This book is concerned with Western images of Muhammad and Islam, and examines changing attitudes to the Prophet and Islam in 19th-century England: It analyzes the shifts in images of the Prophet from that of the profligate, heretical, lustful, ambitious imposter of the late medieval and early modern period to the much more sympathetic portrayal of Muhammad in the 19th century as a noble Arab, sincere, heroic, pious and courageous. It argues that such changing images were the result of increasing knowledge about the origins of Islam and of various social, intellectual and political changes in...

Das religiose Motiv des Vorwurfs gegen Gott war schon in den fruhen Hochkulturen des Alten Orients Gegenstand insbesondere der weisheitlichen Auseinandersetzung. Dorothea Sitzler analysiert in ihrer Studie das agyptische und mesopotamische Textmaterial im Hinblick auf religionsgeschichtliche Einordnung, Theologie der angegriffenen Gottheit, Figur des Klagers, literarische Gestaltung und Inhalte der Vorwurfe. Es ergibt sich das Bild eines religiosen Konflikts, der auf der Schwelle von der Staatsreligion zur Bekenntnisreligion in das Vorfeld von Monotheismus und Prophetie fuhrt. Dabei wird...

Religious Minorities in Kurdistan: Beyond the Mainstream, edited by Khanna Omarkhali, represents an account of the various religious milieus flourishing beyond the Islamic mainstream in all parts of Kurdistan. The miscellany describes how the religious minority groups operate within the Kurdish regions, which themselves have been subject to numerous conflicts and social as well as political transformations at the turn of the 21st century. This volume emphasizes recent developments affecting these communities, in particular their social and religious lives. Six chapters are dedicated to the...