Unveiling Islam: out Irshad Manji takes on the faith's treatment of women, gays, and Jews in a brave new book.

Irshad Manji says one question reverberated in her mind as she sat down to write The Trouble With Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith (St. Martin's Press, $22.95): Am I a self-hating Muslim? The out author, who is also a Toronto TV executive and talk-show host, concludes, "The answer is no. I constantly demanded accountability from myself, in the stone way I am demanding accountability from my faith."

The result is a rabble-rousing book written in a down-to-earth style. Calling herself a "Muslim refusenik," the Ugandan-born Manji calls on all Muslims to speak out against conservative forces who have effectively hijacked an entire faith--forces, she argues, who consistently undermine the rights of women, gays and lesbians, and Jews in predominantly Muslim stales. Manji notes that Muslims were once renowned for critical thought rather than the present-day dogma of conformity, intolerance, and the oppression of minorities within Muslim-dominated nation-states.

Not surprisingly, the book has already drawn sharp criticism from various quarters, particularly in its native Canada, where The Trouble With Islam came out in September. Manji has received several death threats from Muslim extremists, some of them serious enough to warrant round-the-clock personal security.

Meanwhile, critics on the Left have argued that Manji has simply succumbed to right-wing thinking on the issue of Islam and fundamentalism. Citing a chapter that praises Israel as being a free and democratic state and another chapter nonironically titled "Thank God for the West," they see Manji's tome as an overly simplistic look at a diverse religious group, a perspective that has become conventional wisdom in a post-9/11 world.

Manji disagrees, arguing that her primary point is to end a disturbing silence. "My main hope for this book is that conversations would be created where none had existed before," she says. "Already people are contacting me--Muslims and non-Muslims, old and young, gay, straight, you name it. Certainly, amid it all is some anger. But I'm receiving tons of support, in particular from Muslim women, who have been thanking me for putting into words what they say they felt all along. That's been very gratifying."

Has there been one response to The Trouble With Islam that especially stands out in Manji's mind? She smiles. "My mother heard from members of her own congregation, who look her aside and said, 'You know what? We've read the book, and Irshad is right about this.' My mother put a note in my luggage one day when I was leaving. It said, 'You go, girl!'"

Hays is associate editor of the weekly Montreal Mirror.