Irshad Manji

In celebration of Rider University’s ninth annual Unity Day, award-winning journalist and best selling author Irshad Manji, will discuss her new book, “The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith,” (St. Martin’s Press) on Tuesday, October 10.

Manji will speak at 7 p.m. in the Bart Luedeke Center (BLC) Theater. A book signing will follow her presentation. Irshad’s best-selling book has been published internationally, including in Pakistan. Later this year, it will also be published in Turkey, Iraq and India. Manji writes columns that are distributed worldwide by The New York Times Syndicate. She is also producing a PBS documentary about what there is to love about Islam. Among the ideas it will showcase is “ijtihad,” Islam’s lost tradition of independent thinking.

Born in 1968, Manji is a refugee from Idi Amin’s Uganda. In 1972, her family fled to Vancouver where she grew up attending public schools as well as the Islamic madressa. In 1990, she earned an honors degree in intellectual history from the University of British Columbia, winning the Governor-General’s Medal for top graduate. In 1992, she entered the media as national affairs editorialist for the Ottawa Citizen, the youngest person to sit on the editorial board of a Canadian daily newspaper. She left to take up the post of speechwriter for the first female leader of a Canadian political party.

From there, Manji wrote her first book, “Risking Utopia: On the Edge of a New Democracy” (Douglas & McIntyre). Published in 1997, it chronicles how young people are redefining democracy in an age of fluid media networks, shifting social values and flexible personal identities.

As a social entrepreneur, Manji has launched Project Ijtihad, an initiative to develop the world’s first leadership network for reform-minded Muslims. In that capacity, she has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Currently, she is based at Yale University as a Visiting Fellow with the International Security Studies program.

Activities for the campus community will kick off at 11:30 a.m. the next day with a multicultural lunch on the BLC Patio with music by The Steel Kings. That day programming will include a series of concurrent workshops addressing such issues as community service, the great immigration debate, freedom of religion, hate speech as well as a workshop on a student global village conference. The celebration of campus unity will culminate with an “America Voices” Cultural Performance, a one-person show about multiculturalism through the eyes of Generation X, 7:30 to 9 p.m. in the BLC Theater.

Programming is sponsored by the Unity Day Planning Committee, chaired by Dr. Marvin Goldstein, associate professor emeritus of psychology and director of The Julius and Dorothy Koppelman Holocaust/Genocide Resource Center, and student chair Shelley Richards, a senior political science major. Other sponsors include the Center for Multicultural Affairs and Community Service, the Student Government Association (SGA), Rider Campus Ministry and The Julius and Dorothy Koppelman Holocaust/Genocide Resource Center.

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