Quotable quotes from the wonderful world of free speechers ... part 28

Ibn Warraq   ....  describes himself as a "secular humanist".  He is the author of numerous articles and books, two of his widely read books are :   "Why I am not a Muslim"   and "Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate’s Defense of Liberal Democracy."

All quotes below are taken from his  articles at the NewEnglishReview.  

"Human Rights begin with freedom of thought, and expression; democracy depends on it."

"Islamic law is a totalitarian theoretical construct, intended to control every aspect of an individual's life from birth to death. Happily, the law has not always been applied to the letter—Islamic civilization would scarcely have emerged otherwise."

"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 and expression, human rights, liberal democracy-together constitute quite an achievement, surely, for any civilization. This set of principles remains the best and perhaps the only means for all people, no matter what race or creed, to live in freedom and reach their full potential."

" I believe that to abandon the idea of truth not only leads to political fascism, but stops dead all intellectual inquiry. To give up the notion of truth means forsaking the goal of acquiring knowledge. But man, as Aristotle put it, by nature strives to know. Truth, science, intellectual inquiry and rationality are inextricably bound together. Relativism, and its illegitimate offspring, multiculturalism, are not conducive to the critical examination of Islam."

"Feminists pretend that the "real Koran" is progressive towards women, human rights activists pretend, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary that the « real Koran » is totally compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The reality is that the Koran, and the Sharia derived from the Koran, are totalitarian constructs that try to control every single aspect of an individual’s life from the way he or she urinates and defecates, the way he/she eats, dresses, works, marries, makes love, prays, to the way he or she thinks on every conceivable subject."

"Democracy depends on freedom of thought and free discussion. The notion of infallibility is profoundly undemocratic and unscientific. It is perverse for the western media to lament the lack of an Islamic reformation and wilfully ignore books such as Anwar Shaikh's Islam - The Arab Imperialism, or my Why I am Not a Muslim. How do they think reformation will come about if not with criticism?"

"The history of the Islamic theology can be seen as a struggle between reason and revelation, with the eventual triumph of the dictates of revelation, with a victory for irrationalism and blind obedience to tradition."

"Those who back militant Islamic organizations are also the well off. They are more often the urban rich rather than the poor from the countryside.  Neither wealth nor a flourishing economy is a guarantee against the rise of militant Islam."

"As soon as I was able to think for myself, I discarded all the religious dogmas that had been foisted on me. I now consider myself a secular humanist who believes that all religions are sick men's dreams, false—demonstrably false—and pernicious."

His opinion of the UN
"The nations that created the United Nations, and promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 were committed to the concepts of equality, individual freedom and the rule of law. In the last fifteen years, the UN has been taken over by the Islamic States, whose record on human rights is abysmal, and who have a very shaky notion of what constitutes democracy, and whose allegiance is to a seventh-century worldview defined exclusively in terms of man’s duties towards God or Allah. The Islamic States have been supported by those nations with a hatred of the United States of America, and those countries who see their future economic and political interests as being best served by their alliances with the Islamic States."