Thank you guys for your kind words. I’m glad I have something to contribute.
Ibn Warraq straddles that interesting line between polemics and scholarship. He printed these scholarly articles with the intent of challenging the reader: “Can a rational person believe in the Qur’an?” This challenge, found also in Biblical studies, is one that represents a problem for scholars who tend to reflect the modernist view that religion is a personal, individual affair, and that therefore they should merely be openhanded and serious in their research and let the reader come up with his own conclusions from reading the study. We religious scholars don’t like to be too polemical, usually. But just as how nowadays the line is blurred between scholarly works and Muslim exegesis, so too the line is blurred between scholarly work and polemics.
