Ibn Warraq - Writing and Works

Writing and Works

After graduating, Warraq was a primary school teacher in London for five years and moved to France with his wife in 1982, opening an Indian restaurant. He worked as a courier for a travel agent until the Rushdie affair took place. Because of this, Warraq began to write for Free Inquiry Magazine, the American secular humanist publication, on topics such as "Why I am not Muslim."

Ibn Warraq continued writing with several works examining the historiography of the Qur'an and Muhammad, raising a great deal of controversy that allowed certain Islamic leaders to arouse animosity in their communities in the process. Other books treated the topic of secular humanist values among Muslims. In The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book Ibn Warraq includes some of Theodor Nöldeke's studies.

In 2005, Warraq spent several months working with Christoph Luxenberg, who wrote about Syriac vs. Arabic interpretation of Koranic verse.

In February 2006, he participated with several other specialists at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Islam in The Hague (17-19 February 2006).

In March 2006, a letter he co-signed entitled MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism with eleven other individuals (most notably Salman Rushdie) was published in response to violent and deadly protests in the Islamic world surrounding the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Although not a member of any religion, he has a higher opinion of polytheism than of monotheism. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society. Despite his criticisms of Islam, he does not take the view that it cannot be reformed; and he works with liberal Muslims in his group. He has described himself as an atheist or an agnostic.

In 2007, he participated in St Petersburg Secular Islam Summit along with other thinkers and self-proclaimed "reformers of Islam" such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, and Irshad Manji. The group released the St Petersburg Declaration, which urges world governments to, among other things, reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; and to oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostasy, which they believe to be in violation of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Warraq's op-ed pieces have appeared in The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian in London, and he has addressed governmental bodies all over the world, including the United Nations in Geneva.

In October 2007, Warraq participated in the IQ2 debates in London with Douglas Murray, David Aaronovitch, Tariq Ramadan, William Dalrymple, and Charles Glass