Ibn Warraq

Ibn Warraq (born 1946) is the pen name of an anonymous author critical of Islam. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and formerly a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, focusing on Quranic criticism. Warraq is also the vice-president of the World Encounter Institute. Born in Rajkot, Gujarat, British India, his family migrated to Pakistan in 1947. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, studying philosophy and Arabic. He began writing against Islam after the *Satanic Verses* controversy, and has since published works questioning mainstream conceptions of Islamic history and the Quran. His work has been praised for its scholarship and critique of Edward Said's Orientalism, but also criticized as polemical and lacking expertise by some academic specialists.