Center for Inquiry (http://www.centerforinquiry.net)
This is a transcript of Stephen Crittenden's interview of Ibn Warraq on "The Religion Report," Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
On Wednesday 10 October 2001
Secularist Muslim intellectual Ibn Warraq - not his real name - was born on the Indian subcontinent and educated in the West. He believes that the great Islamic civilisations of the past were established in spite of the Koran, not because of it, and that only a secularised Islam can deliver Muslim states from fundamentalist madness. Little wonder that he chooses to keep his identity secret. We talk to Ibn Warraq this week.
(Transcript)
Lyn Gallacher: This week on The Religion Report, we’re devoting the entire program to an exclusive interview with the secularist Muslim intellectual Ibn Warraq. Ibn Warraq is the pseudonym used by this author of two controversial books, Why I Am not a Muslim and The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. The name, Ibn Warraq, is one that’s traditionally been adopted by dissident authors throughout the history of Islam. And in this case, Ibn Warraq uses it because he fears for his safety. He believes that there are moderate Muslims, but that Islam itself is not moderate. And, he says it’s time for Western Muslims and Western politicians like George Bush and Tony Blair to stop denying Islam’s role in the violence of September 11th.
Ibn Warraq is speaking to Stephen Crittenden.
（Lily's Note: The first part is omitted.）
Lyn Gallacher: Secular Muslim intellectual Ibn Warraq speaking to Stephen Crittenden.
Stephen Crittenden: Can I go back to something that we alluded to, but I want to ask a separate question, and that is, we’ve done interviews on this program in recent days with Islamic scholars from America and elsewhere, who are very keen to support Islam and very keen, as I am, not to offend Muslims living here in Australia who are under a great deal of pressure at the moment, through no fault of their own. On the other hand, you are very critical of the kind of political correctness of those people. You call them ‘Western apologists’.
Ibn Warraq: Yes, I find it quite distressing that it’s implicit in such an attitude by the way is the kind of racism they think they’re getting away from, there’s a kind of condescension which says you mustn’t hurt the sensibilities of these poor Muslims, as though they are children who must be shielded from the adult world of criticism, which I find extraordinary. And the other thing I find quite extraordinary is that many of these scholars are in fact Western apologists, are in fact Christians; Christian scholars like Montgomery Watt, for example, who wrote the famous two-volume biography of the prophet, highly regarded in the Muslim world by the way, but not by everyone. Many Muslims in fact despise, really despise scholars like Montgomery Watt. They think, well if Islam is such a great religion, why haven’t you converted? Enough of this condescension, they say. One particular one, the Egyptian intellectual Hussein Amin, wrote a scathing review of Montgomery Watt in exactly these terms that I’m describing, and Hussein Amin said ‘I prefer the old Christian missionaries who at least were honest enough about their Christianity and who wanted to convert Muslims to Christianity, than to these Western apologists who are just totally dishonest in that way.’
Stephen Crittenden: This raises another question, and that is, Is one of the problems here in the West that we refuse to acknowledge, we’ve forgotten in fact, how much our secular democratic institutions, how much the freedom that we’ve won, actually came out of Christianity.
Ibn Warraq: Yes, actually, I mean you’re absolutely right there. In a sense, Christianity always accepted the separation of the two spheres. You know the famous saying in the Gospel according to St Matthew, ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.’ That is supposed to be an indication of the separation of the church and state. You are absolutely right; look at how secularisation took place in the West, surprisingly one of the forces for secularisation was Christianity itself. As soon as it accepted the idea of a contrary opinion, the moment that European opinion decided for toleration, it decided for eventual free marketing opinion.
Stephen Crittenden: Could I ask you, is the separation of church and state impossible for Islam? And I’m thinking, we’re aware of a nation like Indonesia, or like Turkey, where a strong army keeps Islam in its place, but that’s not what I’m talking about, and that’s not what you would mean by separation of church and state either, would you?
Ibn Warraq: Well I think it is possible, but it’s a hard job for the country concerned. I mean Turkey is the only one which has an absolute separation built into its constitution. The others make some sort of a reference to Islam or Islamic law in their constitution, saying that the law of this country is inspired by the sharia or by the Qur’an and so on, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be. I mean it’s quite obvious that in fact many of the countries were going towards a kind of secular state, even a country believe it or not, like Iraq was essentially a secular state, it was a dictatorship of course of the most awful kind, but there was no kind of concessions made to the religious parties, or to religious demands. Same thing with Syria, there’s no intrinsic reason why a country with a majority of Muslims should not head in the path towards secularism. In fact Pakistan ironically, was founded by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was an atheist. This is not recognised, no Pakistani would admit this, and then of course the first leader after Jinnah’s death was Liaquat Ali Khan, and who was on the verge of introducing a secular constitution when he was assassinated, and we believe the assassination was by somebody linked to one of the religious parties. And I’ve seen interviews with various women’s groups, various intellectuals in Pakistan over the last ten years, who say that the people of Pakistan have never been for the Mullahs, for these obscurantist elements, and they essentially have a kind of relaxed attitude to Islam and the thought is Islam, the religion, should be reduced to the private sphere. And I think Bangladesh was also going in a secular way. But then of course the greatest change for all these countries has been the revolution in Iran. That has helped to put the clock back by 50 years. You know, you had all sorts of secular movements, for example, women in Egypt very courageously in the ‘20s burnt their veils publicly, and then you had students, people forget this very quickly, burning the Qur’an publicly in Baghdad in the ‘50s. But politicians, each time politicians have given in to the religious fundamentalist lobby. And people had great expectations for the Benazir Bhutto when she took over in the late ‘80s, and yet she sort of made pacts with the religious groups, you know, they said they would leave her alone and they would not question her authority because she was a woman, if she didn’t attack their power. Well it was a complete disappointment to all the feminist groups, all the women of Pakistan when she did nothing to advance their cause. People had a high expectation, and she talked about democracy, but unfortunately she’s caved in each time.
