Irshad Manji on Park51

by Mark Thompson on August 26, 2010

What’s this?  A thoughtful, non-demagogued, and thought-provoking piece on Park51?  Heaven forfend!

Mark is the Managing Editor of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

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1 Transplanted Lawyer August 26, 2010 at 3:51 pm

Is this, at last, the voice of the moderate Muslim that will satisfy those who claim there are no such people? It’s hard to imagine Ms. Manji saying things like these and being dismissed as taqiyya.

2 Mike Schilling August 26, 2010 at 4:28 pm

The article isn’t outright crazy, but

1. She’s insisting that Park 51 be more progressive than an Orthodox Jewish synagogue.
2. She’s blaming Rauf for the controversy about the site, as if it hadn’t been ginned up by the Right Wing Noise Machine. (Hey, Ms. Half-termer, more Bangladeshis died in 9/11 than Alaskans.)
3. She’s comparing apples to freight trains. The Muhammad cartoons were a deliberate attempt to insult Islam. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. ) Park 51 is not a deliberate attempt to insult non-Muslims.

The fact that this piece can be singled out as “thoughtful” just shows what crap almost everything else has been.

3 bhumii August 27, 2010 at 5:17 pm

If Irshad Manji has ever felt as offended by the Danish caricatures as she is by Park51′s proximity to the site of 9/11, then maybe I can assume what she said is not a product of her feeling commandeered by a hijacked heart.

Will Irshad Manji be as enthusiastic signing up for an advance ticket to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech on Holocaust as to Salman Rushdie’s lecture? I wonder how far she can go with her pluralism of ideas.

And if Irshad Manji will ask the same questions born of the highest American ideals to all the other religious groups, then I’ll say she’s not opininated.

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