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Western
Perceptions of Islam
From the Middle
Ages through the Modern Period: The European Discovery of Islam as a
World Culture
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Ibrahim
Kalin
George Washington University
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14/04/2003
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The
impression that Islam left on Christianity as a heretical religion
was countered by the admiration of Islamic civilization in the works
of some late medireview and Renaissance thinkers. The Islamic
scientific and philosophical culture, inter alia, played a
significant role in this process, and we can mention here only two
examples both of which show the extent to which Muslim philosophers
were embraced with full enthusiasm.
Our
first example is Dante and his great work The Divine Comedy,
an epitome of medireview Christian cosmology and eschatology in
which everything is accorded a place proper to its rank in the
Christian hierarchy of things. Writing in his purely Christian
environment, Dante places the Prophet of Islam and Ali in hell in
Canto XXVIII where he describes the heretics in the ninth level of
hell. By contrast, he places Saladin, Avicenna, and Averroes in the
limbo, thus granting them the possibility of salvation. This
positive attitude is further revealed by the fact that Siger de
Brabant, the champion of Latin Averroism, is placed in paradise as a
salute to the memories of Avicenna and Averroes. With this scheme,
Dante points to a way of coming to terms with the problem of Islam:
if Islam is to be rejected as a faith, its intellectual heroes are
to be accorded their proper place.
Another
closely associated case in which one can easily discern a different
perception of Islamic culture is the rise of Latin Averroism (the
philosophy of monopsychism) in the West and its dominance of the
intellectual scene of the Scholastics until its official ban in 1277
by Bishop Tempier. Even though Averroism was denounced as a
heretical school, it remained to be a witness to the deep impact of
Islamic thought on the West. Roger Bacon (1214-1294), one of the
luminaries of 13th century Scholasticism, called for the
study of the language of Saracens so that they can be defeated on
intellectual, if not religious, grounds. Albertus Magnus (c.
1208-1280), considered to be the founder of Latin scholasticism, was
not shy in admitting the superiority of Islamic thought on a number
of issues in philosophy. Even Raymond Lull (c. 1235-1316), one of
the most important figures for the study of Islam in the Middle Ages
in spite, or perhaps because, of his zeal to convert Muslims and
refute Averroism once and for all, was in favor of the scholarly
study of Islamic culture in tandem with his conviction that the
Christian faith could be demonstrated to non-believers through
rational means. Finally, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) who
represents the pinnacle of Christian thought in the classical period
could not remain indifferent to the challenge of Islamic thought and
especially that of Averroes since Averroism was no longer a distant
threat but something right at home as represented by such Latin
scholars as Siger de Brabant (c. 1240-1284), Boethius of Dacia and
other Averroists.
It
is pertinent to point out that this new intellectual attitude
towards Islam comes to fruition at a time when Western Europe,
convinced of the promising threat of Muslim power, was hoping for
the conversion of the Mongols (“Tartars” as they were called by
Latins) into Christianity to solve the problem of Islam. With
Mongols embracing Islam under the leadership of Oljaytu, the
grandson of Chengiz Khan, however, these hopes fell on the ground
and the deployment of philosophical rather than purely theological
methods of persuasion presented itself as the only reasonable way of
dealing with the people of Islamic faith. Interestingly enough, the
interest of European scholars in Islamic culture minus its religion
in the 11th and 12th centuries contributed to
what C. H. Haskins has called the “Renaissance of the twelfth
century”.
The
belligerent attitude towards Islam as a heresy remained to be an
invariable even after the demise of the Christian Middle Ages when
Western Europe sat out to forge a new paradigm which would culminate
in the rise of a secular modern worldview. Pascal (1623-1662),
perhaps the most passionate defender of the Christian faith in the
17th century, for instance, was as harsh and
uncompromising as his predecessors in condemning the Prophet of
Islam as an impostor and fraudulent prophet. The ‘fifteenth
movement’ of his Les Pensées, called contre Mahomet,
voices an important sentiment of Pascal and his co-religionists on
Islam and the Prophet Muhammad: Muhammad is in no way comparable to
Jesus; Muhammad speaks with no Divine authority; he brought no
miracles; his coming has not been foretold; and what he did could be
done by anyone whereas what Jesus did is supra-human and
supra-historical.
A
similar attitude penetrates the work of George Sandys (1578-1644)
entitled Relation of a Journey begun An. Dom. 1610. Foure Books.
