Ibn Warraq

Ibn Warraq is the pseudonym of a American writer , which would have been born in 1946 in a nonArab Moslem country. Its book more known, translated into French, is Why I am not Moslem .

Biography

Enquiring and American Islamologue, Ibn Warraq would have been born in India in a Moslem family. It would have grown and would have been educated with the Pakistan. Its name is a pseudonym, which means " wire of the feuillet" in Arabic, reference to the quality of writer. It defends a Humanisme Laïc universalist.

Presentation

He is presented in the form of a critic of all the religions, but in particular of Islam, which, according to him, pervert and choke the reason, and, moreover, are always exposed to the danger to allow the political power, to use them with his profit. Political power, whatever is nature and the form, if it seizes the religion in which the members of a company or a community believe and uses this one at ends of government of the men, thus acquires a disproportionate influence on their spirit. By doing this the political power, when it takes support on the major beliefs and most invaluable with the men, can reach with an extraordinary dimension and a power.

This possibility, proven in the facts, is denounced by Ibn warraq like component a danger for the spirit and freedom. The principles of liberty, of free judgment, and the reason induce that the force of the religious belief cannot be politically begun again and exploited by the capacity without alienating the individuals and prohibiting an free society and a State of Droit.

Its book Why I am not Moslem wants a historical and theological study, including/understanding the study of the political incidences of Islam and Moslem civilizations. Ibn Warraq supports a criticism, from a point of view which privileges the reason on the religious belief, and which is very severe with regard to Islam. According to its study, which it consière as a problem is not only the Intégrisme of a certain form of Islam, but Islam itself. Taslima Nasreen presents thus the work of Ibn Warraq: “The governing idea contained in the argumentation of Ibn Warraq is stated with force: the problem is not simply the Moslem integrism, but Islam itself. ”

In addition, Islam binding the policy and the intrinsic religion in manner, Warraq estimates that places it in front of the difficulty of reforming itself and to change. (See the article Moslem Right).

Ibn Warraq written: “Most harmful of the legacies of Muhammad is perhaps to have supported that the Coran is the word even of God, true forever, thus making obstacle with any intellectual progress and obliterating any hope of freedom of thought which only would make it possible the Islam to enter the 21e century. ”

The Jihad, like Warraq presents it, would be preached by the Islamic law. Warraq explains why there does not exist Islamic tolerance: “Islam conquered by the sword, and by doing this it destroyed Christendom in the East and the secular culture Persian, plundering and burning the churches and the temples; it devastated India and literally put at bag thousands of Hindu temples. ”

Warraq analyzes the situation of the women in the Islamic world, and affirms that it is a logical consequence of the Moslem principles, that it estimates Misogyne S, in Coran, the Hadith S, and the Charia. ”

Thought

Human rights and Moslem theology

Ibn Warraq defends the Human rights and the Laïcité, from a modern Western political point of view, from which he studies Islam, to give of it a criticism to the aspects as well theological as political.

In connection with the Human rights, he recalls the not-recognition of the great principles of those by many governments of Islamic countries, to start with legal prohibition to leave Islam. The Apostasie is proscribed and repressed hard by the charia.

He says in his book Why I am not Moslem : “The militants Islamiste S are not unaware of that Islam is incompatible with the principles of the Universal declaration of the Human rights. They met in Paris in 1981 to write a Islamic Déclaration of the Human rights which occults all freedoms which contradict the Islamic law. More alarming still is the fact that under the pressure of the Moslem States, article 18 of the Déclaration of the United Nations was revised in November 1981. The freedom of Religion and the right to change religion were removed and only the right to have a religion was preserved. ”

Ibn Warraq thus doubts the internal capacities of Islam to adopt theological principles which could more be appropriate for a certain concept of modernity.

“Even if we concede that the preserving Moslems interpreted the Charia with their way, what gives us the right to say that their interpretation is false and that of the liberal Moslems is authentic? Who can say what is authentic Islam? For much of specialists, the charia remains the gasoline of Islamic civilization. In the final analysis, one can interpret the charia with a certain flexibility, but it is not therefore indefinitely elastic. ” (in Why I am not Moslem)

The capacity of the religious leaders of Iran is also denounced by Ibn Warraq.

“It is difficult for the Occident to imagine the capacity which the Mollahs exert on the masses, pushing them to perpetrate the cheappest acts, in the name of God. A group of hysterical Moslems, handled by mollah, lapidated an abandoned child, with the reason which it was probably the fruit of an illegitimate union and thus which it could not be tolerated. Another crowd cut the hand of a man because mollah who carried out it had claimed that this man was a robber, without proof, without lawsuit, just on the word of mollah. ” (Ib.)

A political criticism

Its criticism of Islam is primarily Politique. As a historian he affirms that Moslem civilization taught and allowed the conquest many countries. By doing this it puts in prospect the presumedly anti-impérialiste position for many Arab and Moslem countries. He thinks that Islam is a warlike religion; he sees in the middle of Islam even a reason for conflictuality in his reports/ratios with the other.

“Whereas one makes feel guilty all Europeans with the Colonialisme and the Western Impérialisme, the Arab imperialism on the contrary is presented like an object of pride for the Moslems. Nobody warns himself to point out that Islam colonized territories which belonged to old civilizations, and which by doing this, it crushed and reduced to nothing many cultures. ” (Ib.)

“The rise of the Fascism and the racism in Occident is the proof that everyone is not in love with the democracy . Consequently, the final battle will not necessarily be between Islam and the Occident but between those which attach price to freedom and those which do not attach any of it. ” (Ib.)

Work

Why I am not Moslem Editions the Age of Man (1999) ISBN 0879759844

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