Ibn Warraq (born 1946) is the

pen name A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...

of an anonymous author critical of

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and used to be a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, focusing on Quranic criticism. Warraq is the vice-president of the World Encounter Institute. Warraq has written historiographies of the early centuries of the Islamic timeline and has published works which question mainstream conceptions of the period. The pen name Ibn Warraq (, most literally "son of a papermaker") is used due to his concerns for his personal safety; Warraq stated, "I was afraid of becoming the second

Salman Rushdie Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie ( ; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern wor ...

." It is a name that has been adopted by

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 2 ...

authors throughout the history of Islam. The name refers to the 9th-century skeptical scholar Abu Isa al-Warraq. Warraq adopted the pseudonym in 1995 when he completed his first book, entitled '' Why I Am Not a Muslim''. He is the editor of several books, also including '' The Origins of the Koran'' (1998), '' The Quest for the Historical Muhammad'' (2000), '' What the Koran Really Says'' (2002) and the writer/editor '' Leaving Islam'' (2003). He is a controversial figure among his contemporaries as many academic specialists in Islamic history consider him to be polemical, overly revisionist and lacking in expertise.

Early life and education

Warraq claims to have been born in Rajkot,

Gujarat Gujarat () is a States of India, state along the Western India, western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the List of states and union territories ...

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

and his family migrated to the newly independent

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

in 1947. His family were of Kutchi origin. Although born in India, he held a Pakistani passport. His mother died when he was an infant. He stated in an interview that he "studied Arabic and read the Qur'an as a young man in hopes of becoming a follower of the Islamic faith." His father decided to send him to a boarding school in

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, which in Warraq's opinion, was partly to circumvent a grandmother's effort to push an exclusively religious education on his son at the local

madrasa Madrasa (, also , ; Arabic: مدرسة , ), sometimes Romanization of Arabic, romanized as madrasah or madrassa, is the Arabic word for any Educational institution, type of educational institution, secular or religious (of any religion), whet ...

. After his arrival in Britain, he only saw his father once more, when he was 14; his father died two years later. At 18, he took part in the Bridge in Britain exchange in

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

, working on a kibbutz for six months. He had no idea that Pakistan had no relations with Israel and the scholarship embarrassed his father. He enjoyed the experience greatly. It also made him more aware of being from a Muslim background, as he met people of different religions in Israel. By 19, he had moved to

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

to pursue his education at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

, where he studied philosophy and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

with Islamic studies scholar W. Montgomery Watt.Priya Abraham
"Dissident voices,"
'' World Magazine'', Vol. 22, No. 22, 16 June 2007 (Retrieved 1 January 2014; archive available at ) After graduating, Warraq was a primary school teacher in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

for five years and moved to

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

with his wife in 1982, opening an Indian restaurant. He also worked as a courier for a travel agent. Warraq claims to have been "shy" for most of his youth.

Career

Warraq claims to have been induced into writing against Islam due to the inclination of Western intellectuals in blaming Rushdie during the ''Satanic Verses'' controversy. He noticed a lack of anti-Islam tracts in '' Free Inquiry'', an American secular humanist publication, and wrote on topics such as "Why I am not Muslim." Warraq claims to have been hosted by

David Frum David Jeffrey Frum (; born 30 June 1960) is a Canadian-American political commentator and a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He is a senior editor at ''The Atlantic'' as well as an MSNBC contributor. In 2003, Frum authored the ...

, speech-writer of

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...

at the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...

shortly after the 9/11; Frum maintains silence. In March 2006, he co-signed a manifesto in response to violent protests in the

Islamic world The terms Islamic world and Muslim world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs, politics, and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is ...

surrounding the

Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy The Muhammad cartoons controversy (or Muhammad cartoons crisis, ) began after the Danish newspaper published twelve editorial cartoons on 30 September 2005 depicting Muhammad, the founder of Islam, in what it said was a response to the deb ...

, declaring Islam as a totalitarian regime. In October 2007, Warraq participated in an Intelligence Squared debate, "We Should Not Be Reluctant to Assert the Superiority of Western Values," in London. He argued in favor of the motion; arguing on the same side as him were Douglas Murray and David Aaronovitch, while their opponents were Tariq Ramadan, William Dalrymple, and Charles Glass. Although he does not subscribe to any particular religion, he has a higher opinion of humanism than of

and has described himself as an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS). He has also been on the advisory board of the International Free Press Society, and been associated with the

counter-jihad Counter-jihad (also known as the counter-jihad movement) is a self-titled Islamophobia, anti-Muslim political movement loosely consisting of authors, bloggers, think tanks, demonstrators, and other activists across the Western world. Proponents are ...

movement.

