كتاب English Speaking Orientalists

There is scarcely an academic pursuit, in the realm of the humanities, which has more unfortunate antecedents than Islamic and Arabic studies in the West. It is no purpose of this paper to go into details of its sad history. Suffice it, therefore, to give below a mere synoptic view of that history in very rough outline to serve as a general introduction to our limited subject.! From the beginning, the roots of Judaeo-Christian hostility to Islam were seen in the Quran. The "People of the Book" were quick not only to deny but to challenge Muhamad's role as the 1 Oriental studies in the Islamic and Arabic fields are, of course, an international discipline built up by Western Orientalists: English, French, German, Italian and other. This critique may generally apply to most of them; its limitation to English-speaking Orientalists is merely for con- venience of treatment. Even within this limited scope only those scholars with published views bearing directly on the specific themes of the cri- tique are mentioned. bearer of a divine message, and thus began a chain of polemics that continued, parading under different banners, almost to our own times. With the political and military actions of the Islamic state under Muhammad and his successors the hostility was extended from the confines of Arabia to embrace the Byzantine Empire, and later still Western Christendom. The Byzantine polemicists were not ignored by triumphant Islam, nor did it neglect to reciprocate their venomous effusion. But the Byzantines were in due course even surpassed by their medieval European sucessors in cultivating hatred and prejudice through the dissemination of abusive and false accounts. Thus to them Islam was "the work of the devil," the Quran "a tissue of absurdities" and Muhammad "a false prophet," "an impostor" or "antichrist." The Muslims were some sort of brutes with hardly any human qualities.
A L Tibawi - ❰ له مجموعة من الإنجازات والمؤلفات أبرزها ❞ English Speaking Orientalists ❝ ❱
من مقارنة الأديان فرق ومذاهب وأفكار وردود - مكتبة المكتبة التجريبية.