Hostility to Islam could motivate sound, critical scholarship rather than crude polemic
Evidence
Although Pococke’s interest in Islam was entirely hostile, his was a kind of hostility that was conducive to sound scholarship, as he was particularly concerned to discredit Western folklore and crude polemical lies about the Prophet and Muslim doctrine in order that Islam’s real errors could be exposed. It was, Pococke thought, better to study the Qur’an and its commentaries critically than to waste time fabricating incredible nonsense about great magnets holding Muhammad’s tombup in the air and similar medieval legends. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 164
Categorization
- DEFINE: Interesting case of how scholarly animus and accuracy could coexist; foreshadows the book’s broader thesis about orientalism’s mixed motives.
- QUESTION: How common was this ‘hostility conducive to scholarship’ stance among early modern orientalists, and did later ones abandon it?
- XREF: Connects to Said’s critique of orientalism that Irwin is responding to throughout this book; also to the general theme in the standing directive about how enemies of a culture can still be its best documenters.