Notwithstanding the highly regrettable and detestable portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ  down the centuries, which makes a sad, depressing reading, it is gratifying that since early twentieth century there has been some fairness in the West’s treatment of the Prophet – in literary texts, academic publications particularly in the broad field of Islamic studies, and more importantly in a spate of historical and cultural studies, acknowledging the gross injustice and hostility in the West’s representation. Equally welcome is the appearance of several biographies of the Prophet by Western scholars, which do justice, to a large extent, to the Prophet’s genius and his life-ennobling message.

Let us turn first to literary texts. Signalling a marked departure from the centuries-old hate-inspired representation, the Prague-born Austrian-German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875–1926) poem “Mohammed’s Berufung” (Muhammad’s calling) published in 1907 strikes as a sincere attempt to represent the Prophet faithfully. For in his poem, quoted below, about the Prophet receiving divine revelation from the archangel, Gabriel, there is not even a trace of absurd stories about the role of the dove or epilepsy or Sergius or imposture in concocting revelation. 

In contrast, Rilke succeeds in conveying a note of solemnity, humility and truthfulness in describing the Prophet’s extraordinary encounter with Gabriel. Needless to add, Rilke’s whole description, including his pointed reference to the first word of revelation “read” (iqra’) is remarkably cognate with the Muslim belief. Such faithful representation of the Muslim creed or empathy was unimaginable only a century earlier:

The Instantly Recognisable, the Angel,

Upright, pure and gleaming with light

He renounced his every demand and begged

That he might remain, a mere merchant as he was,

Bewildered within from his travels:

He had never read – and now

Such a word, too even for a wise man.

But the mighty imperious Angel pointed and pointed,

Showed him, what was written upon his sheet,

And would not give way and said again: Read!

Thereupon he read, read so that the Angel bowed.

And now he was a man who had read

And could read and obeyed and carried out the command. 

Far from expressing the usual zeal to convert Muslims or to demolish mosques, Rilke’s response represents the other end of the scale – his regret over and disapproval of the conversion of mosques in Spain, as evident from his letter to Furstin Taxis:

This mosque; it is a concern, a worry, a disgrace what has become of it, churches twisted into the luminous inner space, I would like to comb them out like combing knots out of lovely hair... Christianity I could not help thinking is constantly slicing God up like some beautiful cake, but Allah is one, Allah is whole. 

His another letter is reflective of his growing admiration for the Quran  and the Prophet:

Incidentally I should tell you, Princess, that since Cordoba, I have been overcome by an almost fanatical anti-Christian feeling. I am  reading the Quran, it is taking on, in places, a voice of its own, in which I am inside with all my powers like the wind in an organ. You really should not hand out these decaying rinds that are lying around as food. The juice has been sucked out, so, putting it crudely, you should spit out the rind... In any case, Muhammad was immediate, like a river bursting through a mountain range, he breaks through to the one God with whom you can talk so wonderfully, every morning, without the telephone called “Christ” into which people constantly shout “Hallo, is anyone there?” and no one replies. 

Rilke’s other works, The Notebooks of Malte Laurdis Brigge and Duino Elegies also show his sympathetic, nuanced understanding of Islam and Muslims.

Not only Rilke, such eminent twentieth century English literary figures as W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), E.M. Forster (1879-1970), T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) and Doris Lessing (1919-2013), in their own respective ways, are found projecting Islam and Muslims in a positive light. Although they have not written specifically on the Prophet, their stance on Islam and Muslims is characterised by empathy. Moreover, their works evidence their appreciation for Sufism (the Muslim mystical tradition). For example, T.S. Eliot acknowledges his fascination with the Persian polymath, Omar Khayyam’s [‘Umar Khayyam] (1048–1131) mystical poetry read by him in its English translation by Edward Fitzgerald (1868):

I happened to pick up a copy of Fitzgerald’s Omar which was lying about, and the almost overwhelming introduction to a new world of feeling which this poem was the occasion of giving me. It was like a sudden conversion, the world appeared anew painted with bright, delicious and painful colours. 

