| Ibn Warraq From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Ibn Warraq (born 1946) is the pen name of a secularist author of Pakistani origin and founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry[1][2] [3] focusing on Qur'anic criticism. [4][5] Warraq gathered world notice through his controversial historiographies of the early centuries of the Islamic timeline and has published works which question mainstream conceptions of the period. He is the author of seven books, including Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995), The Origins of the Koran (1998), and Quest for the Historical Muhammad, (2000). He has also spoken at the United Nations "Victims of Jihad" conference organized by the International Humanist and Ethical Union alongside speakers such as Bat Ye'or, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Simon Deng.[6] The first part of the book presents an overview of the theological-juridical underpinnings of apostasy in Islam based upon the Quran, the hadiths and written opinions from classical schools of Islamic jurisprudence as well as contemporary written pronouncements of Islamic jurists. The next section presents the history of the application of Islamic jurisdiction on apostates documenting notable cases from the early centuries of Islam, such as those of freethinkers Ibn al-Rawandi and Ar-Razi (865-925), or skeptical poets such as Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) and Hafiz (1320-89), or Sufi (mystic) practitioners including Mansur Al-Hallaj ... |
