Former Muslim Ibn Warraq stands up for the West.- B. Thornton

Golden Threads
August 23, 2007

by Bruce Thornton

City Journal
Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism,

by Ibn Warraq
The West hasn’t been doing well in the war of ideas against Islamic jihadists.

We fail to understand the true nature of Muslim doctrine, and a self-loathing long entrenched in our public discourse often cripples us. The eagerness of our intellectuals, scholars, and artists to don the hair shirt of colonial, imperial, racist, and xenophobic guilt has heartened our enemies and convinced them that for all of our economic and military power, we are rotten to the core and ripe for destruction.

The most pernicious example of this cultural pathology is the work of the late Edward Said, whose 1978 book Orientalism asserted that Western scholars had constructed a false image of the inferior Middle Eastern “Other” to facilitate and justify colonial and imperial oppression. Said’s incoherent amalgam of dubious postmodern theory, sentimental Third Worldism, glaring historical errors, and Western guilt corrupted not just Middle Eastern Studies departments but other disciplines, too, such as English and “culture studies.” More: it provided justifications for Islamic failure and aggression as understandable responses to Western crimes.

The enduring influence of Said’s thesis makes Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism crucial reading for anyone concerned with winning the war of ideas. Ibn Warraq is the pen name of the brave apostate whose Why I Am Not a Muslim laid out, against what some still call the “religion of peace,” a powerful case that earned him death threats and forced him to live incognito. At a time when even some conservatives hesitate to speak the truth about both Islam and the West’s superiority, Defending the West is a much-needed brief for the West’s unique virtues.

READ IT ALL!

http://victorhanson.com/articles/thornton082307.html

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Click on this link to hear an interview of Salman Rushdie and Ibn Warraq at the New York Society for Ethical Culture in late October of this year.

I found it really interesting.

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/?p=80