In a seminal essay on "Islam Through Western Eyes," Professor Edward Said of Columbia University wrote, "I have not been able to discover any period in European or American history since the Middle Ages in which Islam was generally discussed or thought about outside a framework created by passion, prejudice and political interests. This may not seem like a surprising discovery, but included in the indictment is the entire gamut of scholarly and scientific disciplines which, since the early nineteenth century, have either called themselves Orientalism or tried systematically to deal with the Orient."

Truly, anti-Islamic polemics is older than the Crusades. Since the time of John of Damascus (c.675-c.749), Islam was depicted as a Christian heresy. In his book De Haeresbius, John claimed that the Quran was not a revealed scripture but was created by the Prophet Muhammad and that he was helped in his task by a Christian monk Bahira to use materials from the so-called Old and New Testament. As the Islamic Empire defeated the Byzantine Empire of one after another of its far Eastern Provinces, the negative portrayal of Islam became quite wild. This view is echoed by Hichem Djait, the distinguished historian attached to the universities of McGill and Berkeley: "Over the centuries Christian tradition came to look upon Islam as a disturbing upstart movement that awakened such bitter passion precisely because it laid claim to the same territory as Christianity." Nicetas, of Byzantium, wrote a "Refutatio Mohammadis" (Migne P.G. cv), and Bartholomew, of Edessa, a treatise "Contra Mohammadem" (Migne P.G. civ), which reflected more about the emotional health of these Byzantine Christians than anything of real value. 

Then came the Latin writers (in fact, priests) of the Middle Ages who got their information mostly from the Byzantine accounts, and from the personal contact with Islam during the Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula and the Crusades. Alvarus Paulus (d. 861) was the first Latin author to transform Muhammad into antichrist. Making use of the reference in Psalm 89, he algebraically substituted seventy years for each of the three and one half "times" and calculated that the end of Islam would come after 245 years of Islamic rule, that is, as he figured it, in the year 870 C.E. His friend Eulogius of Cordova (d. 859) similarly depicted Muhammad as the 'anti-Christ,' a 'false prophet,' the coming of which Christ had foretold to the apostles. These Latin priests' preference for the meager, debased, and distorted Latin version of Muhammad's life, which Eulogius found in Navarre, rather than from the fountainhead of the Quran and Muslim traditions is symptomatic of a xenophobic ignorance, which characterized early Spanish views of Islam in general. It would be an intriguing study to follow the development of the absurd fables that spread abroad in Europe during this period in which Muhammad comes to be one of the three great idols - Mahomet or Mahound, Opolane and the third Termogond (in that order) - popularly supposed to be worshipped by Muslims. Among the ecclesiastical writers of the Crusade period Muhammad was looked on as the arch heretic, a second Arius, worse than the first, and his legend was molded on that of the great legendary heretics, Simon Magus and the Deacon Nicholas. Dominican Friar Humbert of Lyons (d. 1277), Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Nicholas de Cusa (c. 1443) and others followed John's footstep in portraying Islam as an inferior religion. 

The Italian scholar Professor Francesco Gabrieli puts it succinctly: "We find it in various versions, inconsistent in their content, but entirely consistent in their spirit of vituperation and hatred, in the writing of chronicles, apologists, hagiographers and encyclopaedists of the Latin Middle Ages; Guibert of Nogent and Hildebert of Tours in the eleventh century, Peter the Venerable in the twelfth, Jacques de Vitry, Martinus Polonus, Vincent of Beauvais and Jacobus, a Varagine, in the thirteenth, up to Brunetto Latini and his imitators, and Dante and his commentators."

Karen Armstrong tells us that during the Crusades, "... biographies of Mohammed by Christians describe the Prophet's sex life in a manner that reveals far more about their own sexual problems than about the facts of the Prophet's life." 
As Christendom started losing ground to expanding Islamic empire, the vilification of Muhammad became more vicious. To quote Montgomery Watt, "It is easy to see how this has come about. For centuries Islam was the great enemy of Christendom, for Christendom was in direct contact with no other organized states comparable in power to the Muslims. The Byzantine Empire, after losing its provinces in Syria and Egypt, was being attacked in Asia Minor, while Western Europe was threatened through Spain and Sicily. Even before the Crusades focused attention on the expulsion of the Saracens from the Holy Land, medieval war-propaganda, free from the restraints of factuality was building up a conception of 'the great enemy'. At one point Muhammad was transformed into Mahound, the prince of darkness." 

The attitude of Protestants under Luther (1483-1546) and Calvin (1509-1564) was no different from the Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Already the Ottoman Turks had established themselves as Muslim Caliphs ruling vast territories in Asia, Africa and Europe. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople had already fallen to the forces of Sultan Mehmed II. Twice, in 1529 and 1683, the Ottomans reached the gates of Vienna. So began a new period when the Church and the state cooperated, and "Muhammad, the prophet of the Arabs, came to be seen as the embodiment of Turkish monstrosity." Martin Luther's attitude towards Islam is reflected in the following words: "...[he] who fights against the Turks [Muslims]...should consider that he is fighting an enemy of God and a blasphemer of Christ, indeed, the devil himself...."

The ignoble task of vilifying Muhammad then was shouldered by people like Raleigh (c. 1637), Hottinger (c. 1651), Marraccio (c. 1698), and Humphrey Prideaux (1648-1724). Most of this early work is bitterly hostile, inaccurate and prejudiced. Sir Edward Denison Ross has rightly observed: "For many centuries the acquaintance which the majority of Europeans possessed of Muhammadanism was based almost entirely on distorted reports of fanatical Christians, which led to the dissemination of a multitude of gross calumnies."

