NASHVILLE, Tenn. ñ Irshad Manji, best-selling author of The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith, will give a public lecture at Vanderbilt University’s Wilson Hall, Room 126, Thursday, Sept. 23, at 4:10 p.m.
Manji’s talk, "Not My Father’s Islam: Women as the Key to Reforming the
Muslim World," will address the ill treatment of women in the Muslim
world and whether there is something inherent to Islam that opposes
women’s equality and democracy. She will use her personal journey to
lay the groundwork for an examination of what can be done to improve
the lives of women, and therefore of children and men, in the Islamic
world.
Her speech is the first event in a yearlong Muslim Women Series
sponsored by Vanderbilt’s Women’s Studies Program, Margaret Cuninggim
Women’s Center and the Carpenter Program on Religion, Gender and
Sexuality.
Manji, a Muslim feminist, wrote her best-selling book while serving as
a writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto’s Hart House. She
hosts a television program, "Big Ideas," that showcases innovative
thinkers from around the world and is co-produced by public education
channel TVOntario and the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for
International Studies. The show is aimed at college and university
students.
She holds an honors degree in history from the University of British
Columbia and in 1990 won the Governor-General’s medal for top graduate
ñ the first humanities student to earn this distinction at the
university.
After graduation, she worked as a legislative aide to a member of
parliament, press secretary to the Ontario Minister for Women’s Issues
and speechwriter for the first female leader of a Canadian political
party. She also entered the media as a national affairs editorialist
for the Ottawa Citizen and was the youngest person to sit on the editorial board of a Canadian daily newspaper.
She later produced and hosted "Queer Television" on Toronto’s Citytv.
The show was the world’s first program on commercial airwaves to
explore the lives of gay and lesbian people. In its first two seasons,
"Queer Television" earned three nominations for the Gemini, Canada’s
highest broadcasting award. The show won for best-edited information
show.
Manji has made numerous media appearances on outlets such as National
Public Radio, Fox and the BBC, and her writings have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, OUT, Time and Glamour. She also serves as a volunteer on Seventeen magazine’s inter-faith editorial board.
Oprah Winfrey honored Manji with her first annual Chutzpah Award for "audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction." Ms. Magazine named her a "Feminist for the 21st Century," and she is a recipient of the Simon Wiesenthal Award of Valor.
Manji is now launching Project Ijtihad, an initiative to revive Islam’s lost tradition of independent thinking.
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Media contact: Princine Lewis, (615) 322-NEWS
princine.l.lewis@vanderbilt.edu