Some critics have pointed out the affinity between the Sufi thought and certain passages in Eliot’s Ash Wednesday, Four Quartets and Choruses from the Rock. According to Georges Cattaui, Eliot may have drawn upon the Sufi tradition for his depiction of the Rose Garden in his Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets.  W.G. Archer too, identifies the similarity between the Persian poet, Sadi’s [Sa‘di] (1210–1291) and Eliot’s conception of the Rose Garden.

For Eliot, the Rose is the Virgin Mary and the Garden the catholic church. Yet the objective is ultimately the same as Sadi’s: peace of mind achieved by transcending or extinguishing desires.  

The Irish/British poet, W.B. Yeats’s (1865–1939) following poems, “The Gift of Harun Alrashid, Mosada, Ego Dominus Tuus, Street Dances, Solomon to Sheba, Solomon and the Witch, Calvary, and The Cat and the Moon” stand out for their Islamic content and context. More importantly, these depict things Islamic in a positive vein. His treatment of Muslim mysticism is marked by depth and insights, as is pointed out in the critical studies by Salah Salim Ali,  Suheil Badi Bushrui,  Shamsul Islam  and Adnan M. Wazzan. 

A Passage to India (1921), a remarkable novel by E.M. Forster (1879–1970), notwithstanding its Hindu majority British India locale, accords the pride of place to a Muslim character, Dr. Aziz. Islam and Muslims are depicted favourably throughout the novel. 

Another distinguished literary figure of our time favourably inclined towards Islam, especially its mystical tradition, is Doris Lessing (1919–2013). Her deep and perceptive engagement with Sufism (Muslim mystical tradition) is documented in the critical writings on her by Muge Galin, Masoodul Hasan  and Joe Martin.  They have identified Sufi elements in her Four Gated City, Learning How to Live, Briefing for Descent into Hell, Shikasta and The Marriages between Zones Three, Four and Five. 

Some recent works on Sirah in English reflect a sea-change in the representation of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). These indicate the welcome trend of acknowledging the Prophet’s greatness and glory. A brief account of such select works follows.

R. V. C. Bodley (1892-1970)

The British military commander and journalist, Colonel R. V. C. Bodley’s The Messenger: The Life of Muhammad (1946) is, according to Minou Reeves, “written from a perspective close to that of Muslims themselves.”  Based on his seven years long stay in Arabia and friendship with Arabs, Bodley’s presentation of the Prophet touches upon several illuminating facets of the Prophet’s exemplary character and conduct:

My attempt, therefore has been to present Muhammad as he really was—an Arab like many I knew in the desert, a man of simple tastes, but of great personality, with the good of his people at heart; Muhammad’s tastes were simple and aesthetic, but he was also a man of the world. Neither was it a world of a remote past. . . . Muhammad would not have felt ill at ease in society. He married and had children. He was a fine horseman, he could make his own shoes and mend his own clothes. He had a good sense of humour. He knew himself to be a leader, but he was never boastful and never tried to create anything resembling a court. He never led anyone to believe that he had supernatural gifts.

The Muslims follow the example of the founder of their faith who ruled Arabia but had no compunction about dining with a slave or sharing his dates with a slave or a beggar.

Could a man who was not inspired have brought such an international brotherhood into being? Does not the scoffing of the anti-Muslims rather reflect on themselves? Why should an impostor have left a creed which has grown ever since he died? 

The same charge of impostor is strongly rejected by Rudi Paret, the German translator of the Quran, and author of Muhammad und der Koran [Muhammad and the Quran] published in 1957:

Muhammad was in the very essence of his being a religious man. The key to understanding his personality lies in his religiosity. The accusation of dishonesty which has been laid against the Prophet time and again over the centuries up to the most recent times with varying degrees of vehemence is relatively easy to refute. Muhammad was not a deceptor. . . . Muhammad was in no way driven by the thrust of power. On the contrary, as we were able to show, he gave God credit for even the greatest military and political successes, in deep humility.  

