Ibn Warraq condemns apostasy in Islam while unable to read its primary sources.

Evidence

Leaving Islam (2003) begins with a long expose of what Ibn Warraq calls the “theory and practice of apostasy in Islam”. After giving an incomplete and fallacious account of the juridical position of various schools of Islamic law on the issue, he reports on the recent cases of Nawal al-Saadawi, the late Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, and Mahmud Muhammad Taha—three public intellectuals, two Egyptian and a Sudanese, who in one way or another angered the juridical establishment of their respective countries. None of the three can be said to have abandoned their faith. All three wrote in Arabic and published under their own names. Ibn Warraq, of course, cannot read them in Arabic—nor can he read al-Rawandi or Abu al-Ala’ al-Ma’arri, who also wrote in Arabic, nor Omar Khayyam, Sadeq Hedayat, and Ali Dashti, who wrote in Persian. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 526

Related

• Ibn Warraq argues Arabic fluency is unnecessary for valid critique of Islam. (similarity 0.82)
• Insular academic language on Islam enables public charlatans (similarity 0.81)
• Ibn Warraq marketed himself as the first secular Muslim doubter of Islam (similarity 0.81)
• Ibn Warraq’s recommended sources are dominated by religious and nationalist extremists. (similarity 0.81)
• Muslim intellectual critique long predates and exceeds Islamophobic polemic. (similarity 0.80)
• Anti-Islamic polemic often rests on secondhand citation of texts authors cannot read. (similarity 0.80)
• Islamophobic polemicists work from paid translation rather than primary sources. (similarity 0.78)
• Ibn Warraq’s catalogue of critics contradicts his claim no Muslim challenged doctrine (similarity 0.78)