Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate's Defense of Liberal Democracy - Hardcover

Warraq, Ibn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594035768 ISBN 13: 9781594035760

Publisher: Encounter Books, 2011

Synopsis

We, in the West in general, and the United States in particular, have witnessed over the last twenty years a slow erosion of our civilizational self-confidence. Under the influence of intellectuals and academics in Western universities, intellectuals such as Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, Edward Said, and Noam Chomsky, and destructive intellectual fashions such as post-modernism, moral relativism, and mulitculturalism, the West has lost all self-confidence in its own values, and seems incapable and unwilling to defend those values. By contrast, resurgent Islam, in all its forms, is supremely confident, and is able to exploit the West's moral weakness and cultural confusion to demand ever more concessions from her. The growing political and demographic power of Muslim communities in the West, aided and abetted by Western apologists of Islam, not to mention a compliant, pro-Islamic US Administration, has resulted in an ever-increasing demand for the implementation of Islamic law-the Sharia- into the fabric of Western law, and Western constitutions. There is an urgent need to examine why the Sharia is totally incompatible with Human Rights and the US Constitution. This book , the first of its kind, proposes to examine the Sharia and its potential and actual threat to democratic principles.

This book defines and defends Western values, strengths and freedoms often taken for granted. This book also tackles the taboo subjects of racism in Asian culture, Arab slavery, and Islamic Imperialism. It begins with a homage to New York City, as a metaphor for all we hold dear in Western culture- pluralism, individualism, freedom of expression and thought, the complete freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness unhampered by totalitarian regimes, and theocratic doctrines.

About this title

About the Author

Ibn Warraq, Islamic scholar and a leading figure in Koranic criticism, is a visiting fellow at the Center for Law and Counterterrorism, a project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is the author of five important and distinguished books on Islam and Koranic criticism, including the classic Why I am Not a Muslim, 1995, The Origins of the Koran, 1998, The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, 2000, What the Koran Really Says, 2002, Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out, 2003, Virgins? What Virgins? And Other Essays, 2010; and the forthcoming Which Koran??all Prometheus Books. Warraq’s op-ed pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal in America and The Guardian in London, and he has addressed distinguished governing bodies all over the world, including the United Nations in Geneva, and Members of the Dutch Parliament, at The Hague. Mr. Ibn Warraq completed in 2007, a critical study of the thought of Edward Said, Defending the West, which Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism, described as ?a glorious work of scholarship, and it is going to contribute mightily to modernizing the way we think about Western civilization and the rest of the world".

Edition details

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1594035768
• ISBN 13: 9781594035760
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 286