Michael Hart (1932  –)

The most glowing tribute imaginable to the Prophet in a fairly recent and highly popular Western publication is the NASA scientist, American scholar, Michael M. Hart’s The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History (published first in 1978). More than 500,000 copies of this book have been sold and it has been translated into fifteen languages. After critically and rigorously examining varied contributions of the world’s greatest religious and political leaders, inventors, writers, philosophers, explorers, artists and innovators of all times, he attempts to evaluate their enduring influence, which is reflected in his ranking. What strikes as a most pleasant surprise is that it is neither Jesus nor Plato nor any other Western intellectual giant on whom Hart bestows the top rank among the 100 most influential figures. Rather, he accords this coveted position to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). What impelled him to do so is explained by him thus:

A striking example of this [individual personal influence] is my ranking Muhammad higher than Jesus, in large part because of my belief that Muhammad had a much greater personal influence on the formulation of the Moslem religion than Jesus had on the formulation of the Christian religion. 

His recognition of the Prophet’s greatness stems from the following criteria:

My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world’s most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels.

. . . It may initially seem strange that Muhammad has been ranked higher than Jesus. There are two principal reasons for that decision. First, Muhammad played a far more important role in the development of Islam than Jesus did in the development of Christianity. . . .

Muhammad was responsible for both the theology of Islam and its main ethical and moral principles. In addition, he played the key role in proselytizing the new faith, and in establishing the religious practices of Islam. . . . 

Furthermore, Muhammad (unlike Jesus) was a secular as well as a religious leader. In fact as the driving force behind the Arab conquests, he may well rank as the most influential political leader of all time.

. . . Nothing similar [to the Arab conquests] had occurred before Muhammad, and there is no reason to believe that the conquests would have been achieved without him. . . .

. . . It is thus the unparalleled combination of secular and religious influence which I feel entitles Muhammad to be considered the most influential single figure in human history. 

Karen Armstrong (1944  –)

Karen Armstrong, a distinguished scholar of comparative religion, deserves credit for her tolerant perspective on Islam and the Prophet. Her two influential books Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet (1991) and Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time (2006) have contributed much to breaking the negative stereotypes about the Prophet. As part of her valiant attempt to refute the Prophet’s false image, in her books she explains accurately the Islamic concepts of Prophethood and jihad. More importantly, she describes cogently that far from being a man of violence, the Prophet professed and practised love and mercy for all, believers and unbelievers alike. Also, she rues the demonization of Islam and the Prophet in the West. For her, Islam presents a theology characterized by peace and tolerance. In the post-9/11 world, her other equally admirable work Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time (2006) served well to douse the flames of hostility and vituperation against the Prophet. It sincerely seeks to correct the Western perception, asserting that the Prophet should be better approached as a role model in our time. For he was the true harbinger of pluralism, world peace and cordial interfaith relations. Moreover, she brings into sharper light the Prophet’s accomplishments as a social reformer and moral guide and more significantly, the relevance of his teachings for our time. 

Annemarie Schimmel (1922–2003)

Annemarie Schimmel, a German scholar served as Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Marburg, Germany and Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Ankara, Turkey. Many of her more than fifty books on Sirah, Persian and Urdu literature and Muslim mysticism available also in English paved the way for a better understanding of Islam, the Prophet and Muslim culture in the West. 

Special mention may be made of her And Muhammad is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (1985) which brings out the centrality of the Prophet in Islam and as the role model in both devotional and everyday life. It helps readers appreciate his importance, his impeccable character and conduct, and his greatness. So doing, she cites numerous pieces of evidence from the poetry, mystical tradition and socio-cultural life of Muslims down the ages, which are indicative of their devotion to the Prophet. Also, she discusses the popular Muslim beliefs about the Prophet’s light, his path and his role in intercession and salvation. Although it is not strictly speaking a biography of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, it enables readers to gain a clear, accurate picture of the Prophet in Islam.

In sum, Schimmel stands out among the contemporary Western scholars who have effectively and sincerely articulated through their writings the essence of Islam and the Prophet as a role model. Her representation of the Prophet is both comprehensive and sensitive. For example, she draws attention to the Prophet’s spirituality, an aspect often neglected in his biographies:

Whoever studies Islam in the West and becomes accustomed to the traditional image of Muhammad as it had developed in the Christian world over centuries of hatred and hostility, will be amazed to witness the powerful mystical qualities that are ascribed to this man in the Sufi tradition, a man whom the ordinary European is used to regarding as a sly and sensual politician and at best as the founder of a heresy derived from Christianity. Even the most recent studies of the Prophet, which show his honesty and profoundly religious attitude betray nothing of the mystical love that his followers feel for him. A Prophet who was so certain of being God’s instrument must indeed have been a great man of prayer; for precisely through prayer he could sense over and again the presence of the God who had sent him. 

