I hear from a Saudi friend that his country's religious police arrest women for wearing red on Valentines Day, and I think, Since when does a merciful God outlaw joy—or fun? I read about victims of rape being stoned for "adultery" and I wonder how a critical mass of us can stay stone silent.

She asks tough questions: "What's with the stubborn streak of anti-Semitism in Islam? Who is the real colonizer of the Muslims—-America or Arabia? Why are we squandering the talents of women, fully half of God's creation?" This is not an anti-Muslim rant. Manji also speaks with passionate love and hope for Islam, believing that democracy is compatible with its purest doctrine. Sure, she's biased and opinionated. But all religions, from Christianity to Buddhism to Islam should be accountable for how their leadership and national allegiances personally affect their followers. One would hope that this honest voice be met with a little more self-scrutiny and a little less anti-personal, anti-feminine, and anti-Western rhetoric. --Gail Hudson

Product Description

Thirty reviews are positive--3 to five stars--and 14 (nearly 50%) are by people who have reviewed for Amazon before. Only 7 (less than 25%) are anonymous, signed "A Reader"). In general, the reviewers discuss the merits of the .

Twenty-two reviews are hostile--almost all only 1 star--and only 5 (about 23%) are by previous Amazon reviewers. (One claims a children's game caused repeated vomiting by her child; reviews a $2.79 screwdriver; and attacks a book she admits not having read. In short, she doesn't review--she rants.) Nine (about 40%) are anonymous. Many are merely ad hominem attacks on the author, who is described as dishonest, ignorant, money-hungry, publicity-seeking (even fatwa-seeking) and fostering a "craze for Islamophobia." One calls Manji "simply not a Muslim" because of her "inability to read Arabic, absence from active Mulim worship, embrace of the West and its secular values, not to mention her identity as a Lesbian feminist."

I believe Amazon's reader-reviews are important and should not be distorted by partisan attacks. Readers should be alert to possible unfairness in this case. Now (at last) to the book itself.

Manji addresses her fellow Muslims thus: "I have to be honest with you. Islam is on pretty thin ice with me. I'm hanging on by my fingernails . . . ." What sounds like a nifty, snappy, wise-ass opener is, it soon becomes clear, really an expression of pain. Spirituality is important to Manji, and she feels her religion has betrayed her--from childhood onward--and she makes a number of important points.

First, she rejects the notion, popular since 9/11, that the problem isn't Islam but that Islam has been 'highjacked' by murderous psychopaths. No, she says: Mainstream Islam IS the culprit; it is cruel and even brutal toward women, toward Jews, toward Christians, toward all other infidels--even toward other Muslims. Dissident Muslims can be and have been beaten, imprisoned, killed. Muslims who aren't religious enough (e.g., those impious, kite-flying Afghanis) have been crushed. (Indeed, they were the Taliban's first victims: There's nothing fundamentalists hate more than apostates.)

As for the simplistic idea that "you mustn't confuse Islam with culture," she's all too well aware that Islam and such cultural horrors as Sharia law go hand in hand, each supporting the other. Sharia law, you may recall, means honor killings, punishing homosexuals by toppling walls on them, punishing adulteresses by stoning them to death, and defining rape victims as adulteresses.

She is clear on Islam's hermetic nature: Ask a question and get no answer, especially if you're a woman. Propose interpretation and be told the Koran is the literal word of God--and that the 'hadiths' or secondary sources are likewise not to be questioned, analyzed, interpreted. The source of this closed view is, she says, "desert Islam"--the narrow, harsh Wahabist Islam of Saudi Arabia. Its hermeticism is only increasing. The Koran, according to fundamentalists, can't be translated but must be read in Arabic (some also believe that only Arabs are "real Muslims"), and the Wahabist madressas (religious schools) don't want many people to read it even in Arabic. They don't teach reading but foster illiteracy; their students must learn to recite Koranic verses by rote.

Very interesting: What you can't read, you can't question or analyze or parse. You can't even know there are contradictory Koranic passages of compassion and tolerance toward non-believers and other beliefs. Can they be literally God's words? "The Koran is so profoundly at war with itself," says Manji, "that Muslims who 'live by the book' have no choice but to choose what to emphasize and what to downplay." Unless, of course, they're madressa-trained illiterates who will never know the contradictions exist. Imagine that: a religion with a vested interest in illiteracy. Is that a recipe for backwardness, or what?

Manji says most "moderate Mulims" allow these and other abuses to continue without protest. They remain silent--silent except, Manji says, for "screaming self-pity." Indeed, Muslims are frequently quoted in the New York Times on being maginalized, discriminated against and harmed by "backlash" and Islamophobia. Really? Such reports conspicuously lack anything but accusations and charges; there are never any facts. If Muslims in America in particular and the West in general were being victimized, do you not think you'd have heard about it by now? Manji's view and mine is that Western Muslims either support the abuses of desert Islam--or they are crippled by fear of retirbution.

