Images of the Prophet Muhammad in English Literature

Several modern studies on the image of Islam and its Prophet in European Literatures, like the remarkable English works by Minou Reeves (Muhammad in Europe, 2000), F. Quinn (The Sum of All Heresies, 2008) and M. Dimmock (Mythologies of the Prophet Muhammad, 2013), seemed to have exhausted the subject and foreclosed the scope of any further literary venture in the field. However, Abdur Raheem Kidwai has tackled the subject afresh knowledgeably and deftly. Succinct and reader-friendly in style, the text maps the traditionally calumnious course of Muhammad-baiting, with rare respites, in the West across the ages successively, characterized by a long-lasting fanaticism even during the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Reason and Humanism.