This book is a survey of Western biographies of the Prophet Muhammad in the last two centuries, with special attention to the prominent Orientalists Sir William Muir, David Samuel Margoliouth and W. Montgomery Watt. The author seeks to show that, despite the epistemological transformations brought about by the Enlightenment, especially in the areas of secularism and objective rationality, most if not all Orientalists who wrote on Muhammad remained entrapped to varying degrees in pre-Enlightenment thought, leading them to exhibit non-secular and unobjective prejudices toward the Prophet of Islam.
Jabal Muhammad Buaben begins by giving a brief survey of Medieval European representations of the Prophet, especially Medieval Christian European war propaganda against Islam. He then proceeds to examine Muir’s writings on Muhammad (written in the late 1850s) and the themes Muir emphasizes. Such themes include Mecca before Islam, with attention to the birth and childhood of Muhammad; Muhammad as Prophet in Mecca; Muhammad in Madina; as well as Muhammad and Arabian Jewish tribes. Although Muir attempts to follow Enlightenment methodologies of scholarship, Buaben shows him to fall short of them due to Muir’s emphasis on “the falsity of Muhammad’s prophethood, faking of revelations to justify evil acts, violence, sexuality, immorality and the like” (p. 42), views commensurate with Medieval Christian war propaganda. Important events related to the Prophet, such as the Madman Charter (security treaty concluded with all the Madman groups), treatment of the poor, the peaceful entry into Mecca, etc., are given scant attention by Muir because they do not lend themselves to a negative portrayal of Muhammad.
David Samuel Margoliouth, writing more than half a century after Muir, continues, albeit with variations, a similar tradition. Still, Margoliouth’s position was “fundamentally different from that of Muir” (p. 108), especially so since the latter was an Imperial officer while the former was an Anglican preacher born to Jewish converts who became Anglican missionaries. Margoliouth’s scholarship and methodology were of a higher caliber than Muir’s in that he consulted more sources (especially Muslim sources) for his research. This, however, did not liberate Margoliouth from his subjectivist biases. He continued to moralize about Muhammad and his followers, who are described as “bloodletting people” (p. 109). He also gives credence to, among others, the medieval theory of Muhammad’s alleged epilepsy or some other pathology to explain Muhammad’s reception of revelations.
Following Margoliouth’s book on Muhammad in 1905,1 a large number of biographies of the Muslim Prophet began to be published in Europe. After providing a review of the literature, Buaben emphasizes the important contributions of W. Montgomery Watt as the more outstanding of the 20th century Orientalists writing on Muhammad. Also, despite “the general condemnation of the works of Western non-Muslim scholars by Muslims,...Watt has received some fairly appreciative comments...and is perhaps the most respected [by them]” (p. 155).
Watt, who was an Anglican minister, was writing in the mid-20th century. In his time, Buaben asserts, “the Christian biographical approach to the Prophet shifted significantly from confrontation to dialogue” (p. 317). Watt proved to be a much more competent researcher, who avoided the methodological pitfalls of his predecessors. He is so respected that Muslim scholars include him in many conferences on Islam, where he is the only European participant. Still, despite such vigilance on the part of Watt, wherein he “seems to defend Muhammad against what he considers irresponsible or misplaced attacks by some scholars,” he lapses into propagandistic conclusions as when he outrageously puts Muhammad in the same category as Adolf Hitler (p. 325)!
Buaben’s conclusion is a call for Western scholars of Islam to be more objective and impartial and to cultivate “dispassionate attitudes” in their studies (p. 327). In his survey, he discerns, on the one hand, a trend toward such objectivity which includes the works of Watt and Maxime Rodinson - and, on the other, a return to earlier methodologies by non-Orientalist pamphleteers like Samuel Huntington and Judith Miller. Still he is surprisingly optimistic that “objectivity, fairness and justice, with which modern Western scholarship claims to be characterized, will be applied to the study of Islam” (p. 329). Buaben is uncritical of the alleged “objectivity” of Western scholarship, especially at the level of theory. He seems convinced of its viability were it only to be applied properly. Had he subjected this methodology to as thorough a critique at the level of theory as he did at the level of application, his conclusion might have differed substantially.
Buaben’s Image of the Prophet Muhammad in the West is an excellent survey of Western scholarship on the Muslim Prophet. Although the book sometimes reads like an unending summary of books and reviews with brief analysis in between, the author’s critical tone is discernible throughout as is his thorough analysis in the conclusion of each chapter. For anyone interested in Western scholarly representations of the Prophet Muhammad, this book is a useful contribution.
[Footnote]
1. Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (New York and London: GP Putnam, Knickerbocker Press, 1905).
[Author note]
Joseph Massad is a Columbia University Ph.D. candidate in Political Science. He has published articles in a number of journals, including The Middle East Journal, Journal of Palestine Studies, and Social Text