Books and reception

Ibn Warraq continued writing with several works examining the

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...

of the

Qur'an The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God ('' Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which consist of individual verses ('). Besides ...

and

Muhammad Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...

. Other books treated the topic of secular humanist values among Muslims. In ''The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam's Holy Book'', Ibn Warraq includes some of Theodor Nöldeke's studies. In 2005, Warraq spent several months working with Christoph Luxenberg, who wrote about Syriac vs. Arabic interpretation of Quranic verse. A pattern in Warraq's work is paying homage to earlier scholarly works on Christianity by borrowing their titles and applying them to Islam: ''Why I Am Not a Muslim'' is taken from

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...

's '' Why I Am Not a Christian'' (1927), ''The Quest for the Historical Muhammad'' is taken from

Albert Schweitzer Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was a German and French polymath from Alsace. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. As a Lutheran minister, ...

's '' The Quest of the Historical Jesus'' (1910), and ''What the Koran Really Says'' is taken from German author Manfred Barthel's ''Was wirklich in der Bibel steht'' ("What the Bible Really Says", 1980).

Praise

In a 1996 review of '' Why I Am Not a Muslim'', Daniel Pipes wrote that "With few exceptions, he arraqrelies almost entirely on the Western tradition of Islamic studies" but concluded that "Despite his anger, 'Ibn Warraq' has written a serious and thought-provoking book" calling for "an equally compelling response from a believing Muslim." Pipes also described ''Why I am not a Muslim'' (1995) as "well-researched and quite brilliant." Daniel Pipes
"Why I Am Not a Muslim,"
'' Weekly Standard'', 22 January 1996 pg1 "Ibn Warraq brings a scholarly sledge-hammer to the task of demolishing Islam. Writing a polemic against Islam, especially for an author of Muslim birth, is an act so incendiary that the author must write under a pseudonym; not to do so would be an act of suicide. And what does Ibn Warraq have to show for this act of unheard-of defiance? A well-researched and quite brilliant, if somewhat disorganized, indictment of one of the world's great religions. While the author disclaims any pretense to originality, he has read widely enough to write an essay that offers a startlingly novel rendering of the faith he left." David Pryce-Jones said that it was "a scrupulously documented examination of the life and teaching of the Prophet Muhammad, of the Qur'an and its sources, and the resulting culture." David Pryce-Jonesbr>"Enough Said,"
''

The New Criterion ''The New Criterion'' is a New York–based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Roger Kimball (editor and publisher) and James Panero (executive editor). It has sections for criticism of poetry ...

'', January 2008

Christopher Hitchens Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British and American author and journalist. He was the author of Christopher Hitchens bibliography, 18 books on faith, religion, culture, politics, and literature. He was born ...

described ''Why I Am Not a Muslim'' as his "favorite book on Islam." In 2007, Douglas Murray described Ibn Warraq as: In a 2008 review of Ibn Warraq's book, ''Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism'',

political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

Peter Berkowitz described Warraq as a "worthy critic" for

Edward Said Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, and political activist. As a professor of literature at Columbia University, he was among the founders of Postcolonialism, post-co ...

. Berkowitz said that "with a rare combination of polemical zest and prodigious learning, it 'Defending the West''is the first ook-length critiqueto address and refute Said's arguments 'against the background of a more general presentation of salient aspects of Western civilization.'" In a 2009 review of ''Defending the West'' A. J. Caschetta concluded that "Ibn Warraq's critique of Said's thought and work is thorough and convincing, indeed devastating to anyone depending on Saidism. It should do to ''Orientalism'' what Mary Lefkowitz's ''Not Out of Africa'' did to Martin Bernal's ''Black Athena''." Pryce-Jones said that it "demolishes in close detail the Saidian 'narrative.'" In a 2012 review of Ibn Warraq's book, ''Virgins? What Virgins'',

Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres. Rice University comp ...

historian of Islam David Cook wrote: "As a scholar of Islam myself, I find Ibn Warraq's attitude to be very refreshing, and his scholarship for the most part to be accurate and devastating in pinpointing the weaknesses in Muslim orthodoxy." The book's third essay, Cook continues, "could almost serve as a history of our field, and of its systematic failure to critique the foundational texts of Islam as those of other faiths have been critiqued."David Cook
"Ibn Warraq. ''Virgins? What Virgins? and Other Essays''"
i
''Reason Papers: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Normative Studies''
vol. 34, no. 2 (October 2012), p. 235

Criticism

In reviewing Ibn Warraq's compilation ''The Origins of the Koran,'' religious studies professor Herbert Berg has labelled him as "polemical and inconsistent" in his writing. Berg lauded the inclusion of the essay by Theodor Nöldeke, but panned the inclusion of William St. Clair Tisdall's as "not a particularly scholarly essay". He concluded " seems that Ibn Warraq has included some of the essays not on the basis of their scholarly value or their status as 'classics', but rather on the basis of their hostility to Islam. This does not necessarily diminish the value of the collection, but the reader should be aware that this collection does not fully represent classic scholarship on the Quran." In reviewing Ibn Warraq's essay in his ''Quest for the Historical Muhammad'' (2001)

Fred Donner Fred McGraw Donner (born 1945) is a scholar of Islam and Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Near Eastern History at the University of Chicago.

