here is one anecdote in this bracing little book that still makes me crack a smile long after reading it. As a 13-year-old student attending a madrasa in suburban Vancouver, Irshad Manji, a Muslim immigrant of South Asian origins from Uganda, was subjected to a familar tirade against the Jews by her teacher -- to whom she gives the name ''Mr. Khaki.'' Unfazed by the disapproval she knew she would garner and completely unsuited to the kind of supine deference her teacher was obviously asking for, Irshad began to pose some tough questions:
''I remember asking why Prophet Muhammad would have commanded his army to kill an entire Jewish tribe when the Koran supposedly came to him as a message of peace. Mr. Khaki couldn't cope. He shot me a look of contempt, gave an annoyed wave of the hand and cut short history class, only to hold Koran study next. Me and my big mouth.''
But Irshad wasn't done with Mr. Khaki. She kept asking awkward questions throughout the year. A kind of Lisa Simpson of Islam, one day she simply demanded that Mr. Khaki provide some evidence of the alleged Jewish plot. She recalls:
''What he provided was an ultimatum: 'Either you believe or get out. And if you get out, get out for good.'
'' 'Really? That's it?'
'' 'That's it.'
''With my temples throbbing and my neck sweating under the itchy polyester chador, I stood up. As I crossed the partition checkpoint, I could have uncovered my head for all the boys to see, but I didn't want to risk the humiliation of being chased out by an even more scandalized Mr. Khaki. All I could think to do was fling open the madrasa's hefty metal door and yell, 'Jesus Christ!' A memorable exit, I hoped.''
''The Trouble With Islam'' is a memorable entrance. It isn't the most learned or scholarly treatise on the history or theology of Islam; its dabbling in geopolitics is haphazard and a little naive; its rhetorical hyperbole can sometimes seem a mite attention-seeking -- like that final ''Jesus Christ!'' in the madrasa. But its spirit is undeniable, and long, long overdue. Reading it feels like a revelation. Manji, a Canadian journalist and television personality, does what so many of us have longed to see done: assail fundamentalist Islam itself for tolerating such evil in its midst. And from within.
Her basic argument is that the Koran is a complex, contradictory, human book. Its proscriptions are many and conflicting. Abandoning the role of a thinking person is not something that should be required of any religious individual. Reason and faith, Manji wants to believe, are not in conflict. And yet, as Islam is frequently practiced, reason is deplored as something that should defer in every instance not simply to the Koran but to the political authoritarians who reserve to themselves the sole right to interpret it.
What Manji discovered in the madrasa was a symptom of what she sees as a broader and deeper problem: that Muslims have stopped thinking, that their faith has been hijacked by tyrants and bullies, and that it has become infested with all kinds of hatred -- of Jews, of women, of gays, of the West. And instead of confronting these issues directly and openly, most Western Muslims -- perhaps the only group of Muslims with the actual freedom to question, criticize and debate -- have decided to retreat into victimology and appeasement. Aided and abetted by the moral nihilism of academic postmodernism, these people have surrendered to the new fascists of the Arab world.
I just hope Manji is ready for a very rough ride ahead. She is not exactly diplomatic. Here's one typical rhetorical flourish: ''Through our screaming self-pity and our conspicuous silences, we Muslims are conspiring against ourselves. We're in crisis, and we're dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it's now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it?''
