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Abstract

In this evaluative article, we critique the works of the Islamic scholar and Orientalist Ibn Warrāq. An anonymous author, Ibn Warrāq is widely recognised by scholars of the field as a pseudo-scholarly prominent figure with highly polemical tendencies. There can be no doubt that healthy revisionism is the epitome of academic learning and intellect, but the writer in question betrays very little ability or desire for serious knowledge, that can only be gained through meticulous scholarship and an impartial demeanour. As such, I contend that Ibn Warrāq can be more accurately regarded as an ex-Muslim representative of a particular group of Orientalists with conspiratorial tendencies. This group, which also includes figures such as the more scholarly Michael Cook and Patricia Crone, is unambiguously the implicit harbinger of the modern political agenda of right-wing Islamophobia, which has been in the making throughout Europe and North America since at least the early-1970s.