Geiger was the first to treat Muhammad and Islam with scholarly respect

Evidence

Methodologically, Geiger’s approach was truly comparative, a genuine attempt to historicize religious origins. Moreover, he sought to accord the previously ignored or belittled textual sources of rabbinic Judaism their due in the development of Christianity and Islam. … Geiger declared such opinions to be the product of “outright bias and misunderstanding of the human heart” [einseitigkeit und gänzlicher Verkennung des menschlichen Herzens]. By contrast, Geiger saw Muhammad as a “genuine enthusiast [wirklicher Schwärmer] who was himself convinced of his divine mission, and to whom the union of all religions appeared necessary for the welfare of mankind.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 383

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for an essay: the nineteenth-century Jewish scholar who defended Muhammad’s sincerity against the Voltaire/Herder dismissal — a case study in what it takes to break an orientalist consensus.
• XREF: Echoes the clash/anecdote in A Very Minor Prophet about how minority scholars can extend sympathy to another marginalized faith tradition against majority prejudice.