Format:
1 Online-Ressource (xii, 309 Seiten)
,
Illustrationen
ISBN:
9780691186115
Content:
Heretic and impostor or reformer and statesman? The contradictory Western visions of MuhammadIn 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
Note:
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 20. Jun 2019)
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780691167060
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe Tolan, John Victor, 1959 - Faces of Muhammad Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2019 ISBN 9780691167060
Additional Edition:
ISBN 0691167060
Language:
English
Subjects:
Theology
Keywords:
Westliche Welt
;
Muḥammad 570-632
;
Fremdbild
;
Rezeption
DOI:
10.1515/9780691186115
Author information:
Tolan, John Victor 1959-
