I found a book…
By Irshad Manji
Don’t Label Me
subtitled
How to Do Diversity Without Inflaming the Culture Wars
Saint Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2019
I get a kick out of Irshad Manji. As a young lady she routinely used to come home, turn on her e-mail, and delete that day’s death threats. This was early in the war on terror, after she wrote The Trouble With Islam Today. A Muslim herself, she wrote to give fellow Muslims permission to have common sense. This by documenting that centuries ago Muslim scholars believed so too—Not something any extremist today wants to hear.
Now she’s older, teaching at Oxford University. It amuses me to picture Manji going down the sidewalk, to the park, pushing a stroller containing her rescue dog Lily. No point in labeling Lily as a typical mutt. Lily could sniff the air, but she was blind, and very old. When an old crippled hound is offering love, that’s no time for Manji to be putting “her” culture’s “anti-dog” beliefs over her own experience.
If Manji knows real Islam it’s because she was raised Muslim. Her father, no extremist, would “go to mosque just for show.” Mother prayed. Father beat Mother so badly, so often, that Mother did finally did something that scandalized her ethnic peers: She divorced him. As I said, “for show.” No wonder Manji grew up questioning.
Manji has a new book out, with references to Obama and President Trump, called Don’t Label Me. Labels, of course, are a horrible fact just now. I read somewhere a 95 year old grandmother wouldn’t protect herself from covid by wearing a mask. “Mom, why not?” “People will think I’m a democrat.” I think granny identified as a republican too much. Way-y-y too much.
To quote Manji, (p 127) where “they” means both leftists and rightists, “They never let on that puritanical identity will destroy whatever it’s meant to defend. Because a society attacking itself, like a body inundated with a fear of losing control, seizes up and finally conks out.”
I won’t say “effed up,” but ya, America is rather “seized up” just now. Maybe a little less identity, or a little more humbleness, could mean a lot less fear. Like when Manji’s friend Jim wants to “make America great again.” Meanwhile others fear him and assume that, in liking Trump, he must be a homophobe—he’s not. I say, “Look behind the label, you morons.” Manji, as it happens, wouldn’t speak so crudely, for she is gentler than I am.
Of course Professor Manji knows how to talk with people. She ain’t no white middle class, politically correct, “humiliate any wrong-thinking people” snob. Oxford yes, ivory tower no. Workshops, meeting students, going on tours, talking on media shows… she has learned the hard way how to connect. You’ve heard of calming the nerves of your listeners by replacing “we should all…” with ““I” statements?” In her book she goes one better, by having conversations with her dog. This works. Really. When her editor first saw the “talking dog” manuscript “his heart sank” and his “head began to ache” But after reading it he sent her an exuberant e-mail.
Manji proposes to avoid seizing up by looking beyond labels: Being humble, being willing to change herself when sincerely asking others for their perspective. Which sounds obvious, perhaps, but hard for anyone who is stuck in their ego. Which is most of us. I mean, if you see your friend as “being worthy” only as long as she toes the party line, then you are coming from ego, seeing her as your object. Labels objectify.
Experts say for something horribly new you have to hear it six times before it sinks in. Irshad Manji comes at her subject from more than six angles, with the deep research of a professor. She shows her humble solutions, and teaches us to do likewise. One of her concepts (which I can’t explain with a soundbite) is the difference between honest diversity and dishonest diversity. (Sorry, you’ll have to read the book)
Such fresh air… You may remember how, in 2018, everyone was shamed into silence; no one defended an innocent high school girl in Utah for her prom night. In outrage, many slashed her on social media. The girl’s crime? To wear a Chinese dress. “Cultural appropriation!” I wouldn’t even treat a grown woman the way complete strangers would hurt that girl.
Luckily, Manji has developed her “moral courage.” She asks: Would it have been OK if the girl pinned a sign to her dress saying, “Thanks China?” Or if she had handled out flyers about how China has a different culture? Or if she had charged all the teens five bucks to give to an anti-racism group? Or donated five bucks to an historical society and pinned a sign, “Cut me some slack. I paid twice for this dress.”? It gets cumbersome.
Easier to respect individuals, realizing a culture is not your object, not owned, and cannot be embezzled. Culture is kinetic, “combining influences,” ever changing. Like my own. I enjoy a living culture and living God.
Next time I meet today’s “long haired hippie,” tomorrow’s computer millionaire, I’m sure God will want me to look beyond the label.
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Comments make the dog happy,
Sean Crawford,
On the Canadian western prairie,
August 2020
Link to Newsweek interview
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