Critical evaluation of Prophet Muhammad in Western scholarship

¶ … Perception and Portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad within the Western Scholarship

Prior to September 11, 2001, few Western observers might have given more than a casual look at the Islamic faith because the religion and its prophet, Muhammad, had little bearing on their personal lives. By sharp contrast, today, there has been an increasing amount of attention paid to Moslems and their religion, and the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad has been the focus of a growing body of research in the Western scholarship. To determine the perception and ways in which the Prophet Muhammad has been portrayed since his death in the 7th century, this paper provides a review of the relevant literature, followed by a summary of the research and salient findings in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Background and Overview.

According to Huband, an analysis of the manner in which the Prophet Muhammad has been portrayed in the Western scholarship is important because, "Western attitudes toward the Islamic world, from precolonial times to the present day, have had an enormous impact upon the direction the religion has taken. Western attitudes toward Muslims -- the people of the Islamic world -- have a tremendous influence on the political direction the Islamic world has taken throughout the twentieth century" (p. xv). Indeed, Western scholarship concerning the Prophet Muhammad in general and the Islamic faith in particular has been highly influential in this regard. As Brown points out, "For better or worse, Muslims today are almost oppressively concerned with politics and the state. This, itself, is a measure of the Western impact on the Muslim world in modern times. One may deplore or applaud this fact. One can hardly ignore it" (p. 67). From the perspective of Muslims, this focus on politics and the state has been in response to a groundswell of Western scholarship that has been directed at the Arab world that continues to characterize it in less-than-admirable ways. As Strawson (1999) emphasizes, "In the debate about the development of civil society and human rights, it becomes clear the West retains its right to review and to comment upon the Middle East in colonial terms. The premise remains that due to the essential characteristics of the Islamic Middle East, despotism is inevitable without the intervention of Western ideas" (31).

Notwithstanding the increased attention given to the Islamic faith in recent years, there remains a fundamental lack of real understanding concerning the religion and its true meaning for its faithful adherents among Western scholars. In this regard, Huband advises, "There exists, beyond the reach of the Western observer, journalist, analyst, and commentator, an Islamic reality that has emerged independent of the Western cultural onslaught. There is a history that barely relates to the political events in the Islamic world as they are presented in the West" (p. xvi). While this lack of understanding and appreciation may be mutual, there appears to be a real sense of misunderstanding or at least misinterpretation about what Islamic means to the Arabic world and, increasingly, the Western world as well. For instance, Huband adds that, "The Islamic world has evolved, although the West generally views it as alternately stagnant, regressive, or fanatical. At points Islam, like the many constituent parts of what is considered 'the West,' is indeed all these things. It is also much more" (Huband, p. xvi).

In an attempt to understand the "much more" aspects of the Islamic faith, some Western scholars have muddied the historical waters through an overemphasis on some aspects of the Islamic faith to the detriment of others that are deemed more relevant and important by its adherents. In this regard, Brown (2000) advises, "It has been persuasively argued that the earlier tradition of Western scholarship on the Muslim world, emphasizing the 'mosaic pattern' of different groups (e.g., bedouin, mountaineers, urbanites vs. rural folk plus the many distinctions of religion, race, and language), can be pushed too far and thereby obscure the demonstrable cohesiveness and coherence characterizing classical Islamic civilization" (2000, p. 67).

In reality, and notwithstanding the prohibitions against infidels (e.g., non-Muslims) from setting foot in Islam's most holy cities, Mecca and Medina), it is not as if the Islamic world has attempted to conceal anything, but rather there are different worldviews involved that make such an appreciation and understanding difficult for both civilizations. As Huband points out, "Although decades of recent history, and self-images formed over the centuries, have forged the heart of what is now the Islamic world, the Western media has skimmed the surface of a long period of interaction" (p. xvi). Indeed, given the growing influence of many of the Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates by virtue of their vast oil resources and petrodollars, this paucity of understanding has assumed new importance and relevance for the West today. In this regard, Huband concludes that, "No other area of the world, when being covered by the Western media, is so in need of constant reference to history as is the Islamic world. These references are missing, perhaps because the knowledge simply is not there" (2001, p. xvi).

The Life of Muhammad from the Western Perspective.

The Prophet Muhammed lived from 570 to 632 CE, and is regarded as being a direct descendant of the patriarch, Abraham, the "Friend of God," through his son Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabic people (Cleary 2001). This author states that, "Muhammad was born to a family of the Quraish, the noblest tribe of Arabia. The Quraish were the hereditary custodians of the Ka'ba, the ancient Cube shrine in Mecca believed to have originally been built by Abraham himself" (Cleary 2001, p. v). During his 62-year lifetime, the ancient world experienced some fundamental changes, many of which were directly attributable the Prophet's actions (Cleary 2001). According to Huband (1998), "In 1700 the first accurate translation of the Koran was published in English, and English writers portrayed the Prophet Mohammed as highly intelligent, well-bred, and undoubtedly inspired by genuine piety" (p. 51).

