basic background, beliefs, and principles. Links are provided to member’s articles and letters, including three items that have appeared in the presumably fawning Toronto Star.


As the MCC doesn’t advertise who its officers are, a little research is necessary. Enter MCC supporter Irshad Manji, who frequently targets the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) for criticism. The CIC is a news media contact that is often asked to speak on behalf of Canada’s quarter-of-a-million Muslims. However, according to her op-ed piece in the May 8th, 2002 National Post, Ms. Manji sees it as keeping Muslims ``stuck in patterns of self-pity`` or ``enfeebling habits of victim-hood.`` However, she sees the Muslim Canadian Congress as the necessary salvation: ``Here’s a group that interprets Islam as a progressive, liberal, pluralistic, and democratic religion. If the (Muslim) teens and 20-somethings disclosing their religious struggles to me are at all representative, these kids could enter Canada’s mosques as honest, curious, and intellectually innovative imams.``


Writing of the National Post article, Peter Stock, in his Report news-magazine article of June 10th, 2002, has this to say: ``Ms. Manji’s piece leaves out some salient personal points. These include her career as a lesbian activist, most notably as host and producer of Queer TV. In addition, Ms. Manji recently admitted to the Jewish World Review that she disavowed her Islamic faith when she was nine. Furthermore, she told Herizons magazine in 1995 that she had only somewhat re-identified herself with the faith through SALAAM, a homosexual advocacy group for Muslims. Peter Stock quotes Canadian Islamic Congress Vice-President, Wahida Valiente, as saying that Manji is not a valid voice for Islam. ``She doesn’t know Islamic history, and she only has the most basic knowledge of the faith she brings in her anti-Islamic views because she feels rejected by mainstream Islam.``


Amina Sherazee, and her inflammatory statements made at Queen’s Park, were supported by comments made by fellow MCC member Jehad Aliweiwi. Against the background that all 19 suspects obtained their student visas by fraudulent means, he took great exception to the accusation that one of them took flying lessons over the nuclear power plant at Pickering. ``Are we, as Muslim students and foreign students who happen to be Muslim, allowed to take flying lessons? If we are, then we’re bound to fly wherever the school flies.`` This totally ignores the fact that two of the students had been apprehended by security guards on a secluded beach near the same nuclear plant, in the small hours of the morning, with no satisfactory explanation for their presence. A confusion over visiting hours, perhaps?


I think it’s significant that Jehad Aliweiwi is an executive director of the Canadian Arab Federation, and Amina Sherazee is the legal counsel. The President of their Toronto Chapter is Ali Mallah, of whom I have written before. The Federation describes its mandate as being to ``empower the Arab-Canadian community by serving as the ‘voice’ of Arab-Canadians.``


On its web-site, the Muslim Canadian Congress tells us ``We believe that fanaticism and extremism within the Muslim community is a major challenge to all of us.`` That may be so, but is the MCC affirmation of this a sincerely held conviction, or is it simply intended to provide a veneer of responsibility and good intentions? Because in my opinion, there is nothing in their activities to contradict the notion that the MCC is a media-hungry pressure group fronting for Muslim terrorists by crying ``racism!`` whenever Canada tries to protect itself, and its citizens, against infiltration and the threat of terrorist violence.

Jeff Goodall worked for the Metro Treasury and City Finance Departments for 25 years, and served as a member of the CUPE Local 79 Executive Board for 14 of those years.

Temporal Bhai

The final battle against this Klu Klux Klan version of Islam will have to be fought by ordinary mortals like you & me - in our own small ways. Rejecting its intolerance & barbarism. Manji is doing her bit.

There is no institution in the Islamic world with the authority or acceptability to bring about the Ijtahad that Manji wants. In Pakistan, even the mosques are dedicated to their own versions. And others are not welcome.

Meanwhile something needs to be done with Maressas which keep pumping out little devils - the future demi-gods. Madressa Certificate should have no acceptance as a certificate of temporal education. About 60 MNAs have entered the Pakistani parliament on the basis of a Madressa Certificate. There simply is a huge upheaval waiting ahead.

As I read some conversation between SR & Tehmed32 recently on some board, the only segment of society in Pakistan which has the most balanced views on religion/India-Pakistan, are the Pakistani women - whether poor, uneducated, educated, rich, ultra-modern - all have a commanality of sane views.

Unlike all portions of men society - even some educated men come out with fantasies and fixations on such issues.

