IRSHAD Manji is a Muslim with attitude. The outspoken social commentator never eats pork, never drinks alcohol and fasts during Ramadan. She is also one of the most fervent critics of the self-appointed ambassadors of Allah.

A 35-year-old lesbian, Irshad has been making big waves on the other side of the Atlantic, with her campaigning to reform Islam and improve the lot of Muslim women. Oprah Winfrey has just honoured Irshad with her first annual ''Chutzpah Award'' for ''audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction''.

Irshad has examined the violation of basic human rights of Muslim women worldwide, hearing horror stories of Muslim police arresting women for wearing red on Valentine's Day, victims of rape being stoned for "adultery" and worse.

Now this self-styled Muslim refusenik and TV presenter has become a best-selling author and public speaker, based in Toronto. In her latest book, The Trouble With Islam, she outlines many of the issues facing Muslims and the need for change.

In it, she sings the praises of the West and argues that terrorism, complacency, mindless and often barbaric rituals and practices must be addressed. ''We need to move beyond anti-Western prejudices if we are going to revive what was once glorious about Islam,'' she insists.

So strident is Irshad in campaigning for a more liberal approach to Islam, that she has attracted death threats through her website from a number of Muslim leaders and now has to take extra security measures at her home.

Because of this, she has had bullet-proof glass installed in her windows at home and avoids set routines. She even employs a bodyguard from time to time, although she is alone when we meet in a cosy London club.

''If I am going to explain to young Muslims in the West that it is possible to dissent with the Establishment and still live, I can't be sending mixed messages by having a bodyguard shadowing me wherever I go,'' she says.

Irshad arrived in Vancouver in 1972, at the age of four, after her family fled a prosperous life in Uganda (her father ran a Mercedes-Benz dealership) when the military dictator Idi Amin proclaimed Africa to be for the blacks. But while there she recalls her father savagely beating their black domestic and knew she would be punished if she was caught tending the slave's injuries.

''We Muslims made dignity difficult for people darker than us. We callously exploited native Africans,'' she says.

Like many Muslims, the family lived in fear of their father, who beat Irshad's mother if she stepped out of line and the same went for the children. He might give his wife a beating for something as trivial as speaking to him when he didn't want to be spoken to.

Irshad remembers her father once chasing her through the house with a knife. She escaped by climbing up on to the roof and staying there until things had cooled down. ''There was a tension in the house every day. You never know what's going to happen when a violent individual comes through the door.''

Her parents divorced when she was in her late teens and she hasn't spoken to her father since, although she wonders if now she should.

''I don't hate him any more and that distance has been vital to get some perspective.''

She says that from her public speaking events she is getting a lot of positive feedback from young Muslim women who want to break free from the so-called rules which allow women to be treated as second class citizens "in the name of Allah".

''I'm not telling them what to think. I'm giving them freedom to think. The bad news is that most of the people who write to me in support and come to these public events tiptoe up to me afterwards to whisper in my ear their support but tell me they can't go public with it, because they fear persecution.''

Irshad is campaigning for a fatwa-free future, and while writing the book was in contact with the author Salman Rushdie, who was himself the target of a fatwa following the publication of his book The Satanic Verses.

''I asked him, why should I write a book that may invite into my life the type of threat that has been inflicted on yours?," she says. ''His answer was, because a book is more important than a life. He said, when a writer puts out a thought, it can be disagreed with vehemently, but it cannot be unthought.

''Even if you are bumped off, just know that the thought you put out there, which made people want you dead as a result, can never be said to have never been expressed. That's one of the sentiments that got me going.''

She knows that reform will be a long process. Many of her detractors are the very women she is trying to liberate, she knows.

''My mum is a case in point. She never asked me not to write the book but she did ask me not to anger God. I had to remind her that angering Muslim political lobbyists does not necessarily mean angering God.''

So how long will it be before Muslim women worldwide have a voice?

''I don't see that day in my lifetime or in the next generation's lifetime. In every single Muslim country, including Saudi Arabia, there are underground groups of women - but they are, for the most part, underground," says Irshad.

''There are organisations putting out books reconciling women's rights to Islam. Tribal silences are ready to dissolve. The challenge will be for people like me and beyond me to help transform that underground hunger for change into an above-the-ground phenomenon.''

The Trouble With Islam by Irshad Manji (Mainstream, £12.99)