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Ibn Warraq Biography

Ibn Warraq is the pen name of an anonymous author critical of Islam. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and used to be a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, focusing on Quranic criticism. Warraq is the Vice-President of the World Encounter Institute.

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Ibn Warraq Quotes

The origins of the modern West are often seen in the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, but the roots of the Enlightenment can be found in habits of mind cultivated in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, and the institutions that grew from them.

Eighteenth, Mind, Origins, Rome, Roots, Seventeenth

All religions are sick men's dreams, false - demonstrably false - and pernicious.

Dream, Dreams, False, Men, Pernicious, Sick

A culture that gave the world the spiritual creations of the Classical Music of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Schubert, the paintings of Michelangelo, and Raphael, Da Vinci and Rembrandt, does not need lessons from societies whose idea of spirituality is a heaven peopled with female virgins for the use of men, whose idea of heaven resembles a cosmic brothel.

Female, Ideas, Men, Spiritual, Vinci

The great ideas of the West - rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience, thought, and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy- quite an achievement, surely, for any civilization- - remain the best, and perhaps the only, means for all people, no matter of what race or creed, to reach their full potential and live in freedom.

Expression, Freedom, Law, Mean, State

Abolitionism did not find positive response in Africa as it did in Western societies and cultures.

Culture, Cultures, Positive, Response, Western

Being from a minority culture, I realised the importance of looking at non-Western cultures in a positive way.

Cultures, Looking, Minorities, Minority, Way, Western Culture

I maintain that Western popular culture at its best is worthy of respect and should be cherished as much as the operas of Wagner.

Culture, Maintain, Opera, Should, Worthy

Discussions of Western civilization are too often confined to works of high art that reflect a relatively narrow element of public taste and experience.

Art, Civilization, Confined, Elements, High, Relatively

I always have tendency to form very strong local attachments, so I was very keen to find out about the school I was going to, its history, and the countryside. I was acquiring a kind of English character if you like, Englishness about things and my attitudes.

Attitude, Countryside, Like, Local, School, Strong

Slavery had very little to do with the economic success of the West. Just look at the facts and figures and how much slavery actually contributed to development.

Contributed, Development, Economic, Looks, Slavery

You can't grow up without taking a few knocks on the way. All parents know that, but children when they're growing up, they take some knocks, and nasty knocks sometimes if they've been too protected.

Children, Growing Up, Parent, Parents, Protected, Way

The implausible, well-nigh-miraculous functioning anarchy that we know as New York is adorned with every excellence of Western art. It is a city of manifold suggestions, which ministers to every ambition, engenders a thousand talents, nurtures ingenuity and experimentation.

Adorned, Ambition, Art, Ministers, New York, Talents

It is the West that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians, recognizing and defending their rights. The notions of freedom and human rights were present at the dawn of Western civilization, as ideals at least, but have gradually come to fruition through supreme acts of self-criticism.

Defending, Gay, Racial, Religious, Rights, Supreme

Human rights transcend local or ethnocentric values, conferring equal dignity and value on all humanity regardless of sex, ethnicity, sexual preference, or religion. It is in the West that human rights are most respected.

Ethnicity, Human, Rights, Sex, Values

Each time you admire the façade of the New York Public Library, you are paying homage to Western civilization.

Civilization, Facade, Homage, Library, New York

Western society is a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives; it is a society of boundless private charity; it is a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth.

Chains, Charity, Merit, Self, Society

In the West we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live as we choose. Liberty is codified in human rights, a magnificent Western creation but also, I believe, a universal good.

Believe, Free, Liberty, Rights, Thinking, Western

I think forgiveness plays a very important part in Western society and it comes from the Judeo Christian heritage.

Christian, Judeo, Part, Play, Society, Thinking

By working and living in New York, you are breathing Western civilization, continuously reminded of its benefits and its values.

Breathing, Civilization, New York, Values, Western

As Luxenberg's work has only recently been published we must await its scholarly assessment before we can pass any judgements. But if his analysis is correct then suicide bombers, or rather prospective martyrs, would do well to abandon their culture of death, and instead concentrate on getting laid 72 times in this world, unless of course they would really prefer chilled or white raisins, according to their taste, in the next.

Assessment, Judgements, Prefer, Suicide, White

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