The Place of Research on 'Muhammad (PBUH)' in the Works of Western Islamic Scholars

In the ۱۹th and ۲۰th centuries, Islamology was an important part of historical, theological, linguistic, geographical, history of thought and cultural studies in Western countries, especially Europe. Such studies were usually started by non-Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Western-industrialized countries, and later, with changes, they founded today's Islamic studies. The movement of Islamology in the ۱۹th century was accompanied by various motivations, some of which were rooted in the conflicts between Christian churches and Islam, and centuries ago, almost from the time of the Crusades, it had started in European churches with the motivation of confrontation with the Islamic world. Since the ۱۳th century AD, the Christian Church in Europe, in an effort to confront Islam, had targeted two important Islamic elements in its intellectual and propaganda attacks; these two elements were the Qur'an and the historical personality of the Messenger of Allah (PBUH). It seems that this historical record, later, in the ۱۹th and ۲۰th centuries, somehow had an impact on the movement of Islamology. In other words, in the church's confrontational efforts with Islam in the ۱۳th and later centuries, a hostile and aggressive mentality against the Messenger of God (PBUH) can be seen. This mentality, during that time, was such a generator of aggression that even during the Crusades, a group of crusaders, in an act of showing malice towards Islam, took the initiative to attack the mosque and the holy shrine of the Prophet (PBUH) in Madinah with a special operation and desecrate and destroy the holy shrine. Although these conflicting motivations during the ۱۹th and ۲۰th centuries were greatly moderated and in some cases gave way to colonial-economic motivations and experimental positivist cognitions, they still had conflicting effects against Islam. This can be clearly seen from the amount of attention paid by Islamic scholars in the ۱۹th and ۲۰th centuries to research Muhammad (PBUH) with its strong foundations in an effort to make the Messenger of God (PBUH) like normal people in the world and, in the best of circumstances, manifests itself as issuing positivist reports simply out of sheer disbelief in relation to the Prophetic dimensions (being the Messenger of God) of the Messenger of God. This is despite the fact that even the least scientific-intellectual fairness ruled about the prophetic dimensions (being the Messenger of God) of the Prophet (PBUH). In this way, many Western