Containing a description of the Turkish Empire, of Aegypt, of the
Holy Land, of the Remote parts of Italy, and Ilands adioyning,
which is one of the earliest travel accounts of the Islamic world to
reach Europe. A humanist as much as a Christian, Sandys saw Islam
under the same light as Pascal did and had no intentions of placing
his ‘humanist’ outlook over his Christian prejudices against
Islam. Sandys’ book contains important observations on the Islamic
world, highly polemical remarks about the Qur’an and the Prophet,
and finally some very edifying praises of Muslim philosophers. The
dual attitude of rejecting Islam as a religion while admiring its
cultural achievements is clearly exemplified in Sandys’ work. Of
“the Mahometan Religion”, Sandys has the following to say:
So
that we may now conclude, that the Mahometan religion, being
derived from a person in life so wicked, so worldly in his projects,
in his prosecutions of them so disloyal, treacherous & cruel;
being grounded upon fables and false revelations, repugnant to sound
reason, & that wisdom which the Divine hand hath imprinted in
his works; alluring men with those enchantments of fleshly
pleasures, permitted in this life and promised for the life ensuing;
being also supported with tyranny and the sword (for it is death to
speak there against it;) and lastly, where it is planted rooting out
all virtue, all wisdom and science, and in sum all liberty and
civility; and laying the earth so waste, dispeopled and uninhabited,
that neither it came from God (save as a scourge by permission)
neither can bring them to God that follow it.
By
contrast, Sandys follows suit in pitting Muslim philosophers against
Islam as a common strategy during the late Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, the implicit assumption, voiced by a figure no less
prominent than Roger Bacon, being the secret conversion of Avicenna
and Averroes into Christianity or simply their professing the Muslim
faith for fear of persecution. Needless to say, this was the only
possible way of explaining the genius of Muslim philosophers and
scientists against the backdrop of a religion that the medireview
West abhorred, rejected, and ignored. Thus Sandys speaks of Avicenna
(Ibn Sina) in terms of an unmistakable vindication while discarding
Islam as irrational on the basis of the celebrated ‘double-truth
theory’ attributed by St. Thomas Aquinas to Averroes:
For
although as a Mahometan, in his books De Anima and De
Almahad, addressed particularly to a Mahometan Prince, he
extolleth Mahomet highly, as being the seal of divine laws
and the last of the Prophets… But now this Auicen, laying
down for a while his outward person of a Mahometan, and putting on
the habit of a Philosopher; in his Metaphysics seemeth to make a
flat opposition between the truth of their faith receiued from their
Prophet, and the truth of understanding by demonstrative argument…
And it is worthy observation, that in the judgment of Avicien one
thing is true in their faith, & contrary in pure &
demonstrative reason. Whereas (to the honor of Christian Religion be
it spoken) it is confessed by all, & enacted by a Council, that
it is an error to say, one thing is true in Theology, & in
Philosophy the contrary. For the truths of religion are many times
above reason, but never against it.
We
see a similar line of thought articulated in Peter Bayle’s
monumental Dictionnaire historique et critique (Historical
and Critical Dictionary, 1697). Bayle (1647-1706) was one of the
pioneers of the Enlightenment and his skeptical scholarship had a
deep impact on the French Encyclopedists, championed by Diderot, and
the rationalist philosophers of the 18th century. His Dictionnaire,
which has been aptly called the “arsenal of the Enlightenment”,
devotes a generous and unusually lengthy twenty-three page entry on
the Prophet of Islam under the name “Mahomet” as opposed to
seven pages given to Averroes and only half a page to al-Kindi (“Alchindus”).
Even
though Bayle exercises caution in narrating the Christian bashings
of Islam and the Prophet and rejects some of the legendary stories
concerning the Prophet’s tomb being in the air, his dead body
having been eaten by dogs as a sign of Divine curse and punishment,
and his being the anti-Christ as simply foolish and baseless, he
joins his fellow Europeans in describing the Prophet of Islam as a
man of sensuality and the sword, as an impostor, and as a “false
teacher”. In The Dictionary, the Prophet appears under the
same light of medireview Christian polemics, and Bayle states, on
Humphrey Prideaux’s authority, that
Mahomet
was an impostor, and that he made his imposture subservient to his
lust … what is related of his amours, is very strange. He was
jealous to the highest degree, and yet he bore with patience the
gallantries of that wife [‘A’ishah], which was the dearest to
him
and
that
…
I choose to concur with the common opinion, That Mahomet was an
impostor: for, besides what I shall say elsewhere his insinuating
behavior, and dexterous address, in procuring friends, do plainly
show, that he made use of religion only as an expedient to
aggrandize himself.
