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Faces of Muhammad - Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today (Hardcover)
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Faces of Muhammad - Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today (Hardcover)
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Heretic and impostor or reformer and statesman? The contradictory
Western visions of Muhammad In European culture, Muhammad has been
vilified as a heretic, an impostor, and a pagan idol. But these
aren’t the only images of the Prophet of Islam that emerge from
Western history. Commentators have also portrayed Muhammad as a
visionary reformer and an inspirational leader, statesman, and
lawgiver. In Faces of Muhammad, John Tolan provides a comprehensive
history of these changing, complex, and contradictory visions.
Starting from the earliest calls to the faithful to join the
Crusades against the “Saracens,” he traces the evolution of
Western conceptions of Muhammad through the Reformation, the
Enlightenment, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and up
to the present day. Faces of Muhammad reveals a lengthy tradition
of positive portrayals of Muhammad that many will find surprising.
To Reformation polemicists, the spread of Islam attested to the
corruption of the established Church, and prompted them to depict
Muhammad as a champion of reform. In revolutionary England, writers
on both sides of the conflict drew parallels between Muhammad and
Oliver Cromwell, asking whether the prophet was a rebel against
legitimate authority or the bringer of a new and just order.
Voltaire first saw Muhammad as an archetypal religious fanatic but
later claimed him as an enemy of superstition. To Napoleon, he was
simply a role model: a brilliant general, orator, and leader. The
book shows that Muhammad wears so many faces in the West because he
has always acted as a mirror for its writers, their portrayals
revealing more about their own concerns than the historical
realities of the founder of Islam.
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