Posted: Oct 01, 2011 3:09 pm
Oeditor wrote:Thanks metacristi - Ibn Warraq's books are quite expensive, even the ones on Kindle. I look forward to reading these chapters.
You're welcome Oeditor. They are indeed quite expensive, I paid the equivalent of around 20 pounds when I bought the book. But it deserved all the money, ibn Warraq's approach - although far from criticism - is much closer to a scientific approach than the pathetic sugarcoating of islam we usually see in Western Academia (see Esposito et altri). I knew about these links even before buying the book and I thought it is a good idea to put them here for all those interested.
In other order of ideas if ibn Warraq's books were much more popular among westerners I'm sure that this or this kind of stories would be virtually nonexistent. The last thing we need is to popularize the islam of today as the religion of 'peace' and 'egalitarianism' and to delude ourselves with the 'progressives' of islam. Unfortunately as ibn Warraq put it well "no amount of mental gymnastics or intellectual dishonesty is going to make the unpalatable, unacceptable, and barbaric aspects of islam disappear".
No matter what some western apologetics of islam say Rationality shows clearly that this religion needs non trivial reforms. Of which even the vast majority of the 'progressives' of islam are not capable at this time. Finally one cannot be considered a real moderate if one still believes/accepts tacitly that the qur'an is perfect, Adam and Eve are literally the first humans, sharia is fully compatible with Modernity etc and rejects the level of secularism characterizing the western societies.