This book is first and foremost an assertion of my right to criticize everything and anything in Islam - even to blaspheme, to make errors, to satiri… - Ibn Warraq

What lessons have the Bengalis learned from this genocide? The answer is really pathetic: We pretend as if nothing happened in Bangladesh in 1971. We pretend that Islam had nothing to do with that genocide. Somehow or other we try to find other scapegoats, whoever that may be, except Islam. We pretend as if everything is fine and dandy with Islam. This is the biggest lie and the greatest cruelty: pretending that Islam had nothing to do with one of the most horrific genocides in human history. It pains people like me and many others who have seen and experienced the true color of Islam with their own eyes.

The tribesmen did not know the Koran simply because it did not exist, for it was put together piecemeal at a much later date. In other words, all the traditional accounts are hopelessly wrong.

His work will one day be seen as the moral and intellectual breakthrough that led to the Islamic Aufklarung.