Criticism of Muhammad

Uncommon card · No. 156085

The first to criticize the Islamic prophet Muhammad were his non-Muslim Arab contemporaries, who decried him for preaching monotheism, and the Jewish tribes of Arabia, for what they claimed were unwarranted appropriation of Biblical narratives and figures and vituperation of the Jewish faith. For these reasons, medieval Jewish writers commonly referred to him by the derogatory nickname ha-Meshuggah (Hebrew: מְשֻׁגָּע‬, "the Madman" or "the Possessed"). During the Middle Ages, various Western and Byzantine Christian polemicists considered Muhammad to be a false prophet, the Antichrist, a heretic, Satan possessed by demons, a sexual deviant, a polygamist, and a charlatan. Thomas Aquinas criticized Muhammad's handling of doctrinal matters and promises of what Aquinas described as "carnal pleasure" in the afterlife. Modern criticism by some Western scholars has raised questions about Muhammad’s prophetic claims, personal conduct, marriages, slave ownership, and mental state. Criticism has also...

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