Prophet Muhammad and the Middle Ages IV
  Renan argued that Hebrew and Arabic were degraded languages, deviations from the Aryan tradition, which had become irredeemably flawed. These Semitic tongues could be studied only as an example of arrested development and lacked the progressive character of 'our' linguistic systems. The nineteenth century was characterised by the colonial spirit, which was giving Europe...

Prophet Muhammad and the Middle Ages III
  This was a subtle transmutation of the old habit of making 'Islam' and its Prophet the opposite of everything that 'we' hoped (or feared) that we were. The apocalyptic view of Islam promoted by the martyrs of Cordova had continued during the Crusading period, though it was not a major theme. In 1191, when Richard the Lionheart had been travelling to the Holy Lan...

Prophet Muhammad and the Middle Ages II
Pope Clement V (1305-14) declared that the Islamic presence on Christian soil was an insult to God. Christians had already begun to expunge this obscenity. In 1301 Charles of Anjou, King of France, exterminated the last Muslims of Sicily and southern Italy in the reservation of Lucera, which he had described as 'a nest of pestilence ... lurid in pollution ... the stubborn plague and filthy in...

Prophet Muhammad and the Middle Ages
By the end of the eleventh century, Europe was beginning to rise again under the Pope and was pushing back the frontiers of Islam. In 1061 the Normans had started to attack the Muslims in southern Italy and Sicily, conquering the area in 1091; the Christians of northern Spain had begun the Wars of Reconquest against the Muslims of al-Andalus and conquered Toledo in 1085; in 1095 Po...

Prophet Muhammad as an Enemy
Extracted from the book "Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet"   It has been difficult for Western people to understand the violent Muslim reaction to Salman Rushdie's fictional portrait of Muhammad in The Satanic Verses. It seemed incredible that a novel could inspire such murderous hatred, a reaction which was regarded as proof of the incurable intolerance of Islam. It w...