Rosenzweig cast Islam as monistic paganism stuck in pagan categories

Evidence

Rosenzweig had written earlier that “while Mohammed took over the concepts of revelation externally, he necessarily remained attached to paganism,” Heidentum, “in the basic concept of creation” (Star, n7/Gn9). And consider the following, as well: “For all that it proceeds vigorously and arrogantly behind the idea of the unity of God, Islam thus slips into a monistic paganism,” monistisches Heidentum, “if one may use the expression. God himself competes with God himself at every moment, as if it were the colorful, warring heaven of the gods of polytheism” (123/G137). Finally, Islam “remains stuck to the untransformed figures which the pagan world pointed out to it and supposes that it can set them in motion, just as they are, with the concept of revelation” (173/G193). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 1073

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s larger claim about how Rosenzweig and Levinas constructed ‘the Arab’ as negative counterexample; relates to Said’s Orientalism on how European philosophers caricatured Islam.
• SHARE: For anyone working on Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption or on philosophical constructions of Islam — the ‘warring heaven of polytheism’ charge is a sharp, specific formulation.