"Imagine a scholar today referring to the "obvious defects of the Koran," to the "crudities of the Koran". (...) Imagine a scholar writing this today - the book could be pounded on, effigies of the author burned…Yet the sentences are from that most effusive - and one of the shallowest - apologies of Islam: M N Roy's The Historical Role of Islam. In brief, the situation has worsened over the decades. No one today could write even this much, and it is only the good fortune that our people do not read these older books which allows them to continue in circulation."