Fred M. Donner (1945  –)

Another recent, positive biography of the Prophet is Fred M. Donner’s Muhammad and Believers (2010). Divided into five chapters, Donner’s substantial, scholarly work first charts out the pre-Islamic Near Eastern background. His main thesis is that there were marked religious trends in the era, not only in Arabia but also in the entire region and hence the emergence of Islam, which he purposively and meaningfully labels as the “Believers Movement,” should be studied in that broader backdrop. It is so gratifying that he recounts at length the Muslim version of the Prophet.  In so doing, he shows respect for Muslim sensitivities and refutes some of the outlandish Orientalist notions, which amount to denying the Prophet’s historicity or which perniciously imply that the Sirah was invented centuries later, while resorting to back projection tactics by Muslims.

His recounting of the Sirah, derived from Muslim writings, is on the whole accurate and comprehensive. He accords much significance, and rightly so, to the “Umma Document,” concluded by the Prophet after his arrival in Madinah among the Muhajirun, the Ansar, the Madinan Jews and others. Appended to his work is the text of this important document.  Donner airs some of his reservations about Muslim sources on the Sirah. However, unlike most of Orientalists, especially of the “revisionist” and “late origins” breed, he does not dismiss the Muslim version outright.

The chief merit of Donner’s work resides in his refutation of the theories propounded by the French Orientalist, Ernest Renan (1832–1892) that “the Mussulman movement was produced almost without religious faith.”  Likewise, he rejects the views of other Orientalists who ascribe the emergence and rise of Islam to socio-cultural, nationalistic, and economic factors exploited adroitly by the Prophet for forging a new community and for assuming its leadership. His account of the early history of Islam, though interlaced with some disquieting doubts, at least, grants space and recognition to the Muslim version.

John Adair (1934 –)

The Leadership of Muhammad (2010) by John Adair, the world’s first Professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Surrey, UK and later, Chair of Leadership Studies, United Nations System Staff College, Turin, adds a new dimension to Sirah studies, for he highlights and celebrates the Prophet’s exceptional leadership traits. 

For Adair, a “generic quality of universal leaders is humility,” which the Prophet had in abundance. Moreover, the Prophet’s vocation as a youth, according to Adair’s analysis, prepared him better to take up later his role of being the leader of his own community. As a shepherd he learnt well “the three core and overlapping functions: to achieve the tasks, to hold a group together as a unity, and to meet individual needs.”  At a later date he accomplished all these tasks admirably, winning over people’s heart and minds. Then as a caravan leader he gained and perfected his leadership skills. 

On the basis of his expertise in leadership studies, Adair makes this thought-provoking observation: “Leadership is a journey concept.”  As a caravan leader, one both literally and metaphorically leads the journey, holds the members together, exercises consistently his judgement or practical wisdom, and ensures their unity and well-being in an exceptionally responsible way. Adair draws attention to the instances where the Prophet served his Companions, though he was their leader. 

Another important factor that helped the Prophet gain unprecedented success, in the opinion of Adair, was his impeccable integrity and truthfulness summed up in the “attractive sobriquet of al-Amin (the trustworthy one).” 

Moreover, the Prophet “insisted upon integrity in those who were chosen to be leaders in the Umma, the growing Muslim community.” As a leader in the real sense of the term, he had “no place for any form of bribery or corruption.” His sharing in hardship of his Companions both reflected and reinforced his status as leader. Adair aptly cites this incident to substantiate the above point: “When they [early Muslims] set to work to build what was in effect the world’s first mosque, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) laboured with the Arab builders and craftsmen as he was one of them.”  

Likewise, while digging up the defensive ditch in the wake of the battle of the Confederates, “he took up a spade or pickaxe and dug with the rest of them. . . . Muhammad seems to have been more than ready to share in any work in progress, even domestic chores.”  

Another laudable trait of him as a leader was his “willingness to listen and to take advice from others. . . . to make wise strategic decision.”  On the basis of many episodes in the Prophet’s life, Adair concludes that he exemplified the universal principle of good leadership. While noting the Prophet’s genuine humility, Adair perceptively remarks, “The worst corruption of all for a leader is to believe and encourage others to believe – that one is more than a person, superhuman, semi-divine, even in the extreme cases God.”  