Not surprisingly, though, a number of differences emerged in the Western scholarship from this time, with variations being identified within the European intellectual community as it attempted to better understand the Moslem faith. For instance, Hourani reports that the Western academic world's study of Islam has depended in large part on the perspective of the writers' attitudes toward Christianity: "There was a tendency to use the career and mission of Muhammad as an oblique way of criticizing Christianity, at least in the form in which the churches had taught it. Muhammad could be shown as an example of the excesses of enthusiasm and ambition, and his followers as examples too of human credulity; alternatively, he could be seen as preaching a religion which was more rational, or nearer to a purely natural faith, than Christianity" (p. 15).

In fact, Smith (1999) emphasizes that, "Muslims believe what they do, and practice as they do, because of the example of Prophet Muhammad, who established his community in Mecca and Medina according to the directives he received from God. Muslims accord the highest respect to Muhammad, seeing in him the prototype of spiritual guidance, wise leadership, and moral example for the best of human living, both communally and in relation to God" (p. 4). A good example of how the Prophet Muhammad is regarded in the United States by American Muslims can be found in the diligence afforded the appellations used for his reference, with these adherents being especially conscientious concerning including the phrase "may the blessing and peace of God be upon him" at any point when the name of the Prophet is spoken or written (Smith 1999). For instance, one American who converted to Islam who sought to communicate to others in the West who are unfamiliar with Islam just how important Prophet Muhammad is to Muslims writes that, "The tense and delicate balance between the glory of Muhammad's prophethood, his closeness to God and his visionary gifts, the Herculean tasks he undertook and accomplished in the world, and the warmth and liveliness of his household is at the heart of the Muslim view of life; if this is understood, Islam is understood" (Wolfe 1998, p. 6).

In his timely book, Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins, Berg advises, "Whereas the modernist typically locates a normative Islam in its beginnings, much recent Western scholarship has come to speak of a formative Islam, when enduring patterns of thought and institutions were established" (p. 116). In the West, then, references to a "normative" Islamic faith are focused on a prescriptive language of theology or law; by contract, references to a "formative" Islamic dogma are focused on the evolution of the religion from its founding. Much Western scholarship has been devoted to the study of the Holy Bible and its historicity, and this same approach has been employed in an effort to either better understand, or in some cases, refute, the origins of the Islamic faith by scholars in the West. According to Berg, "Here we arrive at a piece of common ground occupied by historian of Islam and modernist Muslim alike. Both typically share a text-based positivism -- the truth of what once happened can be comprehended because it is preserved in books; put uncharitably, it is a 'fetish for facts' that is satisfied only by adducing textual evidence" (p. 116).

Consequently, much of the Western scholarship devoted to the study of the Prophet Muhammad over the years has also been sought to understand the Islamic faith by examining the historical accuracy of the fundamental traditions that have evolved over the centuries concerning the Prophet Muhammad and the first generations of Muslims. In this regard, Berg (2000) writes that, "The first specialists in the field showed much trust in the Muslim traditions but since the second half of the nineteenth century there has been increasing skepticism about the reliability of Muslim traditions. The dispute that developed in Western scholarship on this issue was dominated by the skeptics" (p. 211).

Although there have been attempts over the years in the West to refute such outright skepticism, it would seem that some Western scholars are either intimidated by the extant traditions and literature concerning the Prophet Muhammad because they violate or are contrary their own personal Judeo-Christian religious beliefs or simply because they have not been convinced of the historical accuracy of the Islamic dogma, particularly in the post-September 11, 2001 climate that pervades the West. For example, Brown (2000) advises, "Christianity, or other world religions to commentators who have found a new threat to 'our way of life' after the end of the cold war. Indeed, it might be maintained that the present-day West has returned to its centuries-old image of Islam as the traditional enemy vaunting a religion of the sword. Jihad (holy war) ranks alongside kismet as one of the few Arabo-Islamic terms long recognized in the West" (p. 3).

As is the case with such basic belief systems around the world, though, for the faithful, no evidence is necessary and for the skeptics, there will never be enough evidence to sway them otherwise. In this regard, Berg emphasizes that, "There is no middle ground between the two positions" (p. 212). In addition, Berg maintains that "Scholars from each position put forward circular arguments and can therefore only convince other scholars who share their own assumptions" (p. 212). This ethnocentristic view of others is not restricted to the West, though, and as Murata and Chittick (1994) point out, "In the same way, it is common for traditional Muslims to think that their own religious activities are the most normal and natural activities in the universe, since they are simply doing what everything in creation does constantly, given that 'to Him has submitted whoso is in the heavens and the earth'" (pp. 6-7). Therefore, while Western scholarship concerning the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad can perhaps be understood in this context, there are some important trends in this perception that have followed hard on the heels of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that have been highly influential more recently that have attempted to refute the divine aspects of the Prophet Muhammad and the origins of Islam's most holy text. For example, Warraq emphasizes that, "The western critical attitude, with which some western educated Muslims have become imbued, hides an a priori presumption no Muslim can accept, namely the negation of the heavenly origin of the Koranic revelation and the actual prophetic power and function of the Prophet" (p. 115). A corollary of this type of thinking would be for Islamic adherents to attempt to refute the divine source of the Holy Bible and the inspiration of its writers, primarily Moses, in ways that would undoubtedly be enormously offensive to the Judeo-Christian faith.