GETTING IN TOUCH WITH MY INNER SAID. I'll admit it: I'm conflicted over Irshad Manji. I respect her bravery in speaking out as she does against the abuses of Muslim fundamentalists, and I think she's admirably committed to the task of reconciling liberalism, feminism, and Islam. On the other hand, in addition to her tendency to share even her most pedestrian observations as if she'd just discovered the last golden ticket, she also occasionally presents a view of Islam which, while appearing sympathetic, supports many of the West's assumptions about Islam and about itself. Manji, writing in The New Republic:
"Despite being accused of playing God, President Bush has never been all that serious about emulating Christ. What a shame. In Dostoevsky's story, Christ exercised moral rather than military authority, and thereby revealed the strategic wisdom of non-violence. Where it could have safely bothered to boast soft power, the Bush administration has instead indulged in the most heinous -- and needless -- spasms of torture. The White House has spoken like Jesus Christ yet acted like the Grand Inquisitor.[...]The self-control shown by Dostoevksy's Christ before the sadistic Inquisitor mirrors a central feature of classical Shiism: humility. For 1,400 years, Shiites have been championing freedom of thought, conscience, and worship as a statement of defiance against the Sunni concentration of power. Defeated mercilessly on the battlefield, Shiites built an epic narrative around loss, hardship and tragedy. It is a narrative that reminds believers to remain humble, for dissent keeps tyrants in check--Ayatollah Khomeini's later perversions of this story notwithstanding.If they embrace this traditional Shiite identity rather than Iran's steroidal strain of it, Iraq's leaders could undertake a real revolution. They could begin to replace the tribal imperative of honor, which motivates the Middle East to save face, with the prophetic message about saving their societies from abuse of power--a cause to which the Muslim masses everywhere will relate."
A few things about this. Manji calls Ayatollah Khomeini's innovations "perversions," and many Shi'i scholars (including Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Sistani) would agree, but the fact is that Khomeinism, the way it transformed Shi'ism into a revolutionary ideology, found support among a substantial constituency in Iran because it spoke to their experiences and aspirations, inveighed against a common enemy, and sold itself as a vehicle to their salvation. This is what religion does.
