Remember, I'm simply reporting this. Am not taking any sides. Whether this fellow is right or not - it's for you to judge individually. Don't hang the messenger. ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India Defending the West http://europenews.dk/en/node/9177 Fjordman on Ibn Warraq: Defending the West April 10 2008 Quote: I had the pleasure of meeting former Muslim Ibn Warraq in Denmark recently, where he received a free speech award for his work from the Danish Free Press Society and gave a speech with quotes from his recent book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism. This essay is inspired by his book. Ibn Warraq's book was written as a response to Edward Said's deeply flawed, but highly influential Orientalism from 1979. Said chastised Western countries for their supposed racist and stereotypical view of "the Other." Ibn Warraq dubs Said's methods "intellectual terrorism" and demonstrates the logical inconsistencies of his positions: An emblem associated with Asoka (or Ashoka) the Great is now the national emblem of India, yet he was virtually forgotten until the British got there. The rise of Buddhism as a major force is often linked to Asoka. Buddhism was virtually wiped out from its cradle in Central Asia and northern India with the arrival of Islam. What is difficult to explain is why neither non-Muslim Indians nor the deeply Buddhist-influenced nations of East and Southeast Asia showed greater interest in excavating monuments related to the Buddha. Why didn't Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean or Vietnamese scholars examine the archaeological sources of early Buddhist history? Why was this done by Europeans, overwhelmingly of Christian or Jewish stock? Unquote [snip]