Why I Am Not a Muslim, a book written by Ibn Warraq, is a critique of Islam and the Qur'an. It was first published by Prometheus Books in the United States in 1995. The title of the book is a homage to Bertrand Russell's essay, Why I Am Not a Christian, in which Russell criticizes the religion in which he was raised.
Motive and contents
Outraged over the fatwa and death threats against Salman Rushdie, Ibn Warraq assumes a pseudonym to write what the historian and writer Daniel Pipes called "serious and thought-provoking book" using a "scholarly sledgehammer" approach to "demolish" Islam. Warraq claims the work is his contribution ('my war effort') in the struggle against the kinds of people who would want to murder Rushdie.
The author's "polemic" criticizes Islam's mythology, theology, historic achievements, and current cultural influence. According to Warraq, one either has to believe that the Qur'an is the word of God, or that Muhammad was a liar. Moreover, progress made in modern critical scholarship of the Bible has serious and possibly detrimental consequences for belief in the inerrancy of the Qur'an once it is subjected to the same type of scholarly criticism.