Tinged by the history of European colonialism and orientalism and by terrorism that claims Islam as its justification, the controversy has provoked a flood of polemics and violence. contro-versy over the cartoons of Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands- Posten illustrate the potentially explosive na-ture of Western views of the Muslim prophet, as do the killing of cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. It would have been easy for me to compile a chronicle of that hostility, a catalog of introductionĭisdain, fear, and insult from the earliest Christian polemical texts against Islam to the shrill declarations of politicians like Geert Wilders, parliamentarian of the Partij voor de Vrijheid (Dutch ex-treme right) who, to discredit Islam, attacks its prophet, whom he calls a terrorist, a pedophile, and psychopath. Much of what is written about him is hostile. Not all European writers on Muhammad show him the admiration and respect that we find in Bonaparte and Goethe, of course. In this discussion, Napoleon and Goethe talked about Muhammad, or perhaps better said, about “Mahomet,” the fictitious scoundrel that Voltaire made into the epitome of fanaticism (in order to attack the Catholic Church), the charismatic leader and military genius who served as a role model for Napoleon for Goethe he would become, in subsequent writings, the archetypal prophet, a figure that allowed him to explore the interstices between prophet and poet.įor these three men, as for many other Europeans, “Mahomet” is not merely a distant historical character, prophet of a foreign religion, he is a figure whose story and whose living legacy are a constant source of curiosity, worry, astonishment, and admiration. When Napoleon learned that Goethe had translated Voltaire’s play Mahomet, ou le fanatisme into German, he declared that it was not a good play, that it painted an unworthy portrait of a world conqueror, a great man who had changed the course of history.1 The two men discussed politics and chatted about literature. On october 2, 1808, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Napoleon Bonaparte met in Erfurt. FACES OF MUHAMMAD – Book Sample Introduction the Prophet Muhammad d in Western discourse