Then began the era of Orientalism, when disingenuous scholars, mostly passionate Christian polemicists, joined the fray to assassinate the character of the Prophet of Islam and demean his religion. As Roger Du Pasquier has rightly observed, "One is forced also to concede that Oriental studies in the West have not always been inspired by the purest spirit of scholarly impartiality, and it is hard to deny that some Islamicists and Arabists have worked with the clear intention of belittling Islam and its adherents." The motivation seems to have come from John of Segovia who pointed out that the Islamic threat of Muhammad could only be crushed by an intellectual assault. Consequently, the Bibliotheque Orientale of Barthelmy d'Herbelot (written during the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 18th century), which was used as the most reliable reference on Islam in Europe until the beginning of the 19th century, made the most disparaging remarks about Muhammad . The first Encyclopaedia of Islam depicted 'Mahomet' as 'Author and Founder of a heresy.' In his book "History of Saracen Empires" (London, 1870), Simon Ockley (c. 1708), the celebrated English Arabist, dubbed him as 'a very subtle and crafty man, who put on the appearance only of those good qualities, while the principles of his soul were ambition and lust.' George Sale (c. 1734), the translator of the Quran, titled The Koran (commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed), called Muhammad a monster. In his essay Les Moeurs, Voltaire (c. 1740) said that even those who regarded Muhammad as a great man knew that he was an impostor. 

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Only when Christians were able to defeat Muslims militarily and colonize their vast territories did this vilification get somewhat muffled, and apologetic writings in favor of Islam and its Prophet surfaced. In his work "de Religione Mahommedica" (Utrecht, 1704), the Dutch scholar Reyland sought to break away from the hostile attitude to Muhammad , and strove for a just appreciation of his historical significance. His work was followed by H. de Boulainvilliers's "Vie de Mahomed" (London, 1739), which was a laudation of Muhammad , while belittling Christianity. Such a conciliatory attitude towards Muhammad (and hostility towards Christian teachings) was offensive to Christian orientalists; Snouck Hurgronje called it 'an anticlerical romance.' Gagnier's "Vie de Mahomet" (Amsterdam, 1748), and Edward Gibbon's (1737-94) account of Muhammad in his "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (London, 1776-88) were, therefore, aimed at shifting the scale once again towards Christian prejudice. Gibbon argued that Muhammad had lured the Arabs to follow him with 'the bait of loot and sex.'

The 'colonial spirit,' driven by a belief in racial superiority, and a mission to civilize the barbaric native inhabitants of the conquered territories, characterized the 19th century. After the French Revolution, Islam continued to be seen as 'the opposite of us.' The European authors concluded that in the Quran there was 'neither a principle for civilization nor a mandate that can elevate character.'

This 'colonial spirit' was reflected in the works of bigoted missionaries and Orientalists like Sir William Muir (1819-1905), D.S. (David Samuel) Margoliouth, Leone Caetani, and Henri Lammens (latter a Jesuit and Church pastor). Most of these Christian polemicists only proved how ignorant they were in their understanding of Islam and of the veneration of its Prophet in the Muslim psyche. Interestingly, despite their prejudice and 'holy contempt' for everything Islamic, these Orientalists were (and still are) assumed by many Europeans and Americans who studied Islam to be objective and unbiased researchers. The explanation is provided by Prof. Edward Said, "É Orientalists use the authority of their standing as experts to deny--no, to cover--their deep-seated feelings about Islam with a carpet of jargon whose purpose is to certify their 'objectivity' and 'scientific impartiality.'"

Speaking about Western slander of the Prophet , Thomas Carlyle (d. 1881) said, "Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Imposter, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. The lies which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man are disgraceful to ourselves only... A silent great soul, one of that who cannot but be earnest. He was to kindle the world, the world's Maker had ordered so." Speaking about Islam, he also said, "To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed becomes world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi on that; -glancing in valor and splendor and the light of genius, Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of the world . . . I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame." The admiration of Muhammad's achievements visible in this writer, as Prof. Juan Cole of University of Michigan points out, marked a turning point in Western culture, away from narrow religious bigotries and toward a humanist ability to appreciate the best in world civilization.

Montgomery Watt after examining the various charges heaped on the Prophet similarly concluded: "In his day and generation Muhammad was a social reformer, indeed a reformer even in the sphere of morals. He created a new system of social security and a new family structure, both of which were a vast improvement on what went before. In this way he adapted for settled communities all that was best in the morality of the nomad, and established a religious and a social framework for the life of a sixth of the human race today. That is not the work of a traitor or a lecher."

So, for a brief period, we fancied that we had probably seen the last of such vilifications against Islam and its Prophet. But we were wrong. Prejudice dies hard. With the emergence of the OPEC and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, situation again worsened. The late Prof. Edward Said of Columbia University echoed this understanding: "Even when the world of Islam entered a period of decline and Europe a period of ascendancy, fear of 'Mohammedanism' persisted. Closer to Europe than any of the other non-Christian religions, the Islamic world by its very adjacency evoked memories of its encroachments on Europe, and always, of its latent power again and again to disturb the West. Other great civilizations of the East - India and China among them - could be thought of as defeated and distant and hence not a constant worry. Only Islam seemed never to have submitted completely to the West; and when, after the dramatic oil-price rises of the early 1970s, the Muslim world seemed once more on the verge of repeating its early conquests, the whole West seemed to shudder."