In 217 pages Manji cannot be a scholar nor a historian. She goes a little too easily on the West and Isrtael at times. But she is successful at raising important questions, contradictions and challenges. She is not the best of writers--her tone is urgent, insistent and unmoldulated (to the point of being tedious at times). But her flaws are few and her courage cannot be questioned.--Bill Marsano is a professional writer and editor.


A Must-Read   July 25, 2004
 207 out of 250 found this review helpful

Organized religion has a tendency to invite disaster due to the inherent flaws of the human condition that predicate judgment, mistrust, hatred, and disdain for those who adhere to a faith and dogma different from our own. In particular, the monotheistic Semitic religions over the course of history have proven to be the most rigid and intolerant of other faiths; this 'my way or the highway' approach has resulted in warfare, conquests, and carnage that--unfortunately--carries through to today.

In the post-9/11 world, Islam has occupied center stage of our global lexicon. In the name of this religion, international networks of terrorism have been spawned to attack, kill, and terrify. And Islam, like any other faith, has its problems--the totalitarian intolerance of dissent being one of its ugliest thorns. Under such a foreboding environment, Canadian TV journalist Irshad Manji dares to speak out via an open letter to all Muslims in her compelling and riveting book, THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM.

Granted, the author openly admits she is grappling with her faith; one day, she laments, she may leave Islam for good. Yet Manji has the courage and fortitude to shed light on the myriad of problems inflicting her faith: the oppression of women in the Arab and Muslim world; the unwavering intolerance of other religions in Arab and Muslim nations; the rampant anti-Semitism festering and infecting mosques around the world. The author presents a convincing case that Islam has been captured by zealots who espouse a malignant, narrow interpretation of the Koran: an interpretation that portrays Islam as an antiquated relic looking backward--instead of a peaceful vehicle for adaptation and change in an ever-changing world. This rigid adherence to the past, according to Manji, is defined as 'foundamentalism,' or 'desert Islam.' And the author calls for the 'silent majority' of moderate Muslims to come together to reject such fundamentalism, beginning with Muslims in the West--Muslims who have the freedom to speak their minds.

THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM is a remarkable, engrossing page-turner. Manji presents her arguments, evidence, and observations in a delightfully conversational--often witty--style. Based on the dozens and dozens of one-star reviews of this book, the author and other Muslims calling for sweeping reform have their work cut out for them; on the other hand, each critique represents the opportunity for dialogue--dialogue inherently welcomes discussion. And a frank, open, and honest discussion of Islam is absolutely in order.
--D. Mikels


courageous accurate assessment of Islam   January 19, 2004
 117 out of 185 found this review helpful

My knowledge of world history and religions was better than most but woefully lacking as I have found out since 9-11. Shortly after 9-11, I began reading about Islam from multiple sources; some Islamic and others non-Islamic, some sympathetic and others not, some pre 9-11, some post.

It has taken me a long time to form opinions about Islam because the issues are so complex. Indeed, I do not have final opinions about many issues concerning Islam and probably never will. But in my two years of study, I have begun to feel that I have a sense of the religion.

Manji is the first Muslim who I have seen publicly speak openly, rationally and honestly about the current state of Islam. The book is light reading but insightful. I
would highly recommend it.

It is my belief that this is the most valuable assessment of Islam that has been published since 9-11.


What someone mentioned in the Acknowledgement section says   March 10, 2004
 113 out of 237 found this review helpful

It is not often that a person thanked in the acknowledgement of a book turns around and announces publicly, ythanks, but no thanks.y

And yet this is precisely what I am about to do. At the receiving end of my rejection is Irshad Manji, the Salman Rushdie wannabe author of the fatwa-shopping, newly released book, yThe Trouble with Islam.y

The reason for my rejection? To assuage the souls of the thousands of Muslims from countries and regions as diverse and Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, India, Pakistan, and yes even Palestine and other Middle Eastern nations.

They laid down their lives in the Second World War in battles as significant as those of Stalingrad, which broken Hitlerys back, and North Africa, which sent Hitlerys Desert Fox, General Rommel, scurrying back to his den in Berlin.

Despite the sacrifices of these men, Ms. Manji in her book refers to the yMuslim complicity in the Holocaust.y I froze as I read this serious accusation. Could I have missed something when I sat at the feet of Muslim veterans from Crete, Burma, Egypt, and Italy, and heard their horror stories? In one fragment of a sentence, yMuslim Complicity in the Holocaust,y Ms. Manji places all these warriors on the wrong side of the trenches.

In writing her diatribe against Muslims, I doubt that Manji had heard of the Palestine Regiment, a unit in which Jew and Muslim fought side-by-side against Hitlerys Afrika Korps in Libya. In the cemeteries of El-Alamein lie the dead Muslims, the Mohammeds, the Alis and the Ismailys who gave their lives so that Nazism could be defeated. The cemeteries of Stalingrad bear the names of the young Central Asian Muslims who lay buried, unable to refute the falsehoods being spread by fast-food historians. And what about the hundreds of thousands of Indian Muslims who fought shoulder to shoulder with our own Canadians in Italy and France.

