RECENTLY a very controversial book on the ongoing clash of global cultures was released in the US. The book, titled was written by a woman who calls herself a Muslim Refusenik after those Russians who in the 1970s and '80s refused to toe the Communist Party line in the former Soviet Union.

Author Irshad Manji calls for reform in her faith and among other things outlines what she calls the troubling cornerstones of mainstream Islam today ? tribal insularity, deep-seated anti-Semitism and, most controversial of all, an uncritical acceptance among some Muslims of the Koran as the final and therefore unchallengeable manifesto of God.

Needless to say she could not have written such a book and had it published in most Muslim countries. We all remember the controversy which accompanied the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel . The release of that book, which poked fun at the prophet Mohammed and questioned some of the tenets of hard-line Islam, caused a great deal of controversy across the Muslim world and resulted in the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa ? or death sentence ? against the British writer.

That death sentence has never been lifted although Khomeini's more moderate heirs in the Iranian leadership have urged Muslims not to carry out the Ayatollah's order. At any rate, I don't think will generate the kind of hysteria that greeted . Indeed, it seems to have attracted more attention and readers in the West than it has in Islamic countries.

I first heard about the author when she was interviewed about her book and some of its controversial arguments on a BBC current affairs programme. I have never been one to shy away from books because of controversial subject matter even if I might ultimately disagree with an author's point of view. So on a recent trip to the US I bought the book and recently finished reading it.

As I have stated, such a book could never have been published in most Muslim countries given its tenor and the religious and cultural sensibilities it is likely to offend. The author is a Canadian-Asian citizen, having immigrated to North America with her parents from Uganda in the 1970s along with thousands of other East African Asians who were ordered out of that country by the then military dictator General Idi Amin. Even though the author was four years old at the time her family was expelled, her estrangement with Islam may have started then.

She recalls that the Muslim community in East Africa had, by and large, treated Africans like slaves and her own father had given a much beloved domestic worker a brutal beating in front of her. The British had placed the East Indian Asian above East Africans and, as the author points out in her book, a shared Islamic faith notwithstanding, this did not prevent the ruthless exploitation of Africans by East Indian Muslims.

The community's wholesale expulsion by Amin was therefore not just another one of that madman's capricious whims: there was huge resentment among Ugandans against the Asian community.

Irshad Manji had a traditional Muslim education. She went to school in a (Muslim school) but somehow never stopped questioning some of her religion's strictures such as why girls could not lead prayers.

Needless to say, she did not complete her education in a Muslim school. While she still claims to follow the Islamic faith, her central disagreement with Islam is its perceived treatment of women.

WHILE Irshad Manji is enjoying a sudden rise to literary prominence as a result of the publication of her book, she is actually not the first Muslim woman writer to gain prominence because of speaking out on the position of women in most Muslim countries.

In the (sub-titled "The Global Citizen's Guide to Culture" and emphasising achievements in the non-Western world) we learn of a remarkable woman ? al-Sa dawi Nawal, an Egyptian writer, physician and feminist. The author of numerous novels, plays and studies of Arab women, as her biographical sketch points out, she is a striking example of the way in which social and economic changes in Egypt during the past 40 years has allowed women to participate more fully in society and various political and cultural movements.

Al-Sa dawi Nawal overcame the traditional norms a woman was expected to live by in Egypt as she was growing up. And it was further pointed out that she was probably the first woman of her generation to break these old realities concerning women and how they were expected to live their lives in an Islamic country.

She has written many books, including , (for which she received many international literary prizes) and

The reason why I mention this Egyptian writer and pioneering Islamic feminist is because at the back of Irshad Manji's book there is a list of recommended readings on the subject of the Islamic world but the writings of Al-Sa dawi Nawal are not included. This may have been an oversight on her part, but I would consider it a major one given her prominence.

IN fact, because she lives in the West Irshad Maji's view of Islam may now be coloured by Western biases concerning Islam and, in particular, the Arab world. She has denied such suggestions in interviews but I, for one, cannot see the rationale in accusing the Arabs of having deep-seated anti-Semitic feelings as they are a Semitic people themselves. Arab-Jewish relations have primarily soured in recent decades because of the displacement of the Palestinian people, not because of anti-Semitism.

Irshad Maji is certainly right about the need for political and social reform in the Arab world but I doubt if such reforms will come at the behest of President Bush. His great crusade in Iraq has led to people in the region viewing the Americans as natural heirs to the old imperial powers and not the liberators that American policy-makers would have the world believe.

But she ends her book by asking the question: "Who are the real coloniser of Muslims ? America or Arabia?" I am afraid the answer to that question is more profound than most Arabs would like to believe. For in Bob Woodward's book, it has been revealed that the leaders of many Arab countries covertly conspired with the White House while plans to invade Iraq were being drawn up.

Arab leaders are hoping to benefit from the spoils of the Iraq war regardless of what their people think.