Enlightenment philosophers wavered between rational and superstitious treatments of Muhammad

Evidence

For Enlightenment philosophers, there is evidence of what Benedict Robinson has called a “crisis of representation,” the struggle between humanism and the imagination evident in the treatment of Muhammad and Islam in general, which wavers between a measured rationalism and polemical superstition. Leibniz was one of several philosophers who faced this crisis in his writings: Was Muhammad an enlightened thinker, a medieval humanist, or a force of destruction and evil? — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 360

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘crisis of representation’ as the Enlightenment’s split stance on Islam.
• QUESTION: This could feed the reader’s thesis that even ‘rational’ Western philosophers could not hold a stable image of Muhammad — worth quoting as evidence of manufactured ambivalence.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 360
• XREF: connects to: Enlightenment thinkers retained older anti-Muslim stereotypes — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 161; Boulainvilliers reframed Muhammad as an Enlightenment deist — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 165; Enlightenment science and Romanticism both renewed medieval Muslim-monster fantasies rather than ending them (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Enlightenment thinkers produced contradictory, instrumentally motivated views of Islam #expands (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 91
• Enlightenment thinkers compared Muhammad to Alexander and Jesus #expands (0.60) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 367
• The successful resistance of Muslims to conversion and flourishing Islamic proselytizing seemed twin roadblocks to the cherished goal of Christianizing humanity. Without any apparent sense of… #exemplifies (0.55)
• Enlightenment reason politics drove attacks on Christianity as irrational #corroborates (0.50) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 158