Free Republic

Last October, I participated in a debate in London, hosted by Intelligence Squared, to consider the motion, “We should not be reluctant to assert the superiority of Western values.” Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan, among others, spoke against the motion; I spoke in favor, focusing on the vast disparities in freedom, human rights, and tolerance between Western and Islamic societies. Here, condensed somewhat, is the case that I made. The great ideas of the West—rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression,...

It is quite common to hear two arguments from Muslims and apologists of Islam, the language argument, and that old standby of crooked, lying politicians, “you have quoted out of context.” Let us look at the language argument first. You are asked aggressively, ‘do you know Arabic?’ Then you are told triumphantly, ‘You have to read it in the original Arabic to understand it fully’. Christians, even Western freethinkers and atheists are usually reduced to sullen silence with these Muslim tactics; they indeed become rather coy and self-defensive when it comes to criticism of Islam; they feebly complain “who am...

Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, by Ibn Warraq (Prometheus Books, 500 pp., $29.95) The West hasn’t been doing well in the war of ideas against Islamic jihadists. We fail to understand the true nature of Muslim doctrine, and a self-loathing long entrenched in our public discourse often cripples us. The eagerness of our intellectuals, scholars, and artists to don the hair shirt of colonial, imperial, racist, and xenophobic guilt has heartened our enemies and convinced them that for all of our economic and military power, we are rotten to the core and ripe for destruction....

Best-selling author and Muslim dissident Ibn Warraq argues that freedom of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it against attacks from totalitarian societies. If the west does not stand in solidarity with the Danish, he argues, then the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest.

The problem continues as long as the idea that this is a "war" that "can be won" continues. This is a war, a continuous war. It has no end. "Winning" does not exist. Islam will not disappear. What one can do is to make it less attractive, both to those likely pockets -- as easily identifiable by Infidels as they have been identified by the Da'wa bearers of Islam -- of psychically and economically marginal populations in the Infidel lands, and to those born into Islam itself. We need not send more troops -- in fact, it would be altogether...

The West's Muslim Allies By Andrew G. BostomThe American Thinker | May 31, 2005 Leaving Islam can be hazardous. Apostasy is a capital crime in a number of Islamic countries. But even in elite conservative circles in the United States, there is a tendency to dismiss or at least ignore some important former Muslims who have a lot to teach us about their former faith, as we face an era in which a religious war on the West has been declared by radical Islam. Two years ago, following a modest Washington, DC area reception celebrating the release of  Leaving Islam, a...

KNOW YOUR ENEMY: List of must read books exposing Islam These books are must reads to armor your minds for the struggle against Islam, the oldest and most persistent threat to Western civilization. KNOW YOUR ENEMY! Click book covers to link to book seller and reviews. Islam is a global, militarized terrorist organizationThe Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam : From Jihad to Dhimmitude : Seventh-Twentieth Century by Bat Ye'or, Miriam Kochan (Translator), David Littman (Translator)Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries by Paul FregosiWhy I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn WarraqThe Quest...

Ibn Warraq: Why I Am Not A Muslim Summary: Secularist Muslim intellectual Ibn Warraq - not his real name - was born on the Indian subcontinent and educated in the West. He believes that the great Islamic civilisations of the past were established in spite of the Koran, not because of it, and that only a secularised Islam can deliver Muslim states from fundamentalist madness. Little wonder that he chooses to keep his identity secret. We talk to Ibn Warraq this week. Details or Transcript: Lyn Gallacher: This week on The Religion Report, we're devoting the entire program to an...

There is a new breed of Islam bashers that were at one point part of the Muslim community itself. Muslims already have to contend with people like Daniel Pipes making statements such as "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene ... All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most". Now beyond Daniel Pipes, Muslims are seeing a new stream of attacks against their faith by individuals that were born Muslim and being promoted by media. These particular bashers have...

Consider the following observations on the state of affairs in the contemporary Arab world : “ The history of the modern Arab world – with all its political failures , its human rights abuses , its stunning military incompetences , its decreasing production , the fact that alone of all modern peoples , we have receded in democratic and technological and scientific development – is disfigured by a whole series of out-moded and discredited ideas , of which the notion that the Jews never suffered and that the holocaust is an obfuscatory confection created by the Elders of Zion is...

<p>EVER SINCE SEPT. 11, 2001, American scholars, pundits, and ordinary citizens have not hesitated to offer their opinions about the state of Islam. Critics say the religion is long overdue for the kind of a thoroughgoing reformation that modernized and diversified Christianity in the 16th century. More sympathetic voices argue that today's Islam is not an ideological monolith but a thriving culture, with as many Islams as there are Muslims. But what has been virtually ignored is that there are Muslims, both in the Muslim world and outside it, who want nothing to do with Islam, moderate or otherwise.</p>

Turbans of the mind are disallowing and disavowing proper intellectual engagement with Islam. Aldous Huxley once defined an intellectual as someone who had found something in life more important than sex: a witty but inadequate definition, since it would make all impotent men and frigid women intellectuals. A better definition would be a freethinker, not in the narrow sense of someone who does not accept the dogmas of traditional religion, but in the wider sense of someone who has the will to find out, who exhibits rational doubt about prevailing intellectual fashions, and who is unafraid to apply critical thought...

<p>In real time, world Islam may be in the 21st century, but in practice, it's closer to the Dark Ages, panelists said at a forum yesterday.</p> <p>"The theory and practice of jihad was not concocted in the Pentagon," said Ibn Warraq, a speaker at the conference on Islam sponsored by the Council for Secular Humanism at the Capitol Hilton. "It was taken from the Koran, the Hadith [additional sayings of Muhammad] and Islamic tradition. Western liberals, especially humanists, find it hard to believe this. The trouble with Western liberals is they are pathologically nice. They think that everyone thinks like them, including the Islamic fundamentalists.</p>

Aldous Huxley once defined an intellectual as someone who had found something in life more important than sex: a witty but inadequate definition, since it would make all impotent men and frigid women intellectuals. A better definition would be a freethinker, not in the narrow sense of someone who does not accept the dogmas of traditional religion, but in the wider sense of someone who has the will to find out, who exhibits rational doubt about prevailing intellectual fashions, and who is unafraid to apply critical thought to any subject. If the intellectual is really committed to the notion of ...