Muhammad ﷺ becomes one of the main figures in European oriental studies of the second half of the 19th century. The historical role of the “prophet and hero” (in the understanding of the British historian Thomas Carlyle and the American writer Washington Irving) was denied by other authors, forming an opposite scientific opinion. The need to rethink the life of Muhammad ﷺ as a figure who brought Islam to the world was dictated by the service of European science for the benefit of colonial policy. According to Islamic thinkers, Western oriental studies pursued the goal of spiritual devastation of Muslims so that the material enrichment of the metropolis would be even easier.
For Alois Sprenger, a German orientalist and author of the 1861 work “Life and Teachings of Muhammad”, the personality of the Prophet ﷺ was not exceptional. Islam, in his view, arose from the spirit and needs of the times, and the spiritual leader of all Muslims was only an applied figure in this process. Sprenger believed that Muhammad ﷺ succeeded in inventing a lasting religion only because it satisfied the fundamental instincts of the Arabs. It is striking that a German scholar who served in the British East India Company overlooked the fact that Islam spread far beyond the borders of the Arab nation.
Sprenger tries to expose Muhammad ﷺ as a prophet, to show his inadequacy in this capacity, to reduce him to the position of a politician who only managed to build the Caliphate. In his obvious aggression, the author emphasizes the personal weaknesses of the Prophet ﷺ “revealing hypocrisy, deceit, cunning calculation, crude sensuality, and sometimes even cold cruelty,” notes Professor Mikhail Petrov in his “Essays on General History”, first published in 1886. Petrov contrasts Sprenger’s opinion with the point of view of another author, the French historian Ernest Renan. The latter believed that one cannot judge Muhammad ﷺ as a charlatan based on the moral concepts of the 19th century.
Professor of the Kharkov Imperial University Mikhail Nazarovich Petrov was the first to include the figure of Muhammad ﷺ and the topic of Islam in the field of Russian study of world history. Petrov's “Essays”, based on the works of Sprenger and Renan, were largely of a compilation nature. However, modern Russian researchers Farit Akhmadiev, Igor Vostrikov, and Gennady Sharafutdinov, in a collective work of 2023, note that Professor Petrov also sought to rethink the significance of Muhammad ﷺ for world history in his own way.
Returning to Sprenger's work “Life and Teachings of Muhammad”, it is worth noting that the German author used the text of the Quran, explaining the origin of individual ayats. Given Sprenger's conviction in the mental illness of Muhammad as well as the personal psychological drama of the Prophet admitted by the German scholar, it is quite easy to imagine the content of the interpretations of the sacred text carried out by the Western orientalist. At the same time, the fact cannot be ignored that Sprenger admired the figure of the second righteous caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab.
According to Ernest Renan, Muhammad ﷺ was an enterprising man who became a prophet only thanks to the “fruit of the combined action of time, local conditions, and circumstances,” Professor Petrov points out. The Russian author also cites Renan's thoughts on the “centuries-old immobility of patriarchal ancient Arab life,” the cause of which is “the poverty of the spiritual organization of the Arabs, and indeed of all Semites in general.” The French historian sets out these thoughts in his “Essays on the History of Religion”.
What can be said about this? In his book “The Life of Jesus”, published in 1863, Renan tried to rid the New Testament history of supernatural and miraculous elements, presenting Jesus Christ only as a special preacher. It is also known that the French historian of religion, under the influence of European philosophy, experienced a crisis of faith: Renan was going to become a priest but was disappointed in church Christianity and even regretted that he was not a Protestant.
Unfounded declarations of their own opponents in “madness” against the background of false rumors published in the media, such as about an “incurable disease”, are typical of the modern media environment. Most of its users become witnesses to broad aggressions built on the methods of the European Orientalists of the 19th century and directed against states defending a multipolar world order. This only emphasizes the groundlessness of some conclusions made by scientists of the past and present in an attempt to impose the lack of common sense in their own heads on the rest of the world.
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