Bill Warner (writer)

Bill Warner is the pen name of Bill French (born 1941), an American anti-Islam writer, and the founder of the Center for the Study of Political Islam International. He is a former physics professor whom the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2011 counted among a core group of ten anti-Islam hardliners in the United States.

Biography

Warner graduated from North Carolina State University where he got his PhD in physics and mathematics in 1968. He is a former Tennessee State University physics professor. Warner does not have an academic background in religious studies.

Criticism

Middlebury Institute professor and terrorism expert Jeffrey M. Bale refers to Warner as an example of writers who identify Islam with Islamism. According to Bale, these writers relate all the characteristics associated with Islamism with Islam as a whole, alleging that "such characteristics are intrinsic to Islam itself, and therefore that Islamism and jihadism are simply logical extensions - or simple applications in practice - of the authentic tenets and core values of Islam." He argues that, what they "fail to acknowledge is that these particular interpretations are by no means the only possible interpretations of core Islamic doctrines, traditions, and values, nor are they necessarily the most authentic, valid, or widely shared interpretations." This he says, is like claiming that Christian Reconstructionism is identical to Christianity.

Religious studies scholar Asma Uddin considers several anti-Islam groups like Warner and his organization as anti-Muslim entities that mainstream the idea that Islam is not a religion but merely a political ideology, which aids in legitimizing restricting the religious freedom of American Muslims. Uddin described the organization's statistical reports that claim Islam is mainly a political ideology as "pseudoscience and these nti-Islam'think tanks'... are responding to the work of actual legitimate think tanks using the language of statistics."

Warner has been compared to Geert Wilders in considering Islam a totalitarian political ideology demanding complete submission. He has also been regarded as being part of the counter-jihad movement.

See also

Political Islam

References

Bibliography

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*Warner, Bill (2019). ''Measuring Mohammed.'' Center for the Study of Political Islam. .

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Warner, Bill
1941 births
Living people
American critics of Islam
American male non-fiction writers
American mathematicians
American physicists
Counter-jihad activists
Critics of Islamism
North Carolina State University alumni