The Trouble with The Trouble with Islam

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By Linda Belanger

January 1, 2005
 
Reading the first few pages of the Trouble with Islam, I could easily identify with Irshad Manji’s experiences in her mosque and most certainly with her rejection of the vilification of Jews. As an inmate of the Catholic school system of the 1960s I found no spiritual substance or sustenance in the teachings of Catholicism. The rhetoric rang hollow, even to a six year old, and by the age of fourteen I had completely rejected all organized religion.  

In the French Catholic school that I attended in the 60s, Protestants, the English and the "savages” who “martyred” the holy Jesuit fathers, who had come to civilize and save them, were the objects of disdain of some of my teachers.

As a French Canadian growing up in Toronto among the English and Protestants, I simply couldn’t see them in as bad a light as they were painted by some of my primary school teachers.  Although I didn’t know much about Native aboriginal history and culture at that time, I didn’t like the hateful tones that were used to describe our Native people either.

Novels by English Canadian writers such as Margaret Atwood, Margaret Lawrence and Alice Monroe indicate that the level of tolerance was no better on the English/Protestant side of the Canadian divide.  To a French Canadian it seems totally absurd that the various Protestant sects looked down on one another as did the English on the Scottish and Irish.  To us they were just the Protestants and the English. There is no need to mention how they regarded the French.

Although I can understand where Ms. Manji is coming from in her rejection of racism and human rights abuses, these problems are not unique to Muslim society.  Her criticisms are neither balanced nor placed in historical context. She even blames her father's abusive behaviour on the paternalism of Islam.

Her praise of Canadian society is flattering but not informed. If literature is the mirror of a society, Canada’s reflection is not very pretty.  Twentieth century Canadian literature, both English Protestant and French Catholic is full of stories of abusive family situations and racist, sadistic teachers.

The abuse of orphans in Mt. Cashel, Newfoundland, and native children in residential schools is well documented.  This is not ancient history; these events happened in the period from 1930 to 1960. In affluent, educated Ottawa today there are a number of shelters for battered women.  Let’s not be self-righteous.

By page 30 of her book, Manji starts to sound like the pro-war, pro-Zionist, Islam bashing columnists from the pages of Canwest Global newspapers, and at times I wondered if the book had been co-written with Daniel Pipes.  Her admiration of Israel is evident throughout the book and will be discussed later.

As a Muslim, Ms. Manji has the right to criticize Islam more harshly than the rest of us.  Her book, however, dredges up ancient history and events in poverty stricken, underdeveloped dictatorships supposedly to advance the idea that, in order to modernize, Muslims must become more self-critical.  The brutal history of Christian European nations is barely mentioned. 

She claims that Islam has produced more terrorists than any other group but completely ignores atrocities committed by Christian western states in the past 50 years, such as against Hiroshima and Viet Nam, and the ongoing state terrorism of Israel against Palestinians and the United States against Iraq.

The disappearing freedoms of Americans due to the Patriot Act are justified by Manji because they are taking place in an open, free society; i.e. they can so far still be reported in the media.(1)  It seems that the failings of Western societies can be ignored as long as we benefit from freedom of information and freedom of speech.

One might argue that the populations of Western societies are all the more complicit in their governments’ crimes because they benefit from education and freedom of information yet fail to inform themselves and act to influence their governments.  It could also be argued that the lack of participation in the democratic process has led to freedom of "disinformation" by the corporate media, especially in North America.

Ms. Manji’s most absurd and one-sided criticism of Islam is surely the accusation that it suppresses the right to question and portrays itself as the final and perfect Word of God.  All religions are based on adherence to a certain set of beliefs. Certainly Catholicism with its belief in the infallibility of the Pope cannot be said to promote free thought.

Born again Christians are taught that the Bible is the final and perfect Word of God, and that the only road to salvation is through Jesus.  Such beliefs are held by an estimated 60 million Americans today.  According to their beliefs, Manji herself is going straight to hell, along with all "unsaved" Muslims and Jews.

Could Ms. Manji be selectively ignoring facts that do not fit into the thesis she wishes to advance?  This is a technique frequently used by neo-con columnists in the pages of the National Post and other Canwest Global papers.

Ms. Manji goes on at length about the contradictions and violence expressed in the Koran.  This is another favourite tactic of the Muslim bashers who wish to portray Muslims as both inferiors and a threat to us.  But the Bible and the Torah also contain such passages.