In contrast, the Prophet always and publicly affirmed his humanness and humility. He was ever ready to take advice from his Companions and was quite flexible as a leader. In his personal interaction with people, he gave them full attention and listened attentively to their suggestions and observations. Never did he lose his temper or hit anyone in anger. All this endeared him to his Companions and they were ever ready to lay down their lives at his slightest gesture.

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES

In breaking the Medieval stereotypes about the Prophet and in facilitating a better understanding of both his personality and mission some first-rate studies on history and cultural studies have contributed substantially. This does not, however, mean that the chorus of denunciation against Islam and the Prophet has stopped altogether in the West. Several writings of the day, including those by the Revisionist school and by Ibn Warraq and the recent Encyclopedia of the Quran  (Brill) and Tafsir Studies (Routledge) obdurately paint a black picture of things Islamic. Let us, however, turn attention to the works which, regretting past misrepresentation set out to state the truth. These post-1960 publications stand out for their objectivity and fairness in laying bare and refuting false, tendentious and baseless charges fabricated against the Prophet in the Medieval West.

Norman Daniel (1919-1992)

Norman Daniel, a leading historian, specialising in the Middle Ages and Christian-Muslim relations, wrote some highly valuable books on the cross-cultural encounter. His works, The Arabs and the Medieval Europe, Heroes and Saracens and Islam and the West: Making of an Image document the prejudices against Islam, the Qur’ān and the Prophet. His Islam and the West (1961), in particular, is a mine of authentic information about the history of Christian anti-Islamic polemic, the attacks upon the Prophet, especially the misperceptions about his being a pseudo-prophet, the motives of misrepresentation, particularly the imputation of idolatry to the Prophet, and the survival of Medieval biased concepts up to our times. In his “Foreword” Daniel identifies his objectives which he has achieved with verve:

. . . to see what is implied by this unpleasantness and ignorance in men’s attitudes towards those they supposed to be their enemies. Both these aims involve asking Europeans to recognize how many erroneous ideas their civilization has in the past accepted; My final chapter is concerned . . . to bring out particular aspects of post-medieval development which may help Europeans and Muslims alike to identify prejudices which, still, after so many centuries, affect European attitudes; and which do so, despite the great contemporary improvement in understanding.  

Remarkably judicious are his concluding remarks about the Medieval image of the Prophet in the West, which has unfortunately survived to a large extent even today:

The background of Muhammad’s life, the Arabia into which he was born, his own early life, his call to prophecy, the circumstances of his death, were all used to illustrate his human fallibility; pejorative manner in which this was presented was unacceptable to Muslims and often a gross perversion of facts. . . . Even to have lived in paganism till the age of forty, an offence that would condemn Constantine, and make St. Augustine’s status ambiguous, was put forward as disgraceful [in the case of the Prophet]. Muhammad’s rules governing sexual relations were not the Christian rules; his rules for war were just like those of the Christians; in both cases he was seen as wrong. We must say bluntly that, in order to preserve a scandalous picture of him unblurred it was often necessary to prefer a false account to a true one; certainly it was normal to accept as many false but desirable elements as were believable. If those who should have known better were perversely malignant, the uninformed were more credulous than vicious. 

Here it is only possible to say that later thinkers of all schools of thought owed a great debt to the men who first formed what we can call a European view. Themes recur, partly because of the nature of the subject; but both in the choice and in the treatment of themes it seems clear that writers have for centuries laboured in the shadow of their predecessors. What has been said about Islam before has so dominated the approach as to preclude thinking that might start again from the beginning.  

More fair-minded and courageous is his following assertion:

It is essential for Christians to see Muhammad as a holy figure; to see him, that is, as Muslims see him. In that case they will share by empathy the prayers and devotion of others. This is a case of suspension of disbelief. If they do not do so, they must cut themselves off from comprehension of Islam, but cutting themselves off from Muslims.  

