A best-selling author and educator who took on the daunting task of debating religious orthodoxy in the public realm during a time of great cultural upheaval (the post–9/11 era) learned that being battle-ready for caustic rhetoric and fiery arguments ultimately took too harsh a toll.

That said, Irshad Manji never retreated from the stage or podium.

Instead, Manji, a Canadian-American professor and author of the 2003 bestseller The Trouble with Islam Today, as well as Don’t Label Me: How to Do Diversity Without Inflaming the Culture Wars (2019), decided to examine how (and why) people with opposing viewpoints seemingly cannot speak to each other in a world that has become even more polarized since the Bush years.

Manji, who just spent two days moderating panels and delivering a keynote speech at Mohawk College in Hamilton (she mentioned that her newest book will be out this spring), has pivoted to helping organizations–think academic institutions, police services, non-profits, businesses and individuals–discuss (yes, discuss) difficult and contentious issues.

At a time when people are primed to react emotionally to disagreement, she’s working to equip groups and individuals with tools to quiet their rage and defensiveness and engage in good faith, even when the conversation is hard.

“When we react, we actually wind up making things worse, and I’m not for a moment saying that there are no reasons to react. Of course there are,” Manji tells INSAUGA Canada.

“But if we actually want to, as people within our families, within our places of work, within our classrooms, within our congregations, anywhere that human beings gather, if we want to have influence in order to nudge the direction of what’s going on around us into something productive, we can actually do that by regulating ourselves and changing the dynamic of our surroundings.”

To help change the nature of conversation, Manji founded Moral Courage College, which, as she said in her keynote speech, is not really about being ‘moral’ in the traditional sense. “Moral,” she told the audience, comes from the Latin word “moralis,” which describes how one acts within a community.

“This is a practice,” Manji told INSAUGA Canada.

“It’s not an idea. It’s not a concept. It’s not a theory. It’s about doing. It’s about [anyone] using their own bodies to steady themselves under daily pressures in order to respond to what’s going on around us and not react to what is happening.”

The practice, while inspired by a heated geopolitical debate that reached a fever pitch in the early aughts (and still simmers now) has perhaps grown even more relevant at a time where people linger in online echo chambers, cultivating (both consciously and subconsciously) their biases with few natural challengers. When challengers arise, they’re met with hostility, making good-faith debate near impossible.

In academia, debate is fraught, with some think tanks and policy groups arguing that post-secondary institutions in Canada have seen a decrease in viewpoint diversity.

A 2022 paper by the MacDonald Laurier Institute said a Leger survey indicated that professors with more conservative-leaning viewpoints were more likely to hide their political beliefs from colleagues and students. The survey also found that 57 per cent of respondents who identified as right-leaning said they ‘self-censored’ out of fear of negative consequences.

Another, and most consequential, place polarization manifests is government. A recent policy brief from Wilfred Laurier University, which hosted U of T professor Dr. Eric Merkley to discuss his book on polarization in Canada, said research suggests people not only identify more strongly (and emotionally) with their own political party, but also increasingly dislike other parties more.

“One of the reasons for this is that Canadian political parties have increasingly become ideological, adopting more coherent policy stances on the left-right continuum than they have in the past,” the brief reads.

“This facilitates voters’ positive feelings towards their parties because they hear them expressing policy positions they agree with, as opposed to the Canadian political parties of the 20th century who were more empty vessels and changed policies as the circumstances required.”

For Manji, the practice isn’t about persuading people to adopt specific viewpoints, but about equipping them with tools to quiet their egos, listen, and connect without getting angry.

“The ego’s power manipulates us to feel stressed, fearful, and defensive when we encounter views that differ from our own, which prevents us from understanding others and, in turn, being understood,” she says.

For Manji, the practice’s story is personal. Born in Uganda, she and her family came to Canada as refugees and while British Columbia was safer than Kampala, trouble and conflict brewed within her home.

During a panel discussion with leaders and community organizers (which included Hamilton Police Chief Frank Bergen), Manji said that her father was physically and emotionally abusive and that she was in contact with police throughout her childhood (something that, she says, helped her build rapport and trust with authority figures).

Undeterred professionally, Manji–who has also worked as a journalist, television host and producer–succeeded academically and went on to write her first book while serving as a writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto’s Hart House. The book, The Trouble with Islam Today, became a best-seller in both Canada and the U.S., and while she earned plenty of accolades (she was the first person to receive Oprah Winfrey’s annual Chutzpah Award), the blowback was fierce.

“It became a flashpoint in the culture wars at the time because it was just after 9/11,” she says.

“I listened to that voice inside of my head that said, ‘Irshad, you do realize that by coming out with a book like this, you will be attacked. When you are punched physically or otherwise, be ready to counterpunch even harder. Show them that you mean business; don’t let them intimidate you.’”

Manji, a progressive Muslim, says that with her internal monologue, she was already othering her (at the time) phantom critics.

Those critics, of course, became very real.

“I girded myself for a battle and as a result, I developed a nasty habit of turning what could have been honest and productive discussions with my critics into noxious debates where there can only ever be one winner,” she says.

Manji says a primal part of her brain was telling her that she couldn’t lose,

“And of course, their primal brain was saying to them, ‘I won’t let you lose.’ So everything continued to ratchet up until all listening went out the window, if ever there was any to start with,” she says.

“And what that did is it actually not only hurt my cause, but it hurt my physical and mental he...

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