In Deuteronomy we find that all the nations that God told Moses were sinful were to be "utterly" destroyed and the women, children and cattle taken as "spoil".   A man who marries a woman and “finds that she is not a virgin” can return her to her father’s house and “there the men of her town shall stone her to death.”

In the Torah, disobedient children are to be killed:  “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother…. They shall say to the elders ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious.  He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.’  Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death.”

According to Ms. Manji, the rekindled slave trade in the Sudan and the civil war in Nigeria “couldn’t be waged without some help from the Koran.”(2)  Come on!  The Bible has been used for centuries to suppress women and to justify slavery and wars.  Injustice, war and racism are not unique to Muslim societies.

Of course, Manji goes on at length about the treatment of women in Islamic countries.   Certainly things don't get much worse for women than lashing of rape victims and bride burning.   But in her zeal to portray Islam as violent, oppressive and backwards Ms. Manji forgets to mention that, when the family’s economic situation permits, Muslim women are often well educated and work in fields such as medicine, journalism and informatics.

In Iraq, women were actually doing quite well before that country was "liberated" by the U.S.  Benazir Bhutto became the first woman leader of a Muslim state in 1988 while the United States, France, Germany, Australia or Canada have yet to have a woman leader.  (Kim Campbell was selected as leader of her party but defeated in the election.)  There must be something right with Islam.

Again, her enthusiasm for Western societies seems to be very ill informed.  Women's rights are a relatively new thing in Canada.  Women were not allowed to vote until 1918. Women could not be appointed to the Senate of Canada until 1929 when the British Privy Council rendered a decision declaring that the term "qualified persons" in article 24 of the British North America Act includes members of the female gender.

But even after these legislative advances, the realities of every day life left a great deal to be desired.  It seems that women "persons" were still the possessions of their husbands.

My mother once told me the story of a friend she had in the late 1930s.  This newlywed woman's husband had gone out to work as a logger in the bush for the winter months, as northern Ontario farmers would do to make ends meet.

During his absence, the young woman was stricken with acute appendicitis.  Her parents took her to the hospital but the doctor refused to operate without her husband's consent.  So, in Canada in the late 1930s, a young woman died because her owner could not be reached to give permission to let her live.

In her book, Be a "Nice" Girl, Ottawa writer Ruth Bell recounts that when she started working at the Bank of Montreal in the 1950s there was no pension plan for women, and women who wanted a safety deposit box had to get their husbands or sons to sign so there would be no secrets.

Irshad's admiration of Western society is flattering -  but get real!  It has not been and still is not a shining example of peace and justice.  Slavery was only abolished in the United States 137 years ago after an incredibly bloody civil war.  One hundred and thirty seven years is not a long time in the history of the world.  There were still lynchings in the United States in the 1960s.  Racism only started to go out of style in the 60’s and 70’s.

Not content to trash Islam based on ancient history, the book focuses specifically on “desert Islam", claiming that the worst influences on the religion have come from the Arab countries that, coincidentally, are the main targets of the American neo-cons who seek to dehumanize Middle Eastern populations to justify further wars for oil, economic domination and the security of Israel.

Do Muslim countries have worse human rights records than Western countries, especially in regard to women’s rights?  The answer is no doubt, ‘Yes”.  But Islam is not the only and probably not the main cause. Colonization, as well as cultural, environmental and governmental factors have probably played a far greater role in creating these oppressive societies.

The role of the United States in wars and coups to overthrow democratically elected rulers as well as supporting oppressive regimes deemed more favourable to American interests cannot be ignored.

The trouble with The Trouble with Islam is that it is a biased, poorly researched and negative book.  Aside from a dozen or so pages in Chapter 7 where the author discusses increasing micro banking loans to women in poor Islamic countries, the book offers no constructive suggestions for change.

Ms. Manji's analysis has obviously been highly influenced by the Zionist dominated neo-cons.  Her clearly pro-Zionist and baseless attacks on Islam are more likely to trigger a defensive reaction than to promote the changes in Muslim society that she wishes to see.   In these post 9-11 times, her alliance with the right is irresponsible and provides ammunition to those who are trying to help to paint Islam as the 21st century Red Scare in order to justify American and Israeli aggression in the Middle East.


   1. The Trouble with Islam, p. 216
   2. The Trouble with Islam, p. 41


Coming soon:  Irshad Manji’s trip to Israel.


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