Here’s a good article at the Boston Globe on Islamic apostate Ibn Warraq, author of Why I Am Not A Muslim: Losing his religion. Contained within this piece is an attack on Warraq by UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl. Even though El Fadl promotes himself as a tolerant, secular Muslim who criticizes Islam, he seems very threatened by the exhaustively researched scholarship of Ibn Warraq—and even trots out the tired, disingenuous Edward Said-coined phrase “Orientalist” in an attempt to discredit him:

To his critics, Warraq is an intolerant pseudo-scholar whose bitter polemics set back the very possibility of modernizing the faith. “If you already know what Islamophobes and Orientalists believe, this author has nothing original to add,” says Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of Islamic law at UCLA and the author most recently of “The Place of Tolerance in Islam’” (2002). “It’s good propaganda, but not good scholarship.”

Another mark against El Fadl; if he were really interested in reforming Islam, he would welcome the criticism of apostates like Ibn Warraq. Instead he chooses the cheap, easy, intellectually dishonest route of yelling “Islamophobe!” and “Orientalist!” to evade dealing with Warraq’s many persuasive arguments—the very same strategy used by radical Islamist front group CAIR.

UPDATE: In a previous thread about Khaled Abou El Fadl, several readers asserted that he had been attacked by groups like CAIR. But after searching their site, and other Muslim advocacy sites, the only reference to El Fadl I could find was a copy of his statement condemning the 9/11 atrocities. If anyone has a link to a Muslim advocacy group that is displeased with El Fadl, please post it in the comments here.