162 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 18.2 

Prophet Muhammad and His Western Critics: 
A Critique of W. Montgomery Watt and Others 

Zafar Ali Qureshi, Jdara Ma'arif Islamic, La.hore, 1992, 2 Vols, p. 1103. 

This book by the Pakistani scholar Zafar Ali Qureshi is devoted to an 

important aspect of the relationship between Islam and the West. 

The image of the Prophet Muhammad (pbu) produced by western scholars 

of Islam has determined, in many ways, the parameters of the relationship 

between the two religions and the respective civilizations to which they 

have given rise. The main argument of Qureshi's extremely well-researched 

book is that the western scholarship bred by the centuries-old 

Christian prejudices against Islam has tried to undermine the religious and 

intellectual basis of Islam by undermining the central place and authority of 
the Prophet of Islam. This strategy was in no way accidental, because the 

Christian conception of religion takes as the basis of the Divine revelation 

not the revealed book, i.e., the Qur'an or the Bible, but Jesus Christ. Seen 

through the eyes of Christology, Islam could not be anything other than 
'Muhammadanism', and any scholarly treatment of it was bound to be 

based on the figure of the Prophet of Islam. It was within this framework 
that a number of historicist and materialist accounts were given to prove 

that the Prophet Muhammad was not an authentic prophet and that his 

motives were basically political, tribal or economic. 
The number of books produced in this line of spurious scholarship is 

immense, and Qureshi has carried out an immense survey of western 

literature on the life and personality of the Prophet. Although the author 

spans through hundreds of books produced in the West, he focuses on the 
work of Rev. Montgomery Watt, the celebrated western scholar of Islam. 

The reason for this concentration is that Watt's two-volume work on the 



Book Reviews 163 

Prophet of Islam has become one of the most widely read books on the life 
of the Prophet, both in the West and in the Islamic world. It has also 
been acclaimed as an objective book based on historical sources, without, 
thus, necessarily following the footprints of received prejudices and 
ignorance about Islam and its Prophet. This opinion, however, is called into 
question by Qureshi, who believes that “Dr. Watt has presented a highly 
distorted picture of the life and teachings of Prophet Muhammad (peace be 
upon him).” In fact, Qureshi convincingly shows that the Prophet of Islam 
becomes the imaginative prophet of the Orientalist discourse even in the 
work of Watt. As Qureshi makes it abundantly clear in his critical 
approach, the so-called historical methodology of Watt is, in fact, based on 
the premises of historicisim which regards everydung, including revelation 
and prophecy, as a mere result of socio-historical and economic conditions. 
Another point made by the author is that Watt looks at the Prophet of Islam 
through the eyes of the western scholarship of Jesus Christ, viz., “quest for 
historical Jesus”. The underlying assumption is that what befell the founder 
of Christianity at the hands of so-called objective historical research is 
assumed, or expected, to have happened also to the Prophet of Islam. 

Throughout the book, Qureshi embarks upon a scathing criticism of 
Watt’s presentation of the life of the Prophet by focusing on his two books 
Muhammad at Mecca and Muhammad at Medina. In this part of the book, 
Qureshi presents a very detailed critique of Watt’s construction of the life 
and battles of the Prophet. The author, however, does not only quote long 
passages from Watt’s works, but also allocates a considerable space to 
quotations from the works of other Orientalists and western scholars of 
Islam. The list of the names from which the author quotes is a very long 
one. One is dazzled here by the breadth of Qureshi’s scholarship, which 
spans through hundreds of names and books from Thomas Carlyle and 
William Muir to Alfred Guillaume and D. S. Margoliouth. The long 
quotations, which attest to Qureshi’s adab of fair and faithful criticism, 
however, render his book rather difficult to read. It is not completely out of 
place to consider reducing these long quotations to a reasonable amount for 
the sake of readership. By way of criticism, one should also note that 
Qureshi’s immense scholarship and diligent survey of this vast field 
is somewhat clouded by his language which turns, some places, 
unnecessarily polemical and apologetic. 

Despite these minor points, Qureshi’s two-volume work is a pleasant 
contribution to this much-neglected field. He should be congratulated for 



164 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 18.2 

undertaking such a daunting task - a task which forced Qureshi to carry out 
a thorough study of more than six hundred books. As the author states in 
his preface, this two-volume work is the first step in preparing a 'veritable 
Encyclopedia of Seerat-un-Nabi (sic.)'. We hope that the author will 
continue his important work in dispelling many false opinions and 
assertions of spurious scholarship on the Blessed Prophet, and succeed in 
his commendable enterprise of drawing a veritable picture of the Prophet 
of Islam. 

Ibrahim Kalin 

Ph.D. Candidate, 

The George Washington University, 

Washington, DC