Pandangan Kristen pada Abad Pertengahan terhadap Muhammad

Pada Abad Pertengahan, dunia Kristen banyak memandang Islam sebagai bidah Kristen dan Muhammad sebagai nabi palsu.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} Berbagai pemikir Kristen Barat dan Bizantium^[2][3][4][6] menganggap Muhammad sebagai orang yang menyimpang,^[2][4] tercela,^[2][4] nabi palsu,^[2][3][4][5] dan bahkan Antikristus,^[2][3] karena ia sering dipandang di dunia Kristen sebagai bidah atau dirasuki oleh para iblis.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} Beberapa di antara mereka, seperti Thomas Aquinas, mengkritik janji-janji kesenangan jasmani Muhammad dalam kehidupan setelah kematian.^[4]

Pengetahuan Kristen terawal yang didomentasikan mengenai Muhammad timbul dari sumber-sumber Bizantium, yang ditulis tak lama setelah kematian Muhammad pada 632 M. Dengan Perang Salib pada Abad Pertengahan Tinggi, dan peperangan melawan Kekaisaran Utsmaniyah pada Abad Pertengahan Akhir, pandangan Kristen terhadap Muhammad makin menjadi polemik, yang beralih dari klasifikasi sebagai bidah ke penggambaran Muhammad sebagai pelayan Setan atau Antikristus, yang mengalami penyiksaan abadi di Neraka.^[5] Pada Abad Pertengahan Akhir, Islam secara lebih mencolok dikelompokan dengan Paganisme, dan Muhammad dipandang sebagai penyembah berhala yang terinspirasi oleh Iblis.^[5] Sebuah pandangan yang lebih longgar atau halus terhadap islam baru berkembang pada zaman modern, setelah kekaisaran-kekaisaran Islam menghentikan ancaman militer akut ke Eropa (lihat Orientalisme).

Referensi

Kutipan

1. Buhl, F.; Ehlert, Trude; Noth, A.; Schimmel, Annemarie; Welch, A. T. (2012) [1993]. "Muḥammad". Dalam Bearman, P. J.; Bianquis, Th.; Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E. J.; Heinrichs, W. P. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. 7. Leiden: Brill Publishers. hlm. 360–376. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0780. ISBN 978-90-04-16121-4. 
2. Quinn, Frederick (2008). "The Prophet as Antichrist and Arab Lucifer (Early Times to 1600)". The Sum of All Heresies: The Image of Islam in Western Thought. New York: Oxford University Press. hlm. 17–54. ISBN 978-0195325638. 
3. Goddard, Hugh (2000). "The First Age of Christian-Muslim Interaction (c. 830/215)". A History of Christian-Muslim Relations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. hlm. 34–49. ISBN 978-1-56663-340-6. 

4. Criticism by Christians [...] was voiced soon after the advent of Islam starting with St. John of Damascus in the late seventh century, who wrote of "the false prophet", Muhammad. Rivalry, and often enmity, continued between the European Christian world and the Islamic world [...]. For Christian theologians, the "Other" was the infidel, the Muslim. [...] Theological disputes in Baghdad and Damascus, in the eighth to the tenth century, and in Andalusia up to the fourteenth century led Christian Orthodox and Byzantine theologians and rulers to continue seeing Islam as a threat. In the twelfth century, Peter the Venerable [...] who had the Koran translated into Latin, regarded Islam as a Christian heresy and Muhammad as a sexually self-indulgent and a murderer. [...] However, he called for the conversion, not the extermination, of Muslims. A century later, St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa contra Gentiles accused Muhammad of seducing people by promises of carnal pleasure, uttering truths mingled with many fables and announcing utterly false decisions that had no divine inspiration. Those who followed Muhammad were regarded by Aquinas as brutal, ignorant "beast-like men" and desert wanderers. Through them Muhammad, who asserted he was "sent in the power of arms", forced others to become followers by violence and armed power.

   — Michael Curtis, Orientalism and Islam: European Thinkers on Oriental Despotism in the Middle East and India (2009), p. 31, Cambridge University Press, New York, ISBN 978-0521767255.

5. Hartmann, Heiko (2013). "Wolfram's Islam: The Beliefs of the Muslim Pagans in Parzival and Willehalm". Dalam Classen, Albrecht. East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture. 14. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. hlm. 427–442. doi:10.1515/9783110321517.427. ISBN 9783110328783. ISSN 1864-3396. 
6. Yohanes dari Damaskus, De Haeresibus. See Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. 94, 1864, cols 763–73. An English translation by the Reverend John W. Voorhis appeared in The Moslem World, October 1954, pp. 392–98.

Sumber

• Ernst, Carl (2004). Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-5577-4. 
• Esposito, John (1998). Islam: The Straight Path. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511233-4. 
• Esposito, John (1999). The Islamic Threat: Myth Or Reality?. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513076-6. 
• Reeves, Minou (2003). Muhammad in Europe: A Thousand Years of Western Myth-Making. NYU Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-7564-6. 
• Shalem, Avinoam. Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and Boston, 2013.
• Schimmel, Annemarie (1992). Islam: An Introduction. SUNY Press. ISBN 0-7914-1327-6. 
• Schimmel, Annemarie (1995). Mystische Dimensionen des Islam. Insel, Frankfurt. ISBN 3-458-33415-7. 
• Tolan, John (2002). Saracens: Islam in the European imagination. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 978-0231123334. 
• Watt, W. Montgomery (1961). Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-881078-4. 
• Watt, W. Montgomery (1974). Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-881078-4.  New Edition.
• William Montgomery Watt, Muslim-Christian Encounters. Perceptions and Misperceptions
• Irving, W. (1868). Mahomet and his successors. New York: Putnam

Ensiklopedia

• F. Buhl; A.T. Welch; Annemarie Schimmel; A. Noth; Trude Ehlert (ed.). "Various articles". Encyclopedia of Islam Online. Brill Academic Publishers. ISSN 1573-3912. 
• The New Encyclopædia Britannica (edisi ke-Rev). Encyclopædia Britannica, Incorporated. 2005. ISBN 978-1-59339-236-9.