Profile of Ibn Warraq

Friday April 28, 2006

There is a great deal of interest among Americans to learn more about Islam, but most of the perspectives offered are either apologetic in nature or intensely critical from a Christian point of view. Are there any critical offerings from the perspectives of Muslims or former Muslims? Yes, there is, but primarily from one source: Ibn Warraq.

The Boston Globe has a profile if his life and his work:

The Indian-born and English-educated Ibn Warraq, 57, is among the most prominent and outspoken Muslim apostates alive today. His 1995 book “Why I Am Not a Muslim” was an impassioned polemic against almost 1,400 years of Muslim dogma and its effect on the Islamic world. The more recent collections he has edited - “What the Koran Really Says” (2002) and this year’s “Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out’” - present less confrontational, more scholarly lines of attack. Still, Warraq (the name is a pseudonym) aims to skewer the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of a faith that commands the allegiance of a billion people–as well as the hypocrisies of those Western defenders of Islam who would not tolerate its strictures in their own cultures.

For his part, Warraq says he just wants to win the right to criticize the religion without fear of retribution. “Criticism, free speech, is the foundation of democracy,” he declares. “We criticize and use reason to solve human problems in the best way possible. You can’t do that if certain things are off-limits, like the Koran.” ... For the most part, Warraq tells me, “Muslims have a horror of putting the Koran to critical scrutiny as a human document. The layman is not permitted to question the Koran. This is why there’s no progress in Islamic society.”

Ibn Warraq’s central point is not opposition to Islam per se, but rather defense of the principles of free speech and freedom of conscience. He argues, quite correctly, that there will never be a democratic Muslim society unless that society allows people to speak their mind (even if that means criticizing Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur’an) and to leave Islam for some other religion or no religion at all. Those fundamental principles certainly aren’t sufficient to create an Islamic democracy, but they are necessary.

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