Even
though Bayle’s entry is hardly an improvement upon the gruesome
picturing of the Prophet in the previous centuries, it contains some
important observations on Islamic culture based mostly on the
available travel accounts of the time. The modesty of Turkish women,
for instance, is narrated in the context of stressing the
‘normalcy’ of Muslim culture, which is contrasted to the common
mores of Europe, indicating in a clear way the extent to which
Europe’s self-image was at work in various depictions of Islam and
Muslims. Bayle also praises Muslim nations for their religious
tolerance and admonishes the zeal of medireview Christians to
persecute their own co-religionists. Bayle, like many of his
predecessors and peers, pits Muslim history against the injunctions
of the religion of Islam and explains the glory of Muslim history as
a result of the deviation of Muslim nations from the principles of
Islam rather than an application of them. Thus he says that :
the
Mahometans, according to the principles of their faith, are obliged
to employ violence, to destroy other religions, and yet they
tolerate them now, and have done so for many ages. The Christians
have no order, but to preach, and instruct; and yet, time out of
mind, they destroy, with fire and sword, those who are not of their
religion. ‘When you meet with Infidels,’ says Mahomet, ‘kill
them, cut off their heads, or take them prisoners, and put them in
chains, till they have paid their ransom, or you find it convenient
to set them at liberty. Be not afraid to persecute them, till they
have laid down their arms, and submitted to you’. Nevertheless, it
is true, that the Saracens quickly left off the ways of violence;
and that the Greek churches, as well the orthodox as the
schismatical, have continued to this day under the yoke of Mahomet.
They have their Patriarchs, their Metropolitans, their Synods, their
Discipline, their Monks … It may be affirmed for a certain truth,
That if the western princess had been lords of Asia, instead of the
Saracens and Turks, there would be now no remnant of the Greek
church, and they would not have tolerated Mahometanism, as these
Infidels have tolerated Christianity.
Interestingly
enough, however, Bayle, towards the end of his entry, refers his
curious readers to the work of Humphrey Prideaux (d. 1724) of
Westminster and Christ Church for further information about Islam.
Entitled in a typical manner as The true nature of imposture
fully display’d in the life of Mahomet: With a discourse annex’d
for the vindication of Christianity from this charge. Offered to the
considerations of the Desists of the present age, Prideaux’s
book, published in 1697, was one of the most virulent and bitter
attacks on Islam during the Enlightenment period and the title it
bears requires little explanation as to its content. That
Prideaux’s work became a best-seller in the 18th
century and was printed many times until the 19th century
is quite telling insofar as the Enlightenment’s philosophers’
approach to Islam is concerned.
The
Enlightenment’s robust rationalism and overt disdain for religion
was certainly a major factor in the reinforcement of the medireview
perceptions of Islam as a religious worldview, and attacking Islam
was an expedient way of deconstructing religion as such. This
attitude is much obvious in Voltaire (1694-1778), one of the most
widely read celebrities of the Enlightenment, who took a less
hostile position towards Islamic culture while maintaining the
erstwhile Christian representations of the Prophet Muhammad. In his
famous tragedy Fanatisme ou Mahomet le prophete, Voltaire
projects Muhammad as a prototype of fanaticism, cruelty, imposture,
and sensuality, which was nothing new to his readers except for the
fact that he had invented his own legends and stories that he seems
to have thought served his purposes better. In a letter to Frederick
of Prussia, he states that:
a
merchant of camels should excite a revolt in his town … that he
should boast of being rapt to Heaven, and of having received there
part of this unintelligible book which affronts common sense at
every page; that he should put his own country to fire and the
sword, to make this book respected; that he should cut the
fathers’ throats and ravish the daughters; that he should give the
vanquished the choice between his religion and death; this certainly
is what no man can excuse.
History
has its own checks and balances. The ambivalent attitude of the 17th
and 18th centuries, torn between the received images of
Islam and the Prophet from Christian polemics and the glory of
Islamic civilization witnessed by many travelers and scholars,
resulted in a different genre of writing concerning Islam, and one
very interesting work to be mentioned here is Stubbe’s ‘defense
of Islam’. A typical Renaissance man, historian, librarian,
theologian and a doctor, Henry Stubbe (1632-1676), published an
unusual book, which was to cause Prideaux to write his attack
mentioned above, with the following title: An account of the rise
and progree of Mahometanism with the life of Mahomet and a
vindication of him and his religion from the calumnies of the
Christians. Stubbe had no reservations in going against the
grain and responding to the traditional charges of violence and
sensuality associated with Muslims. More importantly, he openly
defended Islamic faith as more proximate to man’s reason and
nature as a tacit way of criticizing Christian theology and
sacraments. A typical passage from his book states that
This
is the sum of Mahometan Religion, on the one hand not
clogging Men’s Faith with the necessity of believing a number of
abstruse Notions which they cannot comprehend, and which are often
contrary to the dictates of Reason and common Sense; nor on the
other hand loading them with the performance of many troublesome,
expensive, and superstitious Ceremonies, yet enjoying a due
observance of Religious Worship, as the surest Method to keep Men in
the bounds of their Duty both to God and Man.
