The Contemporary Christians’ Attitudes on Prophet Muhammad (Saw): A Critical Analysis of Muir’s Historical-Critical Method

The spread and rise of Islam have been viewed as a significant threat to Christianity in the modern period. Because of its rapid rise, Christians were alarmed, and motivated them to seek any and all measures to eliminate it. Throughout the medieval period and into the modern period, Islam experienced numerous intellectual and military challenges. One of the strategies used is to find ways to investigate the historical context and origin of Islam. The most preposterous method was the “Historico-critical Method,†which claimed to trace the original meaning of the text as seen by its early readers, rather than by current readers. Thus, the main point made by the defenders of this method has always been to view the text from its historical contexts and to argue that understanding it differently from the way their first readers understood it, is a great mistake. The main objective of this paper is to explore the development and patterns of transformation in modern Christian attitudes towards Islam and Prophet Muhammad (saw), and to analyse Muir’s application of the Historico-critical method. In order to achieve this goal, analytical and comparative approaches were used in this process. According to the findings of the investigation, this method was first introduced in biblical studies in the search for the historical Jesus. With the emergence of Orientalists in the 19th century, the old method inherited from medieval writers and their sources regarding Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (saw) was continued. Muir applied the modern historical-critical method in dealing with Islamic sources and in the search for Islam and historical Muhammad.