Leibniz’s shifting portrayals of Muhammad reveal an ideological transition in anti-Muslim discourse

Evidence

In the history of Western responses to Islam, what is fascinating about Leibniz is that he exemplifies a certain ideological overlap, a peculiar transition between a theological repudiation of Islam (Muslims as enemies of Christ) and an early Enlightenment rejection of the “Mohammedan” (Muslims as enemies of reason and civilization). Sometimes Leibniz’s Mohammedan is the Erbfeind or hereditary enemy/ritual foe, other times he is elevated to the status of mere barbarian, whilst on rare occasions he is even grudgingly acknowledged to be the professor of a natural (though still errant) philosophy. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 361

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: ‘Erbfeind’ defined as hereditary enemy/ritual foe — a useful analytical term for the reader’s taxonomy of the Muslim monster figure.
• XREF: The enemies-of-Christ to enemies-of-reason shift is exactly the manufactured, self-serving projection pattern the reader is tracing.

Related

• Leibniz held shifting, contradictory images of Muslims within one mind (similarity 0.95)
• Leibniz’s Islam oscillated between theological foe, barbarian, and natural philosopher (similarity 0.85)
• Enlightenment philosophers wavered between rational and superstitious treatments of Muhammad (similarity 0.83)
• Eighteenth-century rationalists recycled medieval Muslim stereotypes (similarity 0.81)
• The medieval monster narrative of Islam was cemented by colonialism and Orientalism (similarity 0.81)
• Long-running Christian polemics congealed into one fixed hostile portrait of Muhammad (similarity 0.80)
• Both hostile and accurate accounts converged on Muhammad’s revelation as needing explanation (similarity 0.80)
• Gibbon’s Enlightenment account of Muhammad recycled medieval themes unchanged (similarity 0.80)
• Enlightenment thought held contradictory views of Muhammad (similarity 0.80)
• Western hostility to Islam shifted from theological to political rationales across the centuries (similarity 0.79)
• Islamophobia descends directly from Orientalism’s civilizational divide between Islam and the West (similarity 0.79)
• A shared narrative lineage counters Enlightenment reason used against Muslims (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval anti-Islamic polemic resembles modern rationalist critiques of religion (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval Christian polemics could only read Islam as affirming or negating Christianity (similarity 0.79)
• Interrogating Western-ness is required to expunge Islamophobia (similarity 0.79)