Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate's Defense of Liberal Democracy [Hardcover]

I am a long-standing fan of Ibn Warraq. I thoroughly enjoyed his ground-breaking book, Why I Am Not a Muslim, and especially liked one of his follow-up books, Virgins? What Virgins?: And Other Essays.

But this may be his best book yet.

I have to say, right off the bat, that it is biased. It seems to have been created as a document to refute anti-American (and anti-Western) leftists. It is quite definitely a reply to the "wets," who can find nothing wrong in the world except for "Western racism, imperialism, and genocide." And Warraq's reply is not antagonistic, in any way. It could be summed up as, "You don't know nothing yet."

The book begins with a surprising, but delightful, hymn to New York City. Warraq has previously written about "how he became an Englishman," but by now he is clearly an Englishman in love with New York. He takes two separate tracks in praising the city: the first is (again, surprisingly) his love affair with Tin Pan Alley and the best of the American musicals, and the second is his visit to a place that might be called "Little India," where every imaginable Indian product is for sale to the crowds which appear every day -- delicious curries and the ingredients which go into them, Indian silks and saris -- and so on: the complete list would consume this entire review!

But Ibn Warraq is most informative on subjects like slavery and imperialism. On slavery, he dispassionately points out the worst offenders in the matter of slavery (the Arabs, and perhaps the Africans themselves) and points out that the end of slavery came from the West. It certainly did not come from Medina or Marrakesh, Algiers or Tunis. There are many more interesting facts which will surprise most readers.

On imperialism, he is quite astonishing. He points out, en passant, the admiration of Western scholars for the Islamic conquest of the world, while of course there is no admiration of any sort for the British Empire. Warraq goes into this in devastating detail, when he compares the Islamic "raj" in India with the British "raj" in India. The Islamic "raj" lasted 700 years and left nothing good behind it. It left only a record of destruction. It managed to destroy Buddhism in India, as well as most of the Buddhist temples, and it destroyed Hindu temples by the thousand. (It also destroyed Hindu people by the "lakh.")

The "ferocious, imperialist" Britons, on the other hand, had a "raj" which lasted 200 years. And, when they left, they left behind them ports, roads, railways, the English law, English parliamentary democracy, universities, the English language, and Indians well-educated in medicine, law, science and other fields. As Dinesh D'Souza remarked, "Other than that, the British did absolutely nothing for India."

As I remarked at the opening, this book is biased. Don't open it and expect to find another catalog of the sins of the West, real and imaginary. What you will find here is a robust and highly effective defense of what the West has done RIGHT, including human rights, freedom, democracy, and -- perhaps most important -- the freedom to construct your own life by your own lights.

Put this one on your required reading list!!

It is hard to know whether it is sad or encouraging that the West now finds its staunchest defenders from the ranks of non-Westerners (Hirshi Ali, Mangalwadi, D'Souza, etc). Although I have been aware of Warraq for quite some time, it was his publication on this topic along with some impressive pre-release interviews that finally pulled me in to reading him. Warraq is truly a leading intellectual with an incredibly broad learning, and that is what his book uniquely contributes. He brings in information about the rest of the world that makes our American perspective look provincial.

The book opens with a long panegyric to New York City, and especially the music spawned there in the early part of the century as an encapsulation of what is great about the West. This part was interesting, but did not accomplish what I think it was intended to -- it came off as more of an excurses at times than it did a metonym. The pay off, however, comes in the second half of the book, when he gets to his home territory. His expose on Islamic slavery is an absolute embarrassment to the Western elite. He brings together material on Islamic and African slavery that is devastating, as it should be common knowledge instead of obscuranta. He then proceeds into self-criticism and religious freedom.

The subtitle is misleading however. This is not a defense of liberal democracy, it is a defense of Western values as a whole and an appeal for us to believe in them again. It's a full frontal assault on multiculturalism and the Marxist historiography that supports it. In particular he recognizes throughout that human rights are unique to the Western tradition and the building block for everything else. Warraq's theoretical framework seemed to shift between conservative and classical liberal footings throughout the book, weakening the overall vision, but this does not detract from his assembly of such a broad defense of the West.

Warraq defends the West as a non-religious secularist who is at the same time not hostile to Christianity -- something that we do not know how to classify in most of contemporary American culture. There is something for us to learn from this. In fact, one could argue that this will be the fundamental choice for secularists in the 21st century -- which religion to side with against the other. As of today, our secular elites are so blinded by their disdain for Christianity that they ignore the much more obvious and dramatic flaws in Islam. Warraq rips off the veil, and forces to re-examine the question.

In this vein, I was surprised for his wide learning that he did not draw on Rodney Stark at all, who has covered a lot of this same ground. It may have enriched his argument. I recommend Stark's The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion as a complement to this.

This is the kind of book you dare your more open left-leaning friends to read. In fact, I dare you to read it!

Ibn Warraq has written a tremendously well researched and documented book and makes a persuasive case that what we come to think of as "western values" are really universal values that simply put, are principles that work best in terms of guiding human behavior, governing societies, fostering growth of science and the arts, and helping people reach their full potential,

As a person educated in the Eastern US, and an avid reader of the NYT, I have been amazed several times by the historical facts Mr Warraq documents that were heretofore unknown to me. There are very interesting expositions of Islamic, African, Indian, Japanese and Chinese culture and history, that one seldom reads about.

(I choose not to mention them specifically here because I fear this would lead to an endless steam of comments, defenses and accusations.)

I would also recommend this to anyone who has read "Guns Germs and Steel" because Mr Warraq raises some very interesting counterpoints to Mr Diamond's arguments.

This is a very important work which i'm sure will grow to become a best seller. It will open your eyes to much history that has been sanitized, or overlooked by the American educational system and media.

I highly recommend reading this book - although many may find the facts uncomfortable, and its likely to become controversial, its written in a very thoughtful rational tone and merits serious consideration and debate.