Irshad Manji

Irshad Manji was born in Uganda, the daughter of parents of Egyptian and Gujarati descent. In 1972, when Idi Amin exiled the Asians from Uganda, she moved with her family moved to just outside of Vancouver, Canada. She was educated at both a secular and an Islamic religious school, but was later expelled from the Islamist school for asking too many questions. She continued to study Islam through both self-directed reading and with Arabic tutors. She attended the University of British Columbia, and received a degree in the history of ideas. In 1990, she won the Governor General's Medal for top humanities graduate.

At age 24, Manji became the national affairs editorialist for the newspaper The Ottawa Citizen. She has hosted several public affairs programs on public television. In 2002, she was the writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto's Hart House, and she began writing her first book, The Trouble with Islam (later reissued as The Trouble with Islam Today), which was published in 2003.

Manji is currenlty director of the Moral Courage Project at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. The goal of this program is to teach young leaders to "challenge political correctness, intellectual conformity and self-censorship." She is also founder and president of Project Ijtihad, a charitable organization promoting a "tradition of critical thinking, debate and dissent" in Islam.