'I'm Asking for Honesty'.

Like thousands of Muslims originally from South Asia, Irshad Manji's parents fled Uganda in the early 1970s to escape the wrath of dictator Idi Amin. Manji, at 34 the host of TVOntario's Big Ideas and writer in residence at the University of Toronto's Hart House, continues her search for answers in her book The Trouble With Islam, released last week. In it, she calls on Muslims to question the insularity of their faith, the harsh treatment of women, and what she describes as Islam's deep-seated anti-Semitism. Since then, Islam has undergone one reformation after another, but they have all been such conservative reformations that they have taken Muslims and Islam in general back further and further, until we get back to the mores of the seventh century, the mores that women are temptation and evil, the mores that see Jews and Christians as infidels, that see vendettas against Islam around every corner. The young people of Iran are in fact leading the way for the Muslim world, and I actually don't know too many Iranians who do defend Islam.