James Kritzeck (1930  –)

The noble mission undertaken by Norman Daniel in his Islam and the West, of exposing the misrepresentation of Islam and the Prophet in the Medieval West was extended further by James Kritzeck’s Peter the Venerable and Islam (1964). For it evaluates the Toledan Collection sponsored by Peter the Venerable, the abbot of Cluny in 1142, which was published in 1543. Kritzeck’s analysis of Peter’s polemical Summa is marked by impeccable integrity and honesty:

There are four undoubted errors of fact in the Summa: the establishment of the time of Muhammad’s aspiration of kingship and use of the sword before his claim to prophethood; the relative dating of the conquests of Asia and Africa; the statement that Muhammad had once become a Nestorian; and finally, his alleged approval of gluttony. Six other subjects treated by Peter in the text could be singled out as weakly presented....

. . . Thus the idea that Islam as a religion was “founded” to realize Muhammad’s political ambitions must now be discarded. The same holds true for the interpretation of the spread of Islam by the sword. With a tendency not to believe all of the meager store of facts at hand, Peter sometimes drew hasty and faulty conclusions. 

Albert Hourani (1915-1993)

Albert Hourani, a Lebanese Catholic scholar, taught for decades in both American and British universities. His writings mostly on Arab history, thought, and politics contributed to representing Arabs better in the West. More importantly, his cross-cultural studies, Islam in European Thought (1991) and Europe and the Middle East call for a better understanding and coexistence between Islam and the West. His works are largely free from negative stereotypes about Islam and Arabs.

William Montgomery Watt (1909-2006)

William Montgomery Watt: The two volumes Muhammad at Mecca (1953) and Muhammad at Medina (1956) and other writings by William Montgomery Watt, a priest of the Scottish Episcopal Church and Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK, went a long way in presenting a balanced image of the Prophet in the West. In the spirit of peaceful coexistence he points to the regrettable vilification of the Prophet and calls for a better understanding of the Prophet’s message in the West:

To spend some time looking at the various ways in which through the centuries our Western world has thought of Muhammad and conceived his significance is not simply to take a leisurely stroll through some of the by ways of history. The topic raised profound questions about the nature of objectivity in the fields of history and religion, and matters of contemporary relevance are also involved. There are in the world about a thousand million Christians and half that number of Muslims, and some of the world’s urgent political problems might be easier to solve if these two great religious communities had a deeper respect for each other’s religion. Yet for Westerners none of the world’s religious leaders is so difficult to appreciate as Muhammad since the West has a deep seated prejudice against him.  

Of an identical thrust is the French scholar and biographer of the Prophet, Maxime Rodinson’s assertion, urging for a careful, unbiased study of the Prophet’s mission. Rodinson’s Mahomet, originally published in French in 1969 came out in English in 1971. He argues:

Muhammad was a religious genius, a great political thinker—and a man like you or me. He was not these things on three separate levels; they are three aspects of a total personality, and can only be seen in distinction by a careful analysis. 

. . . Those who see him primarily as a historical force should think carefully about the importance of the ideology which made him that kind of force, and indeed of the ideology itself. 

The Cambridge History of Islam (1978), a monumental tome of Western scholarship, identifies the age-old misconceptions about the Prophet which should be allayed:

Some Occidental readers are still not completely free from the prejudices inherited from their medieval ancestors. In the bitterness of the Crusades and other wars against the Saracens, they came to regard the Muslims, and in particular Muhammad, as the incarnation of all that was evil, and the continuing effect of the propaganda of that period has not yet been completely removed from Occidental thinking about Islam.  

Let us now revert to Watt’s contribution to promoting a better cross-cultural understanding. In his Muhammad at Medina (1956), Watt pays a glowing tribute to the Prophet’s greatness while focusing on these “three great gifts of his”:

First there is what may be called his gift as a seer. Through him—or, on the orthodox Muslim view, through the revelations made to him—the Arab world was given an ideological framework within which the resolution of its social tensions became possible. The provision of such a framework involved both insight into the fundamental causes of the social malaise of the time, and the genius to express this insight in a form which would stir the hearer to the depths of his being. The European reader may be “put off” by the Quran, but it was admirably suited to the needs and conditions of the day.

Secondly, there is Muhammad’s wisdom as a statesman. The conceptual structure found in the Quran  was merely a framework. The framework had to support a building of concrete policies and concrete institutions. In the course of this book much has been said about Muhammad’s far-sighted political strategy and his social reforms. His wisdom in these matters is shown by the rapid expansion of his small state to a world-empire and by the adaptation of his social institutions to many different environments and their continuance for thirteen centuries.

