Warraq’s War A Critical Review

Abstract

Books Reviewed: Why I Am Not a Muslim. New York: Prometheus Books,
2003; The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. New York: Prometheus
Books, 2000; What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text, and
Commentary. New York: Prometheus Books, 2002; Leaving Islam:
Apostates Speak Out. New York: Prometheus Books, 2003.
Among other consequences of the horrific tragedy of 9/11 is the generation
of a veritable cottage industry in books about Islam and Muslims.
There had always existed a void regarding such books. In spite of its
Abrahamic roots and its long, if somewhat troubled, encounters with the
West, the significance of Arab countries in terms of western economic
interests and the steady growth of diasporic Muslims settling in the developed
world (easily surpassing the Jewish presence, probably even in the
United States), Islam had remained a residual category entirely peripheral
to American intellectual or cultural life.
The unprecedented nature and the brutality of the event that led to the
Muslim “explosion” into the public consciousness exposed the woeful
indifference about Islam and reinforced the Orientalist stereotypes of
Muslims as mysterious, backward, and menacing. There was a predictable
appetite among the public to know about Muslims, who had traditionally
been pictured as quaint and dreadful “others” but were now increasingly
being presented as angry and threatening “fanatics.” Some of the books
rushed to print were works of genuine scholarship, demonstrating experience,
knowledge, and elegance. Others were obviously driven by commercial considerations rather than academic, and some were, indeed, shallow,
trite, and often misleading.
In the latter genre, two classes of books, both critical of Islam, quickly
became popular: those written from an alarmist western perspective by
such authors as Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Spencer, and
others that were supposedly “insider” exposés and interrogations issuing
from such critics as Irshad Manji, the brothers Irgun Mehmet and Emir
Fathi Caner, and Mohammad Mohaddessin. The doyen of the latter group
is, undoubtedly, Ibn Warraq ...