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It is the West that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians, recognizing and defending their rights. The notions of freedom and human rights were present at the dawn of Western civilization, as ideals at least, but have gradually come to fruition through supreme acts of self-criticism.

Ibn Warraq

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Ibn Warraq
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: January 1
Author
Journalist
Writer
Women
Criticism
Minorities
Fruition
Human
West
Dawn
Gays
Humans
Civilization
Acts
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Come
Present
Gay
Defending
Self
Least
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Gradually
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Western
Recognizing
Lesbians

More quotes by Ibn Warraq

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Each time you admire the façade of the New York Public Library, you are paying homage to Western civilization.
Ibn Warraq
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The origins of the modern West are often seen in the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, but the roots of the Enlightenment can be found in habits of mind cultivated in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, and the institutions that grew from them.
Ibn Warraq
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Monotheism is in its turn doomed to subtract one more God and become atheism
Ibn Warraq
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Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: this triptych succinctly defines the attractiveness and superiority of Western civilization.
Ibn Warraq
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All religions are sick men's dreams, false - demonstrably false - and pernicious.
Ibn Warraq
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Western society is a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives it is a society of boundless private charity it is a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth.
Ibn Warraq
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Discussions of Western civilization are too often confined to works of high art that reflect a relatively narrow element of public taste and experience.
Ibn Warraq
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Human rights transcend local or ethnocentric values, conferring equal dignity and value on all humanity regardless of sex, ethnicity, sexual preference, or religion. It is in the West that human rights are most respected.
Ibn Warraq
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Muslims have not ever been told to examine their faith in a critical way, so the shock is going to be even greater for them, as it is for any child who lives in an over-protected environment, who suddenly has to go out and earn a living and has to stand up on his own feet.
Ibn Warraq
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By working and living in New York, you are breathing Western civilization, continuously reminded of its benefits and its values.
Ibn Warraq
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The idea that the West was economically successful because of slavery, it's just nonsense.
Ibn Warraq
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In Saudi Arabia, among other countries, Muslims are not free to convert to Christianity, and Christians are not free to practice their faith. The Koran is not a rights-respecting document.
Ibn Warraq
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You can't grow up without taking a few knocks on the way. All parents know that, but children when they're growing up, they take some knocks, and nasty knocks sometimes if they've been too protected.
Ibn Warraq
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Being from a minority culture, I realised the importance of looking at non-Western cultures in a positive way.
Ibn Warraq
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The rich countries are rich because of their practices at home, and because of their readiness to adopt and adapt new things, such as Chinese inventions or New World crops.
Ibn Warraq
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Slavery had very little to do with the economic success of the West. Just look at the facts and figures and how much slavery actually contributed to development.
Ibn Warraq
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I always have tendency to form very strong local attachments, so I was very keen to find out about the school I was going to, its history, and the countryside. I was acquiring a kind of English character if you like, Englishness about things and my attitudes.
Ibn Warraq
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We cannot hope to win the ideological battle against Islam without criticism of Islam, it is essential that we continue to criticize Islam.
Ibn Warraq
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I have always felt that many Christians, deeply sincere Christians, support the idea of separation of State and Church and the secularist in that sense as well. They believe that religion should be very much a private affair and should not be given special treatment. The State should not fund churches for example.
Ibn Warraq