Manji shutting down her website
Posted August 26, 2007
This will be my final update on muslim-refusenik.com. I’m about to launch my new site, which will stand for Muslim reform and moral courage rather than merely against all that troubles Islam today. I’ll also be blogging, posting more free-of-charge translations to defy the censors, and making it easier to use and distribute my content wherever you are in this world.
The one thing that won’t change is my passion to reconcile religion with reason. In that spirit, enjoy my exchange below with a reform-minded Muslim. You see? I’m not alone. Neither are you!
Leading to the following statements by Ali Eteraz:
Well, it appears that true reform (the Khaled abu el Fadl variety) is winning. It has subsumed Irshad Manji. That’s a victory for all those who stuck with reform instead of contrarianism. (By the way, a lot of people accuse reformists of being contrarians just for the hell of it, but that is just the last thing people who don’t know how to rebut reformists say).
So as this realignment happens, we have to ask again. What is Islamic Reform? Well, for sure, it isn’t “reformation.”
In order to understand this, you have to read his first statement:
In one of my previous altmuslim pieces about state of Islamic Reform in the West, I made a (surprisingly for me) smart observation: “Consider, then, the irony: reformers which did not alienate the Muslim community were alienated by the media; reformers which did alienate the Muslim community were embraced by the media.” I went onto say: “The current situation leaves Western Muslim reformers in a difficult bind. Does she lean towards Ramadan and el Fadl, sacrificing exposure to the non-Muslim world while doing the hard work of reform in relative isolation? Or does she lean towards Manji and Nomani, sacrifice influence in the Muslim community but make a positive impression about Islam to the non-Muslim world?”