Early life and education

Manji was born in Uganda in 1968 to parents of Egyptian and Gujarati descent. YouTube - Irshad Manji on Imran Siddiqui's VOA TV (Pakistan)- Part 2 Her family moved to Canada when she was four, as a result of Idi Amin's expulsion of Asians. She and her family settled near Vancouver in 1972, and she grew up attending both a secular and an Islamic religious school. Manji excelled in the secular environment but, by her own account, was expelled from her religious school for asking too many questions. For the next twenty years, she studied Islam via public libraries and Arabic tutors. Manji earned an honours degree in the history of ideas from the University of British Columbia. In 1990, she won the Governor General's Medal for top humanities graduate. She is openly lesbian.

Career

Manji worked as a legislative aide in the Canadian parliament, press secretary in the Ontario government, and speechwriter for the leader of the New Democratic Party. At age 24, she became the national affairs editorialist for the Ottawa Citizen and thus the youngest member of an editorial board for any Canadian daily. She was also a columnist for Ottawa's new LGBT newspaper Capital Xtra!.

Manji has since hosted or produced several public affairs programs on television, one of which won the Gemini, Canada’s top broadcasting prize. She participated in a regular segment on TVOntario's Studio 2 in the mid-1990s, representing liberal views in debates with conservative journalist Michael Coren. She later produced and hosted QueerTelevision for the Toronto based Citytv in the late 1990s. Among the program's coverage of local and national LGBT issues, she also produced stories on the lives of gay people in the Muslim world. When she left the show, Manji donated the set's giant Q to the Pride Library at the University of Western Ontario.

In 2002, she became writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto's Hart House, from where she began writing The Trouble with Islam Today. From 2005 to 2006, she was a visiting fellow with the International Security Studies program at Yale University. She is currently a senior fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels. Who We Are In January 2008, Manji joined New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service to spearhead the Moral Courage Project, an initiative to help young people speak truth to power within their own communities. Irshad Manji blog and official website » moral-courage-project

Manji has received numerous death threats. Irshad Manji blog and official website » Memo to YouTube: Don't censor death threats In an interview with Glenn Beck, Manji stated that the windows of her apartment are fitted with bullet-proof glass, primarily for the protection of her family.

As a journalist, Irshad’s columns appear in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Times of London, Al-Arabiya.net. She writes a regular feature for Canada’s Globe and Mail. Irshad has founded Project Ijtihad, an initiative to renew Islam’s own tradition of critical thinking, debate and dissent.

"Muslim refusenik" is a phrase Manji uses to identify herself as someone who refuses to "join an army of robots in the name of God." [World: 'Muslim Refusenik' Irshad Manji Urges Thoughtful Piety] - [Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty © 2008] "Refusenik" is an English-Russian portmanteau word first used for Russian Jews refused permission to emigrate, and then for Israeli conscientious objectors who refused to do army service on the West Bank.

Manji's book The Trouble with Islam Today was published by St. Martin's Press in 2004. It has since been translated into more than 30 languages. Manji offers several translations of the book (namely Arabic, Indonesian, Urdu, Malay and Persian) available for free-of-charge download on her website. To date, the Arabic translation alone has been downloaded more than a quarter of a million times. The book has been met with both praise and scorn from both Muslim and non-Muslim sources. Several reviewers have called the book "courageous" or "long overdue" while others have accused it of disproportionately targeting Muslims or lacking thorough scholarship.

In the book, Manji says that the Arab's failure to accept the Jews' historical bond with Palestine is a mistake. Manji accepts that the Jews' historical roots stretch back to the land of Israel, and recognizes their right to a Jewish state. She further argues that the allegation of apartheid in Israel is deeply misleading, noting that there are in Israel several Arab political parties; that Arab-Muslim legislators have veto powers; and that Arab parties have overturned disqualifications. She also observes that Israel has a free Arab press; that road signs bear Arabic translations; and that Arabs live and study alongside Jews.

Tarek Fatah, a fellow Canadian Muslim, who originally criticized The Trouble With Islam reversed his stance by saying that Manji was "right about the systematic racism in the Muslim world" and that "there were many redeeming points in her memoir".

Manji was awarded Oprah Winfrey's first annual Chutzpah Award for "audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction." Ms. Magazine named her a "Feminist for the 21st Century," and Immigration Equality gave her its Global Vision Prize. In 2006, The World Economic Forum selected her as a Young Global Leader. She has also been named a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the American Society for Muslim Advancement. Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow In May 2008, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound.

Books

• A Wake-up Call For Honesty and Change First Edition, Random House Canada - Sept 16, 2003 ISBN-10 0-679-31250-1
• The Trouble with Islam Today, 2004, ISBN 1-84018-837-5
• Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali appearance at the 92nd Street Y on The Trouble with Islam, audiobooks, 2006. ( ISBN 0-312-32699-8 )
• The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith, 2005, ISBN 0-312-32700-5
• Risking Utopia: On the edge of a new democracy, 1997, ISBN 1-55054-434-9

Film

• Irshad's PBS documentary, Faith without Fear, follows her journey to reconcile faith and freedom. Released in 2007, the film depicts the personal risks Manji has faced as a Muslim reformer. She explores Islamism in Yemen, Europe and North America, as well as histories of Islamic critical thinking in Spain and elsewhere. In 2007, it was a finalist for the National Film Board of Canada's Gemini Prize. NFB - About the NFB| 2007 Gemini Awards It also won Gold at the New York Television Festival in 2008. In the same year, Faith Without Fear launched the 2008 Muslim Film Festival organized by the American Islamic Congress. 2008Muslim Film Festival - Think-Different Women