❞ كتاب English Speaking Orientalists ❝ ⏤ A L Tibawi

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.