Research in the shadow of colonialism: Sigismund Koelle's approach in introducing The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

Subject Areas : The Journal of Islamic History and Civilisation

Razieh Sirousi elghar ¹

1 - Assistant Professor, Department of Islamic Studies, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran

Received: 2024-09-22 Accepted : 2024-11-21 Published : 2024-12-12

Keywords: Sigismund Koelle, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), colonialism, Prophet Jesus ,

Abstract :

After the nineteenth century, missionary and colonial motivations created a new trend in Islamic studies. At this time, a new spectrum of writers focused on studying the face of The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), who, despite being equipped with the weapon of knowledge and full familiarity with Islamic sources, were considered representatives of biased and unscientific views, as many of them were writing at the behest of the government and the church of the time. Writers who wrote within the hegemony of colonialism, despite their mastery of Islamic sources, engaged in searching for narratives that could be nurtured in the direction of their own goals through mental storytelling. Sigismund Koelle, as one of the prominent representatives of such an approach, juxtaposed Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) with Prophet Jesus (PBUH) to portray Islam as a deceitful, violent, and derived religion from Christianity. This research, using a descriptive-analytical method, seeks to answer the question on what basis Koelle called Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) anti-Christ. The results showed that Koelle, in what seemed to be a scientific framework, followed a pattern of calling the Prophet (PBUH) anti-Christ based on mental assumptions influenced by environmental conditions, bellicosity, conservatism, and myth-making.

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