Voltaire invented scurrilous legends about Muhammad because existing ones fell short

Evidence

Voltaire’s attitude in 1742 was different from that of the mediaeval Christian only in two respects. In his tragedy (Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le prophéte) he frankly preferred to invent his own legends, rather than use those already circulating, which were apparently not scurrilous enough for his purpose; and his arguments against Islam are not only, like the mediaeval ones, such as might be used against all revealed religion: they are intended so to be used. The attack on Muhammad nevertheless made an excellent mask, and, although it was suspected of antiroyalism, the judicious Benedict XIV read it con sommo piacere. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1611

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• CANDY: The detail that Pope Benedict XIV read Voltaire’s anti-Islamic tragedy con sommo piacere (with great pleasure) is a delightful, tweetable contradiction.
• XREF: Echoes the broader scholarship on using ‘the other’ as a mask for domestic critique, as in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters.

Related

• Voltaire’s attack on Muhammad served to attack revealed religion and royalty (similarity 0.93)
• Voltaire’s anti-Islam attacks served his campaigns against religion itself (similarity 0.89)
• Voltaire attacked Muhammad as a mask for criticizing Christianity itself (similarity 0.84)
• Voltaire’s Islam critique oscillated between polemic and sober analysis (similarity 0.84)
• Boulainvilliers kept mediaeval history but changed his moral verdict on Muhammad (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian readers preferred easily ridiculed Islamic legends over the faithful Qur’an translation. (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval anti-Islamic polemic could work from accurate hadith rather than fabricated detail (similarity 0.81)
• Enlightenment thought held contradictory views of Muhammad (similarity 0.80)
• Voltaire attacked Christian stereotypes of Islam as projections of Christian idolatry (similarity 0.79)
• Even moderate medieval Christian writers distorted Muhammad by cherry-picking facts (similarity 0.79)
• Only well-read medieval Christians knew genuine Islamic legends (similarity 0.79)
• Enlightenment thinkers produced contradictory, instrumentally motivated views of Islam (similarity 0.79)
• Later medieval polemicists reproduced hostile biographies of Muhammad as heresy (similarity 0.79)
• European critics praised Muhammad as a weapon against Christianity (similarity 0.79)
• Voltaire held Muhammad exploited Arab credulity to set himself up as prophet (similarity 0.78)