Thirdly, there is his skill and tact as an administrator and his wisdom in the choice of menas to whom to delegate administrative details. Sound institutions and a sound policy will not go far if the execution of affairs is faulty and fumbling. When Muhammad died, the state he had founded was a “going concern,” able to withstand the shock of his removal and, once it had recovered from this shock, to expand at prodigious speed.

The more one reflects on the history of Muhammad and of early Islam, the more one is amazed at the vastness of his achievement. Circumstances presented him with an opportunity such as few men have had, but the man was fully matched with the hour. Had it not been for his gifts as seer, statesman, and administrator and, behind these, his trust in God and firm belief that God had sent him, a notable chapter in the history of mankind would have remained unwritten. It is my hope that this study of his life may contribute to a fresh appraisal and appreciation of one of the greatest of the “sons of Adam.”  

Watt’s following observation about the Prophet’s genuineness marks the pleasant sea change in the perception about the Prophet in the West. Such assertions are bound to contribute much to better interfaith and cross-cultural dialogue and peaceful coexistence all over the world:

I have always taken the view that Muhammad genuinely believed that the messages he received (and which constitute the Quran) came to him from God. I hesitated for a time to speak of Muhammad as a prophet, because this would have been misunderstood by Muslims who took the traditional Islamic view of prophethood, according to which the Quran, as the speech of God Himself, is infallible. Now, however, I think it important to state publicly that I believe Muhammad to have been a prophet on a similar level to the Old Testament prophets. When earlier Christian scholars looked at the Quran they found many Old Testament stories, and because of this and their belief that Islam was a false religion, they took the view that the Quran was a mere hotchpotch of biblical material pieced together by Muhammad himself. 

A more mature scholarship shows that this view is ridiculous. If we look carefully at the Quran, what strikes us is not how much knowledge it shows of the Bible, but how little. . . .

When it is realized how little was known by Muhammad and the Meccan Arabs of the Jewish and Christian religions, the remarkable achievement of the Quran  can be recognized. It may be said that it presents in its own way all the main truths of the religion of Abraham, which is followed also by Jews and Christians. I maintain that the only reasonable explanation of this fact is that Muhammad was as truly inspired by God as were the Old Testament prophets. Moreover, while the latter were for the most part critics of an existing religion as it was being practised, Muhammad had the mission of bringing belief in God to people with virtually no religion. 

John L. Esposito (1940–)

One of the outstanding Western scholars of our time who has depicted an objective, refreshingly positive image of Islam, the Prophet and Muslims, particularly in the post 9/11 Islamophobic American academia is John L. Esposito. Take as illustrative his noble attempt to remove the misconceptions and misperceptions about the Prophet in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (1995):

Muhammad is often criticized by modern writers; the two accusations most often made against him involve his Medinan militarism and his alleged lasciviousness.

Regarding the first, it must be remembered that Muhammad was a man of his time. The razzia or raiding party was a characteristic feature of life in Arabia in Muhammad’s time, so that his attempt to stop the Meccan caravan that resulted in the battle of Badr was accepted by all as customary and within his rights. Most other major battles in which he fought were initiated by the enemy, and the majority of the other expeditions he led did not make contact with any enemy tribe but were largely demonstrations of his growing power to the neighboring Bedouin tribes. It is best to see Muhammad as using the customs of his day to mold a new social community. The idea of founding a new religion or being solely a religious leader would have been foreign to him. He was administrator, legislator, judge, and commander in chief as well as teacher, preacher, and prayer leader.

As for the second criticism, it must be remembered that Muhammad had only one wife, Khadijah, until her death when he was about fifty years old. Shortly thereafter he married Sawdah, the widow of a Muslim who died in Abyssinia. It was only natural that he remarry after Khadijah’s death, since he had a large household, with children, servants, and many duties that were usually assumed by the wife. These two were his only wives in Mecca before the Hijrah. In Medina most of his marriages fall into two categories; those with political significance, as when they established bonds between the Prophet and important tribes and clans; and those that resulted from his responsibilities as head of the Muslim community, as when he married widows of Muslim men who died in battle.

