Why I Am Not a Muslim

Motive and contents

Outraged over the fatwa and death threats against Salman Rushdie, Ibn Warraq assumes a pseudonym to write what the historian and writer Daniel Pipes called "serious and thought-provoking book" using a "scholarly sledgehammer" approach to "demolish" Islam. Warraq claims the work is his contribution ('my war effort') in the struggle against the kinds of people who would want to murder Rushdie.

The author's "polemic" criticizes Islam's mythology, theology, historic achievements, and current cultural influence. Warraq, drawing largely on previous research, provides what English philosopher Antony Flew called an "invaluable compilation" of Islam's shortcomings. Flew wrote that the book "makes a compelling case" that Islam is "flatly incompatible" with "individual rights and liberties of a modern liberal, democratic, secular state". According to Warraq, one either has to believe that the Qur'an is the word of God, or that Muhammad was a liar. Moreover, progress made in modern critical scholarship of the Bible has serious and possibly detrimental consequences for belief in the inerrancy of the Qur'an once it is subjected to the same type of scholarly criticism.