In
addition to the Islamic faith, the Prophet Muhammad himself receives
a very fair treatment from Stubbe who appears to be heralding the
rise of a new class of European scholars of Islam in the 18th
and 19th centuries.
In
contradistinction to the radical opposition of Pascal, Bayle,
Brideaux, and Voltaire to Muhammad as a figure of religion, some of
their contemporaries including Stubbe saw something different in the
Prophet of Islam as a man of the world. Divested of his claims to
have received God’s word, the Prophet Muhammad could be
appreciated for what he had accomplished in history. This is an
important shift from the strictly Christian assessments of Muhammad
as a false prophet to putting increasingly more emphasis on his
human qualities.
This
new attitude is also the beginning of the depiction of the Prophet
and many other figures of the past as ‘heroes’ and
‘geniuses’, the ostensibly non-religious terms that the
Enlightenment intellectuals were fond of using against the Christian
conceptions of history. The 17th and 18th
centuries witnessed the rise of many scholars and intellectuals who
looked at the Prophet of Islam under this new light and this, in
turn, led to more liberal and less inimical appraisals of Islam and
Muslims. In England, Edward Pococke (1604-1691), the first chair
holder of Islamic studies at Oxford, published his Specimen
Historiae Arabum, a medley of analyses and translations on the
history of Islam, its basic tenets and practices, and a selective
rendering of one of the works of al-Ghazali. Judged by the standards
of his time, Pococke’s work was a major step in the scholarly
study of Islam. Furthermore, Pococke was one of the first among the
European scholars of Islam to spend time in the Islamic world
collecting material for his studies.
Of
equal importance and prominence was George Sale (1697-1736) who
produced the first English translation of the Qur’an in 1734,
making use of Lodovico Marracci’s Latin translation, published at
Padua in 1698, rather than that of Robert Ketton published in the 12th
century. Sale had no intentions of granting Islam any
authenticity as a religion, and he made this point very clear in his
‘Preliminary Discourse’ written as a preface to his translation.
His overall approach to Islam that gained him the half-belittling
title ‘half-Mussulman’, however, was to set the tone for the 18th
and 19th century studies of Islam in Europe, paving the
way for the establishment of Orientalism as a discipline.
Sale’s
translation was a huge improvement on an earlier rendering of the
Qur’an into English by Alexander Ross from the French translation
of Andre du Ryer published in 1647 almost a century before Sale’s
laborious work reached the English reader. For better or worse,
Sale’s translation was the definitive text of the Qur’an in the
English language well until the end of the 19th century
and it was this very translation that Gibbon and Carlyle read
closely and discarded hopelessly as “a wearisome confused jumble,
crude, incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement;
most crude, incondite; - insupportable stupidity, in short! Nothing
but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Qur’an.”
While
the Qur’an and, by derivation, the religious foundations of Islam
were invariably denied, the human qualities of the Prophet of Islam
were repeatedly invoked by the humanist intellectuals of the 18th
and 19th centuries either to level subtle criticisms
against Christianity or simply to cherish the humanist-secular
philosophy of history. The depiction of the Prophet as a genius and
as a hero with a piercing mind and perspicacity, remarkable power of
persuasion, sincerity, and dedication reached a climax with Carlyle
and his heroic philosophy of history.
In
Carlyle’s work, the Prophet is presented as a remarkable man of
the world: a hero, a genius, a charisma, a personality that the
Christian spirit of the Middle Ages was incapable of seeing and
appreciating. Although Carlyle had placed his analysis of the
Prophet within a clearly secular framework and thus preempted any
charges of heresy, he still felt obligated to apologize for his
positive estimation of the Prophet:
as
there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to
say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at his
secret: let us try to understand what he meant with the world; what
the world meant and means with him, will then be a more answerable
question.
A
much more asserting voice of the time was that of Goethe (1749-1832)
who was neither secretive nor apologetic about his admiration of
things Islamic. His West-oestlicher Diwan was a loud
celebration of Persian-Islamic culture and his interest in the
Islamic world went certainly beyond the mere curiosity of a German
poet when he said, as quoted by Carlyle, that “if this be Islam,
do we not all live in Islam?” In 19th century,
Goethe’s call was taken up by a whole generation of European and
American poets and men of literature, which included such
celebrities as Emerson and Thoreau.
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