Finally, as history tells, Baghdad was ransacked by Halaku when it was at the zenith of its debates on the interpretations of Islam - is any such event on the horizon?

temporal:
Trying to promote a fellow Torontonian, eh?
I have been reading/watching Irshad Manji since her Ottawa Citizen days. She loves controversy and constantly promotes herself as a lesbian, feminitst, south asian muslim. No wonder, she has come out with this book. In case anyone missed the point that it would be controversial, she sought police protection from would-be fatwa implementers, which has apparently been denied to her. She claims that she has taken precautions on her own, such as making her glass windown bullet proof.
I think her knowledge of Islam is not perfect. She talks about the need for ijtehad, so do others, without anyone going through the logistics of organising an ijtehad. Will it be an Islamic constitutent assembly elected by the billion plus ummah? Will it be a committee of ulema set up by the OIC (which would exclude the luminaries of Deoband as they wont be represented there!)? Will it be summoned by the custodians of Mecca? Or Qoom? More importantly, from what has been said repeatedly at chowk, ijtehad can merely reinterpret quran, not challenge parts of it, as Manji would like to do? Can ijtehad challenge the concepts of blasphemy, dar-ul-harb, sharia or sunna, sovereignty of people over sovereignty of Allah?
Here is an article from The Economist, which grapples with some of these questions:

Islam and democracy

THE fear that a vote for Islamists would mean “one man, one vote, one time” is not something dreamt up by outsiders. It is voiced throughout the Muslim world. In 1991, the government of Algeria gave just this reason for cancelling the second round of an election in which an Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front, was poised to displace the National Liberation Front (FLN), which had ruled since independence. Once they grabbed power, said the FLN, the Islamists could never be trusted to give it up again.

This seems a bit rich, coming from a government that was not itself willing to give up power in a fair election. Arab politicians who complain that the Islamists are no democrats should be reminded that they are not democrats either. And it is clear that many things other than Islam—the arbitrary borders left by imperialism, the entrenchment of single-party states—have hindered the growth of democracy in the Muslim world. Still, those who argue that “Islam is the solution” need to confront the other possibility. Might Islam be the problem? Is something hard-wired in the faith incompatible with democracy?

The short answer is yes. Democracy is based on the idea that men make laws. Islam contains, in the Koran, a set of God-given laws, dictated directly to Muhammad and therefore not open to revision. Khaled Abou El Fadl, a specialist in Islamic law at the University of California, says a case for democracy that is presented from within Islam has to accept the idea of divine sovereignty. “It cannot substitute popular sovereignty but must show how popular sovereignty expresses God`s authority, properly understood.”

That is obviously a formidable complication, which gives a lot of power to anyone who can claim some special authority to “properly understand”. However, it is not one beyond the wit of man to wriggle around. For it is no less obvious to Muslims than to other people that some of God`s orders leave gaps to be filled in, and that others require interpretation. This opens the way for men to make plenty of rules for themselves. The Koran, for example, does not prescribe any particular system of government. And yet government requires rulers, who must be chosen by some method that is open to argument.

Modern states also require many more laws than are inscribed in the unalterable Koran. In fact only about 80 of the Koran`s 6,000 verses lay down rules of public law, and not many of those have much application in the modern world. Much of what is loosely called sharia derives from other sources: the sunna (the teachings of the prophet); the ijma (the consensus of religious scholars); and the qiyas (legal reasoning). So here is ample room for interpretation (what Muslims call ijtihad). Even some explicit laws laid down in the Koran are routinely circumvented by Islamic judges. The Koran, for example, says pretty plainly that a thief should be punished by losing his hand. But the number of crimes requiring these so-called hudud punishments is small, and most Muslim countries with hudud laws on their statute books have found ways to ensure that the punishments are seldom if ever carried out.

Those who are willing to look for it, in other words, can find sufficient wriggle-room within Islam for the faith to co-exist with democracy. Some Muslim democrats go on to make a further, less plausible claim. By heroic extrapolation, they find an endorsement of democratic ideas in the Koran`s fleeting references to consensus (ijma) and consultation (shura).

That is probably too much of a stretch. The required consultation is only with the Muslim jurists, not the people. Although plenty of the values associated with democracy—such as equality, justice and compassion—are to be found within Islam, the holy texts of this religion, like the other great religions, do not prescribe democracy. The best that can be said is that they do not altogether proscribe it. And even this is in contention. To Sayyid Qutb, remember, man must not be under the dominion of man. The blind sheikh, Umar Abd al-Rahman, who was implicated in the first attempt on the twin towers in 1993, has issued a fatwa banning all political parties, including Islamist ones. The simple fact is that there is no agreed-upon blueprint for politics in Islam.

For evidence that there is no blueprint, look somewhere surprising: Iran. For most of the two decades since Ayatollah Khomeini`s revolution, it has seemed to epitomise the opposite of democracy. Khomeini imposed a doctrine known as wilayat al-faqih (rule by the jurist) under which the final arbiter of political power should be the cleric best qualified properly to understand (that phrase again) the true meaning of Islamic law and tradition. By—for him—happy coincidence, he it was who was deemed best qualified to be supreme leader. Though Iran`s constitution allows for an elected president and Consultative Assembly, legislation must be vetted by a mullah-dominated Council of Guardians to make sure that it complies with Islamic law as they see it.