Frederick Quinn (1935–), an Episcopal priest and Adjunct Professor of History, Utah University, USA, stands out as yet another scholar of history, cultural studies and Islam, whose brilliant book, The Sum of all Heresies: The Image of Islam in Western Thought (2008) has ensured a better perception of Islam and the Prophet ﷺ in the West. He attributes the current Islamophobia to “a general lack of knowledge about Islamic history, beliefs, and politics, and a sharply negative image of Islam often held by policy makers, religious leaders, and the general public.” 

As John O. Voll points out: “Quinn provides Westerners with an important portrayal of their own prejudices about Islam, warning that these entrenched images have not been replaced but rather persist in shifting forms to this day.” 

His superb description of the negative portrayals in the West of Islam, the Prophet and Muslims is based on his judicious scrutiny of a plethora of religious writings, histories, travelogues, literature, visual arts and films, from the Middle Ages to the present. Throughout his concern is to highlight and promote the common ground between Christians/ Westerners and Muslims, and to advocate a dialogue “among members of different faiths, by showing the historical roots of such misperceptions and origins of such religious and cultural mistrust and hatred.” 

He minces no words in condemning such Islam-bashers of our time as the Baptist preacher, Jerry Falwel, the American evangelical, Don Richardson the “hawkish” Samuel Huntington, and the US-based historian of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis. By the same token, he praises the US Republican legislator Keith Ellison, the first Muslim member of the US Congress’s use of the Qur’ān for his swearing-in on January 4, 2007, and the British Prince Charles’s speeches, including the one at al-Azhar, Cairo, Egypt on March 21, 2006, which aim at bridging the gaps between Muslims and the West.

John Tolan (1959 –)

Another scholar of this valuable category is John V. Tolan, a historian of religious and cultural relations between the West and Islam. He is presently Professor of History at the University of Nantes, France. His significant works which have pointed out the bias against Islam and the Prophet in the Western writings are Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (2002), Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (2008) and Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter (2009).

Matthew Dimmock (1975 –)

Matthew Dimmock, Professor of Early Modern Studies, University of Sussex, UK, has accomplished the commendable task of tracing out the distorted image of the Prophet and Turks in his recent first-rate studies, Mythologies of the Prophet Muhammad in Early Modern English Culture (2013) and New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (2005) respectively. The former is a mine of authentic information, tracking down all that there is to know about the “grotesque version” of the Prophet, being the “product of vilification, caricature and misinformation placed at the centre of Christian conceptions of Islam” in England between 1500 and 1700. 

Aptly enough, he speaks of his work as “a study of the misrepresentation of a biography, or perhaps, the biography of a misrepresentation.” 

Behind this “Christian construction of the Prophet” were the “Christian travelers to Muslim lands and zealous propagandizing clergy.” His study is an amazing spectacle of substantial and insightful scholarship, recounting how the image of the Prophet was fabricated in early literature, during the Reformation period, on stage through plays of the Elizabethan period and in the seventeenth-century literature, religious texts and popular culture. His following remarks on the Prophet’s life and mission are a pointer to both his fairness and erudition:

Muir’s Mahomet is a cynical manipulator, a fallen man consumed by lust and power, situated within a Christian universe as a shadow of Christ.... 

... Imputing Satanic motivations to Mahomet is now a step too far. Muir’s approach is also unusual when seen against the backdrop of Victorian “naturalistic” interpretations of Islam. Having read Muir’s text, the Austrian orientalist Aloys Sprenger remarked that just as “the geologists manage to explain the revolutions of our planet by natural powers to us”, so too ‘the origin of Islam is capable of explanation in a quite natural way, and we do not need to ascribe to the Devil an influence upon it. 

Although Dimmock’s analysis is focused on the Elizabethan period, he takes note of “the infamous and destructive Danish cartoon controversy” and the Florida pastor Terry Jones’s burning of a copy the Qur’ān. 

More significantly, he acclaims the Prophet’s prominence on the world stage, as he brilliantly restores the Prophet’s reputation, which is “scarred by vilification, caricature and misinformation.” His elucidation of the “Christian tradition of confutation” is destined to generating and promoting a better understanding the Prophet’s life which, in his words, “Christendom ... distorted ... to create a grotesque.”