Free Republic

The real battle for religious freedom lurks beneath the Ground Zero mosque controversy. It is sadly ironic that our public debate presents the mosque proponents as the partisans of liberty: That includes everyone from imam Feisal Rauf, the project’s sharia-touting sponsor, to President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, and the rest of the Islamist-smitten Left, to the GOP’s own anti-anti-terrorist wing. Yet, wittingly or not, when they champion this mosque and its sponsors, it is the agenda of an alien and authoritarian Islam that they champion — an Islam against which many American Muslims chafe. When it comes to liberty, no one...

AYAAN HIRSI ALI and Irshad Manji are two of the most prominent and outspoken critics of what they and others see as “mainstream Islam.” Brilliant, dynamic women — the overused word “charismatic” is not inappropriate for either one — they have each rebelled against a Muslim upbringing to become public figures with large and devoted followings. Both are successful authors: Ms. Hirsi Ali’s autobiography, “Infidel,” was a New York Times best seller; Ms. Manji’s combination memoir-polemic, “The Trouble With Islam Today,” has been published in almost 30 countries. They are firm and unyielding in their support for the West, feminism,...

THIS week's arrest of Mohamed Haneef in Brisbane may be more curious for the fact he's a professional lifesaver than for the possibility that he's a terrorist. So far, most of those being investigated in the latest British car bomb plots are, as is Haneef, doctors. The seeming paradox of the privileged seeking to avenge humiliation has many scratching their heads. Aren't Muslim martyrs supposed to be poor, dispossessed and resentful? September 11 should have stripped us of that breezy simplification. The 19 hijackers came from means. Mohammed Atta, their ringleader, earned an engineering degree. He then moved to the...

GROWING up in Vancouver, I attended an Islamic school every Saturday. There, I learned that Jews can't be trusted because they worship "moolah, not Allah", meaning money, not God. According to my teacher, every last Jew is consumed with business. But looking around my neighbourhood, I noticed that most of the new business signs featured Asian languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Punjabi and plenty of Urdu. Not Hebrew, Urdu, which is spoken throughout Pakistan. That reality check made me ask: What if my religious school isn't educating me? What if it's indoctrinating me? I'm reminded of this question thanks...

Controversial Canadian journalist and filmmaker Irshad Manji says that many of the death threats she receives stem from Scandinavia. Speaking at Nordic Media Days in Bergen, Manji, a Muslim herself, spoke of the challenges in communication with the Muslim world. Manji, the author of The Trouble with Islam Today and the maker of acclaimed documentary Faith without Fear, discussed the open spread of extreme Islamism in the West, and the importance of communication as a support to reform-friendly Muslims. "Western journalists are too careful. They feel ignorant and do not dare to ask the critical questions. Western ignorance is a...

Irshad Manji has already been dubbed ‘Osama’s worst nightmare’ for her criticisms of Islam. Now she wants Britain’s Muslims to stand more firmly on the side of freedomNo wonder Irshad Manji has received death threats since appearing on British television: she is a lipstick lesbian, a Muslim and scourge of Islamic leaders, whom she accuses of making excuses about the terror attacks on London. Oh, and she tells ordinary Muslims to “crawl out of their narcissistic shell”. Ouch. Manji is a glamorous Canadian television presenter whose book, The Trouble with Islam, has made her so famous in America that she...

The recent picture of the president walking hand-in-hand with Saudi Prince Abdullah prompted a torrent of juvenile jokes. Left mostly unasked were important questions, however, about Saudi Arabia’s role in fomenting and supporting militant Islam. A recent controversial book asks these questions—not only about Saudi Arabia, but the Islamic world as a whole. The book is The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith by Irshad Manji. Manji calls herself a “Muslim Refusenik,” a politically loaded term. “Refusenik” was originally used to describe Soviet Jews who refused to go along with the “mind control” and “soulnessness”...

The assassin's master sermon By Spengler Westerners identify readily with secular Muslims such as Ayaan Hirshi Ali, member of the Netherlands' parliament and the late Theo van Gogh's collaborator in a film attacking Islam's treatment of women, or with the Canadian Irshad Manji, the lesbian "Muslim refusenik" who published The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith. But they have something to learn from the letter that Mohammed B pinned with a knife to van Gogh's corpse after he murdered him with knife and pistol on November 2. The text can be found at FaithFreedom.org, along...

GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Toronto As a young Canadian Muslim who has called for reform in Islam, I've been traveling throughout North America and Europe over the past year. Last week, I toured France and Spain. God help me. I didn't expect a warm reception from fellow Muslims. But now, I'm also not sure that liberal Muslims like me fit comfortably in a secular European crowd. I say this even after the murder of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker, who police officials say was shot and stabbed by a Muslim extremist. Mr. van Gogh had exercised his right to criticize...

(Daniel Pipes' Weblog, Visit http://www.danielpipes.org) Dark Days for North American Islamist Organizations? The Islamist establishment in the United States and Canada must be wishing that September 2003 never happened.Evan McCormick shows in "A Bad Day for CAIR" how on a single day, Sept. 10, the Council on American-Islamic Relations took three blows: "It ran away from testifying before an influential Senate panel that heard a barrage of incriminating evidence about the group and its connections. It saw one of its former officials plead guilty to terrorist-related crimes in Federal Court. And, it was stood up by two Department of...

A Canadian Muslim who tomorrow releases a book critical of her religion is drawing ''a very high level of awareness'' from police because of a feared backlash from fundamentalists. Irshad Manji said she has taken every step possible to ensure her safety, including forwarding critical e-mails and letters to the authorities. The Toronto journalist said she is not sure how The Trouble with Islam, which urges Muslims to purge Islam of fundamentalism, will be received. ''At this point it's all about being prepared rather than paranoid,'' she said in an interview this weekend. Today's National Post carries an exclusive excerpt...