Opinion with Michael Coren We live in an angry age. Social media is incredibly influential and, instead of being a place for civilized disagreement, it has been turned into a venue for nastiness and hatred. Canadian politics, once so polite and moderate, have become polarized and sometimes personal. So to Irshad Manji. In the mid1990s, we were part of a weekly debate on TVOntario’sStudio 2. The segment was called “Friendly Fire,” and the misnomer was lost on nobody. We agreed on little, the arguments often seemed unpleasant and I had no regrets at all when it was not renewed. The two of us went our separate ways and had limited contact. Now, more than 25 years later, we are friends. Both of us have changed. And change, the ability to rethink and re-address long-held ideas and assumptions, is at the heart of Manji’s new and wonderfully optimistic book, entitled Don’t Label Me, one that is fundamentally important in a dangerously polarized and divided time. Not that Manji has abandoned her political views − she was never extreme − but she has tempered what I suppose we could describe as a radical liberalismwith layers of thought and analysis. She uses the image of water, of flowing around a challenge or a critic, softening to an attack but ultimately triumphing because of it. But, she asks, who are our critics and our opponents? She was, for example, introduced to her wife by a Trump-supporting neighbour, a conservative Republican who cared for Manji when she was sick, and oozed compassion. What the Jesuit priest Gerard Hughes once referred to as “the God of surprises” has a parallel here: the people of surprises. Once we think that we can judge and pigeonhole everybody by some of their political opinions, we have closed the door not only on them, but also on ourselves and on dialogue and community, and that leads by a short road to disaster. “Labels,” she writes, “keep us all in our assigned places. At root, that’s why we’re divided. Thus was born the idea to make this book a conversation with Lily.” Lily is Manji’s dog. This is not some twee account of doggy wisdom, but a compelling device in which the author projects her ideas and ideals to this once mistreated and extremely vulnerable creature. The relationship − and especially the account of Lily’s death, by the way − is described with great subtlety. Mind you, I still cried. In Don’t Label Me, she intersperses sociological and statistical evidence with anecdote and opinion. The woman told to remain quiet because of her “white privilege” who gently explains that there is so much more to her than her ethnicity, and that her suffering and story should be understood before she is judged. The Indian Hindu student who campaigned against the death penalty for a Muslim terrorist, was consequently persecuted by state and society, and hanged himself. Labels, rejection, the delight of hating “the other.” She reminds us that “respect comes from the Latin ‘to see someone in a new light’,” and this is the central call in this manifesto of sanity. See through the packaging! In her experience, “listening didn’t translate into losing.”That should be proclaimed across social media. I don’t agree with everything she says, and worry that some on the right will see this roar for reason as a response to what they dismiss as identity politics. But it’s so much more profound and nuanced than that, and thus so much more significant. What Manji is offering is the sacrament of empathy, and pleading with us to understand the transformative and transcendental capabilities of change. She is still on the left, still a Muslim who is deeply critical of elements of Islam, still − of course − gay, still the intensely clever and selfcritical Irshad I always knew, but she is much more now. Consider this: “Anti-PC brigades may exaggerate, but everyone knows that imperious individuals, pretending to speak for all liberals, intimidate decent people into clamming up.” Perfect. The right does exaggerate, angry leftists don’t speak for anything like the mass of liberals, and triumphalism does lead to good people feeling silenced. Personally, I would say that change is always possible, that we need to listen properly to criticism before responding, must try to reply with courtesy to those who attack us, strive to see yourself in them, and see them in you. I think that my old enemy and new friend Irshad would agree with that. 14 | www.snowbirds.org
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