Guest Post by Ernest Marshall
The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith, by Irshad Manji, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003
Ms. Manji’s book is both a heartfelt defense and scathing criticism of Islam. To understand this, a bit of her background is helpful.
Of South Asian descent, she immigrated to Canada from East Africa when four years old, and was raised in a Muslim family in the midst of modern Western cultural values. There are over a billion Muslims worldwide; they are not all living in Middle Eastern countries. Part of her message is that the monolithic view of Islam is not just a common misperception of the West, but a mistaken and harmful mindset of most of the Muslim world.