So how did Ms. Manji come up with a charge as far reaching as the one by the recent German parliamentarian who said that yJews were complicity in the Bolshevik revolutionys atrocities? She bases it on one Haj Amin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who, as she writes, ywound up as Hitlerys special guest in Berlin, presiding over the unveiling of the Islamic Central Institute in December 1942.y

According to Irshad Manjiys rationale, because one Muslim Mufti accepted the hospitality of Hitler, after being expelled from Palestine by the British colonial authorities, all us 1.2 billion Muslims, a quarter of humanity, deserve to be accused of complicity in the Holocaust.

And what about other prominent Palestinians, such as Hazim Khalidi, a London School of Economics grad who volunteered to serve in the Indian army's "Palestine Battaliony and later assigned to the yPalestine Regimenty that included Muslims, Jews, and Christians? Perhaps Irshad Manji may like to visit the cemetery in Mississauga where Sgt. Hannah Hazineh lies buried, unable to come to his defence. This decorated Palestinian veteran of the Second World War was wounded in the El-Alamein battle while fighting the Nazis. Ah! But why let facts get in the way of a good story.

Haj Amin, no doubt, was an influential Muslim cleric in Jerusalem. But so were countless Catholic and Protestant clergy in Europe who supported Hitler, and many looked the other way while their Jewish neighbours were being dragged away. Should we talk of Christian complicity in the Holocaust? Should we, like the German Parliamentarian who talked of a Jewish complicity in the Bolshevik uprising, allow the actions of a few to rub off on an entire people?

The Holocaust charge is not the only example of Manjiys poor scholarship when it comes to Muslim bashing. In an amazing swipe at her co-religionists, Manji writes, yMuslims of East Africa treated blacks like slaves.y The fact that the vast majority of Muslims in East Africa are themselves black is completely lost on her. She continues, yWe Muslims made dignity difficult for people darker than us.y A Somali friend bewildered at her accusation asked, yWho is darker than me? Obviously, Irshad Manji does not consider black Muslims as Muslim enough,y he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Irshad Manji says her book is addressed to fellow Muslims. Had it been written in good faith, I would have understood her reasoning, even if I did not agree with her. However, her book is not addressed to Muslims; it is aimed at making Muslim haters feel secure in their thinking.

And so, I politely tell Ms. Manji: Thank you for thanking my wife Nargis and me for a yspirited discussiony that landed you yimportant insights.y But the kind of insight you display in your book is troubling. Not quite our recollection of where you said you were coming from. And we would appreciate any mention of us being removed from your second edition y that is, if you do manage to secure a threatening fatwa and have a second edition.

Tarek Fatah is host of the weekly TV show, The Muslim Chronicle and a founding member of the Muslim Canadian Congress.


Maybe a beginning   January 12, 2004
 72 out of 107 found this review helpful

Some of us have been waiting for a long time - since the first attack on the WTC, the Khobar Towers incident, the embassies, the USS Cole.

If none of those were enough, 9-11 finally woke us up and put us on watch. We've been waiting ever since.

We've been waiting for an uprising of the "ordinary" Muslim against the fanatic literalists who have hijacked their religion.

Where was the outcry?

The President of the United States assured us that Islam is a religion of peace in an attempt to quell the rising threat of hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs in our country. I forgave him his misinformation in this matter, because I did not want to see any more innocents harmed, no matter what their faith or nationality.

But where was the outcry from mainstream Islam?

There were verbal condemnations of this violence from many of those in the Muslim community, but when you read further statements from the groups that have condemned terrorism, most continued with a variety of amendments that implied that the US was responsible for this tragedy.

"We're very sorry. Terrorism is never acceptable," out of one side of their mouths and "But you did this to yourselves," out of the other.

Literal Islam is not a religion of peace. It is a religion of domination and conversion even by force. It is a religion that allows its believers to lie, steal or kill if those are deemed necessary to promote Islam. Read the Koran - it's all there.

The books of Islam were written over a period of more than 20 years in the life of its prophet, Mohammed - and the scriptures changed depending upon the conditions under which the prophet found himself at any given time.

It was a religion of peace and tolerance when it suited Mohammed to demonstrate those principles to the local populace. (i.e. - when he was outnumbered)

It became a religion of conversion by force whenever and wherever he achieved the necessary strength that allowed him to convert followers by threat of death.

The people who know the Koran and who are telling you that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance know that they are forgiven in their sin because lying in order to promote the religion is not only tolerated, it is prescribed in the Koran.

The Christian literalists among us in the US are loudly denounced and disavowed by mainstream Christians.

When they commit a crime (killing abortion doctors or homosexuals, for instance, as prescribed by the Christian bible) they are brought to justice.

Where is the denouncement of the fanatic among Muslims?

Finally, an author who speaks to those of us who have been waiting.

Maybe it is the beginning.