Why I am Not a Muslim does have a mocking quality, to be sure, but it is also a serious and thought-provoking book. It calls not for a wall of silenc… - Ibn Warraq

After their spectacular conquests, the Arabs were unwilling to concede equality to the non-Arab converts to Islam, despite Islamic doctrine that expressively forbade discrimination. But for the Arabs there were the conquered and the conquerors ... The Arabs ruled as a sort of conquistador tribal aristocracy.

Perhaps the writer who has best identified the problems within the Muslim world is the philosopher Ibn Warraq, of Pakistani origin, author of Why I Am Not a Muslim. That this courageous man writes under a pseudonym shows that even in the West he does not feel safe.

When Warraq speaks of science, he allows that it is in this domain that "we come at last to the true greatness of Islamic civilization" ... But Warraq argues that it was despite Islam that Islamic science developed.