, a professor in Near Eastern studies, notes his lack of specialist training in Arabic studies, citing "inconsistent handling of Arabic materials," and unoriginal arguments, and "heavy-handed favoritism" towards revisionist theories and "the compiler's .e. Ibn Warraq'sagenda, which is not scholarship, but anti-Islamic polemic." Donner, Fred. (2001
Review: The Quest for the Historical Muhammad
. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, University of Chicago. Anthropologist and historian Daniel Martin Varisco has criticized Ibn Warraq's book ''Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism'', writing that "This modern son of a bookseller imprints a polemical farce not worth the 500-plus pages of paper it wastes." His work, ''The Origins of the Koran'', is itself based on a polemic by St. Clair Tisdall "The original sources of the Qur'an" which was described by François de Blois as a "decidedly shoddy piece of missionary propaganda". François de Blois in reviewing ''The Origins of the Koran'', states that "it is surprising that the editor, who in his ''Why I am not a Muslim'' took a very high posture as a critical rationalist and opponent of all forms of obscurantism, now relies so heavily on writings by Christian polemicists from the nineteenth century". Asma Afsaruddin states that "Ibn Warraq is not interested in debate; he wants nothing less than wholesale conversion to his point of view within the community of scholars of Islam" and added that his work, ''The Origins of the Koran'', "needlessly poisons the atmosphere and stymies efforts to engage in honest scholarly discussion".

Works

* '' Why I Am Not a Muslim'', Ibn Warraq, foreword by R. Joseph Hoffmann,

Prometheus Books Prometheus Books is a publishing company founded in August 1969 by the philosopher Paul Kurtz (who was also the founder of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry). The publ ...

, 1995, hardcover, 428 pages, * '' The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam's Holy Book'', edited by Ibn Warraq,

, 1998, hardcover, 420 pages, * '' The Quest for the Historical Muhammad'', edited and translated by Ibn Warraq,

, 2000, hardcover, 554 pages, * '' What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text, and Commentary'', edited and translated by Ibn Warraq,

, 2002, 600 pages, * '' Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out'', edited by Ibn Warraq,

, 2003, hardcover, 320 pages, * ''Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism'',

, 2007, hardcover, 300 pages, * ''Which Koran?: Variants, Manuscripts, and the Influence of Pre-Islamic Poetry'',

, 2008, 631 pages, * ''Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate's Defense of Liberal Democracy'', Encounter Books, 2011, 286 pages, * ''Sir Walter Scott's Crusades & Other Fantasies'', Ibn Warraq, New English Review Press, 2013, paperback, 259 pages, * '' Koranic Allusions: The Biblical, Qumranian, and pre-Islamic background to the Koran'', Prometheus Books, 2013, 463 pages, * ''Christmas in the Koran: Luxenberg, Syriac, and the Near Eastern and Judeo-Christian Background of Islam'', edited by Ibn Warraq,

, 2014, hardcover, 805 pages, * ''The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology'', Ibn Warraq, New English Review Press, 2017, paperback, 396 pages, * ''Leaving the Allah Delusion Behind: Atheism and Freethought in Islam'', Berlin Schiller, 2020, hardcover, 700 pages,

Footnotes

References

External links

The Official Ibn Warraq Site

Ibn Warraq's articles in ''New English Review''
* Stephen Crittendenbr>interviews Ibn Warraq
for the ABC, 10 October 2001
Profile at Islam Watch
contains writings by Warraq *
Holy War
', Chris Mooney on Ibn Warraq for

The American Prospect ''The American Prospect'' is a daily online and bimonthly print American political and public policy magazine dedicated to American modern liberalism and Progressivism in the United States, progressivism. Based in Washington, D.C., ''The America ...

, 17 December 2001
Statement by Ibn Warraq on the World Trade Center Atrocity
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Warraq, Ibn 1946 births Living people 20th-century pseudonymous writers 21st-century pseudonymous writers Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Atheism activists Counter-jihad activists Former Muslim critics of Islam Muhajir people Pakistani atheists Pakistani former Muslims Pakistani humanists Pakistani people of Gujarati descent Pakistani sceptics Pseudonymous writers on Islam