No, not for that one, Wolfgang. That's why I said "probably".

Some perspectives on Irshad Manji, from people other than me...

http://www.yayacanada.com/manji.html

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=4624


Here are some excerpts from the second link that highlight Manji's posturing and hypocrisy...

"Manji is best when she is flippantly dismissing critics who exhibit homophobia, sexism, or ignorance of one kind or another. Indeed, she devotes a substantial portion of her site and 10 minutes of her public talk to show herself answering such critics. Her point, perhaps, is that humour can help even in serious situations.

She might be right. In one of her notes (35) she describes the treatment of an intolerant Muslim cleric by a queer rights group: "In response to Sheikh Omar, two gay-rights groups, the Lesbian Avengers and Outrage, issued a 'Queer Fatwa' against him. The fatwa reportedly read: 'Omar Bakri Mohammad is hereby sentenced to 1000 years of relentless sodomitical torture.' Pity his torturer."

Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT Palestine) showed that they, too, have a sense of humour, with their recent actions in Berkeley. QUIT Palestine is fully consistent, recognizing the oppression of gays in Palestinian society (36) . Their most recent campaign was on 'Estee Slaughter':

"The queer group who first settled Starbucks launched a new marketing campaign today, introducing shoppers at Macy's Union Square in San Francisco to its new line of killer products from Estee Slaughter.

"About 20 activists from Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism descended on the downtown store today with samples of Village Vanishing Cream, Bloody Hand Cream, Atrocity Cover Up, Defoliant, WhiteRight Ethnic Cleanser and Kill Me Pink Lip Bomb. They gave away 500 samples of the new scent Eau de Occupation to appreciative passersby.

"The promotional leaflet explains that Ronald Lauder, chairman of Estee Lauder International, serves as president of the Jewish National Fund, which was formed in 1901 to establish Jewish settlements by purchasing land from absentee landlords. After the state of Israel was formed, the JNF was made responsible for developing lands expropriated by the government, including 531 villages that were destroyed by a campaign of ethnic cleansing by Jewish terrorists working with the newly formed Israeli "Defense" Forces." (37)

QUIT Palestine is a very inspiring solidarity group. So is the International Solidarity Movement, the group of Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals with whom I visited Palestine last year. That group organizes and supports Palestinians in non-violent direct action and resistance to the Israeli occupation, and, like those struggling Israeli groups, hopes to help shift the balance of forces in favour of a just peace. One of Manji's tactics, used several times through her book, is that of the 'unanswered email'. In her notes, she writes: "In the months following my trip to Israel, I contacted various Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim organizations about sending me on a journalistic mission to the Middle East so that I could appreciate things from a non-Zionist perspective. Not one of them replied to my request." (38)   Let me say publicly that on Nov. 20, 2003, at her public talk at Ryerson university in Toronto, in front of several hundred people who came to listen to her speech, "Defending Israel is Defending Diversity", I told Irshad Manji that she has a standing invitation to go to the Occupied Territories with the International Solidarity Movement. I gave her my email address and the sites for ISM Canada (www.ismcanada.org) and ISM (www.palsolidarity.org). She has not replied to my invitation."


"Opening the (Manji's) website, one is exposed to the picture of a young woman in an elaborate hijab, an outfit that covers all but her face. This type of picture invokes the women of Afghanistan, who have suffered over 25 years of brutality, rape, and torture at the hands of Soviet invaders, the jehadis trained by the US, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia in order to fight the Soviet invaders, and the factions that those jehadis split into - the 'Northern Alliance', the Taliban, and now the Northern Alliance again. Afghanistan's women have become the symbol of oppression by Islamic regimes. But Afghanistan's women have been resisting this brutality and sexism from the beginning. One of the most remarkable organizations in the world is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). But there is not a word about RAWA in Manji's book. The story of how these women built a covert organization to teach women to read, to document the atrocities that the West suddenly became interested in for the duration of the US bombing of Afghanistan, to strive for a secular democracy under the most repressive conditions imaginable, gets only an oblique mention: "Old Afghan women, some of them refugees, now attend schools that younger women run, and that they ran in secret during the Taliban's time." (pg. 180). Manji might not have had access to Anne Brodsky's excellent book on RAWA, 'With All Our Strength', which was just published(2) , but she certainly had access to their website(3) and to their words. There are real women, fighting and dying for secular democracy and against the fundamentalism that Manji decries. But Manji has no time for them.

Perhaps this is because RAWA was against the US bombing of their country while Manji wanted to say "America, your thrashing of the Taliban made millions of Afghanis happy. Since then, though, your failure to post soldiers beyond Kabul has made only tribal warlords and Taliban sympathizers smile." (pg. 143). America's "thrashing of the Taliban" also left at least several thousand Afghani civilians dead by cluster bombs, 'daisy cutters', and other weapons, by conservative estimates. An inconvenient fact, and one Manji makes no mention of, no doubt because her moral responsibility as a Muslim compels her to ignore it."


"Perhaps it is because this does not fit the picture of the West (or of Muslims) Manji is trying to paint that she also denies Queer Muslims a voice, even Queer Muslims from her very own Toronto. Salaam describes itself as follows. "Salaam: Queer Muslim community is a Muslim Identified Organization dedicated to social justice, peace and human dignity through its work to bring all closer to a world that is free from injustice, including prejudice, discrimination, racism, misogyny, sexism and homophobia." (34)   The activists of Salaam link from their website to Project Threadbare, a coalition of justice groups that tried to fight the detention and deportation of 21 Indian and Pakistani Muslim men based on virtually no credible evidence. A group of queer activists well aware of discrimination and homophobia in the Muslim community, Salaam recognizes that the struggle for social justice means struggling against all injustice. It is no wonder that they, like RAWA, or so many courageous Israelis, Palestinians, and Muslims, have no place in Manji's book."