So make it up as you go along
This is hardly democracy as the West understands it. But is Iran proof that an Islamic state cannot be democratic? Arguably, what Iran really shows is how those who espouse the cause of political Islam are pretty much free—or pretty much forced—to make up what it is they mean by this as they go along. Although Khomeini did not just dream up the doctrine of wilayat al-faqih, the version he imposed was very much his own invention. The doctrine itself is by no means accepted by all Shia spiritual leaders. And it may not last even in Iran.

Right now Iran is divided between reformers led by the twice-elected President Muhammad Khatami and conservative mullahs who will brook no change that might weaken the power vested in the clerisy. It is possible that the conservatives will crush the democracy movement, or vice versa. But it is also possible that some middle way might be found. This is the hope of Noah Feldman, an American scholar and adviser to the American government. “Such an outcome”, he says, “would not only begin to solve the problems that Iran faces today without violent upheaval, but would also represent a model for other places in the Muslim world to emulate.”

Until then, political parties which claim that “Islam is the solution” will find it hard to describe the sort of political order they envisage creating, or to point to an admired example. Most prefer to be vague, dwelling on the inadequacies of the status quo. They all say an Islamic state would apply sharia. But sharia is not yet comprehensive and is subject to varying interpretation. God would be sovereign, of course, but who would actually rule? The answer depends on whom you ask. The pessimists may well be right to say that the Islamists are bogus democrats, interested only in one man, one vote, one time. But nothing in Islam itself necessarily makes it so.

Romair

..thanks for the undeserved advice from the unacknowledged erudite master of brevity, eloquence, rhetoric, polemics, articulateness, diction, logic, loquacity, poise, simplicity, lucidity, sublimity, enunciation, expression, inflection, intonation, and above all objectivity…I never cease to learn and will be forever grateful to you..

and you say …I think you forgot to mention the most important thing…

I know at the end of the day when one is tired….etc.etc…..it is hard to concentrate….khair here are the last two sentences: Do not be distracted by those who would deflect and criticize her lifestyle. Judge her on what she has written.

Rgds,

t

ps: rushdie milked the islam angle for all it was worth…now it can barely create a ripple or two…but if the original thought is not there it would sink to the bottom before one can say astagfirullah....

echoboom
in # 3 despite apparent calmness you prove otherwise…;)

and in #10...in your seemingly farangi hatred you forgot who jeff goodall is...

bina

Would like to see commentary on Islam as long as it comes from people who know what they`re talking about

…despite denial …:)…you succumb to the same malady…judging her on some pre-conceived notions…

…who are these people who know what they are talking about?…the pseudo aalims, scholars and maulanas?…if that is the status quo you’d settle for than I am against it…

…time to think aloud and debunk the myths that a religion that was revealed to illiterate bedouins and shone in its simplicity…has been turned into a complex religion by these self serving elite…how many times has Allah intoned in the Book to ‘read, understand and follow’…directly to the average muslims?…where does it say get it interpreted by the clergy?

...t

Dear Echoboom,

I need to clarify two things:

1. Irshad Manji is not a member of the Muslim Canadian Congress
2. Jeff Goodall, who you have quoted, does not represent CUPE, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and had his services terminated from the City of Toronto because of allegations that he used a not so polite racial slur against a colleague.

Having said that I am surprised that his article, accusing the MCC of being a ``Terrorist Front Group,`` would find itself on this forum. Jeff Goodall`s artucle appeared in a right-wing rag and was denounced very soundly by the executive memebrs of CUPE that he purports to represent.

We in the MCC are grassroots folks who all have 9-5 jobs and are volunteers trying to instill political and social justice awareness among Canada`s Muslims. We are Pakistani, Palestinan, Somali, Iranian, Afghani, Turkish and even WASP.

To know more about the MCC please visit www.muslimcanadiancongress.org

Tarek Fatah

We should welcome any and all voices calling for reform of Islam, and for that reason alone we can welcome this book.

However, this book does not seem to have much depth (I say this based on t`s impromptu book review above). For example, it calls for revival of the Ijtiahad. Ijtihad is basically a primordial form of democracy. While the concept of ijtihad recognizes the value of individual thought and of consensus, it begs questions of the process through which such consensus is achieved. Thus, when a ``reformist muslim`` calls for a revival of Ijtihad, he (or she, in this case) has his heart in the right place, but his (her) brain in the 8th century AD (a very distant time, when you think about it). It is like calling for the revival of the Magna Carta, ignoring the fact that in the century we live in the rest of humanity has moved way past such things and into a far richer set of concepts including things like human rights, tolerance, checks and balances and so forth.