Stephen Crittenden: Do you think that the events of September 11 may possibly drive a wedge between Muslims living in the West and Muslims across the Muslim world?
Ibn Warraq: Yes, this is going to be definitely a watershed. I think I already mentioned the change amongst the, certainly among the “Western whites”, if you like, the intellectuals and their willingness to criticise Islam. But there is a group of us for example that’s the secular-minded Muslims, or ex-Muslims, or Muslims, or free thinkers of Muslim origin, we’re having a big meeting in New York in the middle of November. There’s a growing number of us who have got together, and we’re drawing up a constitution and we want to pursue the Muslims living in the West. You’re not betraying your own culture, on the contrary you are dignifying humanity by being critical of the religion of Islam. And that living in the West, they should take advantage of the freedom of expression that the West gives them, to look critically, instead of withdrawing into a kind of sullen silence, they should take this opportunity to openly look at their roots, at the problem of interpreting the Qur’an for example, at the position of women, the need for separation of state and church and so on. So I think it is a great opportunity for Muslims to examine what it is in their religion that pushes them to such a violent act.
As for I think the Muslims elsewhere, well unfortunately, most Muslims elsewhere are living under authoritarian government, there is no freedom of expression, with the limited exception of Turkey of course. There are lone voices, very courageous lone voices, even in those countries. You have a secularist philosopher called Sadiq al-Azam in Syria for example; you have some very courageous individuals in Egypt, in Tunisia you have Muhammad Sharfi, who’s a secularist. They’re the people that we should encourage.
Stephen Crittenden: Can I ask you, the Muslim community in Australia is new, and often the people here have come from war-torn areas, they lack self-confidence; what would you say to those people living in Australia, who are very distressed at this time?
Ibn Warraq: Well I think there’s going to be no easy way out. There won’t be any, without some sort of wounds, as it were, without a little bit of suffering. There’s going to be some kind of suffering, like examination of conscience and so on, and you can’t grow up without taking a few knocks on the way. I mean 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. And this is the case of course with Islam. They have been far, far, too protected. Muslims have not ever been told to examine their faith in a critical way, so the shock is going to be even greater for them, as it is for any child who lives in an over-protected environment, who suddenly has to go out and earn a living and has to stand up on his own feet. This exactly the kind of shock that they will have. But what does a child do? He has to look reality in the face, and this is what Muslims have to do. They have to examine their sacred text and see what is wrong with it, what is in it that drives people to murder 5,000 people in one go, the suicide attack, and it’s no good pretending it’s got nothing to do with Islam, they’ve to examine it and look at reality in the face. And I can’t see there’s going to be any soft way out of this. They’ve just got to wake up, they’ve got to grow up. And so instead of shouting ‘Oh, you’re insulting our prophet, you’re insulting our religion’, they’ve got to take their place along with other people who’ve had to take knocks.
I have a Dominican priest friend who said to me, ‘You know, throughout the ages Catholicism really received some slaps in the face, and believe me, it has done us a lot of good.’
Stephen Crittenden: What’s implied behind all that is that Islam is potentially going to be required, maybe by the West, to go through something a bit like the Reformation that the Christian church went through.
Ibn Warraq: Exactly, and that’s why, as I’ve said over and over again, it is illogical, totally illogical, for the Western media, there’s an editorial practically every month now in The Times, which laments the lack of a Reformation within Islam, and then to ignore books like mine. How do they think reformation’s going to come about?
Stephen Crittenden: Of course if that’s so, we’re talking about one of the biggest stories in the history of religion.
Ibn Warraq: Right. I mean I see this as megalomaniac. But it’s got to start somewhere.
Lyn Gallacher: Ibn Warraq, speaking to Stephen Crittenden. And Ibn Warraq’s books Why I Am Not a Muslim and The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, are published by Prometheus Books.
And that’s it for today. Thanks to John Diamond, David Rutledge and Russell Thompson.
(End)
