French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's Islam
Author: Dr. Zulfiqar Ali Shah
Napoleon very much appreciated Islam and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). He studied the Qur’an as well as the life of Prophet Muhammad and appropriated that knowledge to realize his world ambitions. He converted to Islam and took the name of “Ali Bonaparte.” He was a student of oriental history in general and Islamic history in particular. Ziad Elmarsafy observes that “There are few more momentous “applications” of European learning about Islam than Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt… A learned man, Napoleon embodied the relationship between power and Orientalists knowledge.”
Napoleon’s military genius and successes owed much to his knowledge of the Orient. Henry Laurens argues that “Bonaparte invented nothing, but he translated certain simple principles of the totality of Oriental learning of his age better than anyone else.” Napoleon studied the Orient especially the history of Islam and its Prophet with great enthusiasm. Claude-Étienne Savary (1750–1788), who spent three years in Egypt (1776-1779) and published his translation of the Qur’an in 1784, was one the main sources of Napoleon’s knowledge of Islam. Savary admired the Prophet of Islam as a “rare genius aided by circumstance.”
To him “Mahomet was one of those extraordinary men who, born with superior gifts, show up infrequently on the face of the earth to change it and lead mortals behind their chariot. When we consider his point of departure and the summit of grandeur that he reached, we are astonished by what human genius can accomplish under favorable circumstances.” Napoleon wanted to be the same genius conqueror of the world. He wanted to be for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries “what Muhammad had been to the seventh.” Therefore he could not accept the slightest denigration of the Prophet. He admired Muhammad in the following words:
“Mahomet was a great man, an intrepid soldier; with a handful of men he triumphed at the battle of Bender (sic); a great captain, eloquent, a great man of state, he revived his fatherland and created a new people and a new power in the middle of the Arabian deserts.”
Here Napoleon refers to the Battle of Badar which was fought in the second year of Prophetic migration to Madinah.
Napoleon’s biographer Emmanuel-Augustin-Dieudonné-Joseph, count of Las Cases, reports that Napoleon was unhappy with Voltaire’s dramatization and apparent denigration of Muhammad in his play “Mahomet.” Napoleon, in the final years of his life, was exiled to the Island of St. Helene. During these long years of forced exile he had the opportunity to reflect upon a series of important issues. His conversations and memoir were recorded by a number of fellows including the Count of Las Cases. In relating to conversations made in April of 1816, the Count of Las Cases wrote:
"Mahomet was the subject of deep criticism. “Voltaire”, said the Emperor, “in the character and conduct of his hero, has departed both from nature and history. He has degraded Mahomet, by making him descend to the lowest intrigues. He has represented a great man who changed the face of the world, acting like a scoundrel, worthy of the gallows. He has no less absurdly traverstied the character of Omar, which he has drawn like that of a cut-throat in a melo-drama. Voltaire committed a fundamental error in attributing to intrigue that which was solely the result of opinion." Omar here refers to Omar bin al-Khattab who was the second caliph after Prophet Muhammad.
Napoleon rejected the central theme of Voltaire’s play that Muhammad was a fanatic. He observed that the rapid social changes and political victories which Prophet Muhammad realized within a short span of time could not have been the result of fanaticism. “Fanaticism could not have accomplished this miracle, for fanaticism must have had time to establish her dominion, and the career of Mahomet lasted only thirteen years." General Baron Gourgaud, one of the closest generals to Napoleon, gives almost identical accounts of Napoleon’s evaluations of Voltaire’s play. Napoleon further observed that "Mohammed has been accused of frightful crimes. Great men are always supposed to have committed crimes, such as poisonings; that is quite false; they never succeed by such means."
Napoleon was a true admirer of both Prophet Muhammad and his religion. As an aspiring world conqueror and legislator, Napoleon adopted Muhammad as his role model and claimed to be walking in his footsteps. Before his military excursion to Egypt he advised his soldiers and officers to respect the Muslim religion. “The people amongst whom we are going to live are Mahometans. The first article of their faith is this: "There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his prophet." Do not contradict them… Extend to the ceremonies prescribed by the Koran and to the mosques the same toleration which you showed to the synagogues, to the religion of Moses and of Jesus Christ.”
In 1798 Napoleon landed in Egypt along with his strong army of fifty five thousands to occupy Egypt and disrupt English trade route to India. He believed that “Whoever is master of Egypt is master of India.” He addressed the Egyptians employing traditional Islamic vocabulary of God’s unity and universal mission of Prophet Muhammad. He publically confessed himself to be a true Muslim.
“In the name of God the Beneficent, the Merciful, there is no other God than God, he has neither son nor associate to his rule. On behalf of the French Republic founded on the basis of liberty and equality, the General Bonaparte, head of the French Army, proclaims to the people of Egypt that for too long the Beys who rule Egypt insult the French nation and heap abuse on its merchants; the hour of their chastisement has come. For too long, this rabble of slaves brought up in the Caucasus and in Georgia tyrannizes the finest region of the world; but God, Lord of the worlds, all-powerful, has proclaimed an end to their empire. Egyptians, some will say that I have come to destroy your religion; this is a lie, do not believe it! Tell them that I have come to restore your rights and to punish the usurpers; that I respect, more than do the Mamluks, God, his prophet Muhammad and the glorious Qur'an... we are true Muslims. Are we not the one who has destroyed the Pope who preached war against Muslims? Did we not destroy the Knights of Malta, because these fanatics believed that God wanted them to make war against the Muslims?”
Humberto Garcia observes that Bonaparte promised “to restore egalitarian justice in Ottoman Egypt under an Islamic republic based in Cairo.” The intended Islamic republic was to be based upon the egalitarian laws of “the Prophet and his holy Koran.” Bonaparte casted himself as a Muslim convert and took the Islamic name of “Ali”, the celebrated son in law and cousin of Prophet Muhammad. He expressed his desire to establish a “uniform regime, founded on the principles of the Qur’an, which are the only true ones, and which can alone ensure the well-being of men.” Garcia further observes that “supposedly, the French came as deist liberators rather than colonizing crusaders… and not to convert the population to Christianity…” Juan Cole states that “The French Jacobins, who had taken over Notre Dame for the celebration of a cult of Reason and had invaded and subdued the Vatican, were now creating Egypt as the world’s first modern Islamic Republic.” Throughout his stay in Egypt Napoleon used the Qur’anic verses and Ahadith (Prophetic reports) in his proclamations to the Egyptians.
“Tell your people that since the beginning of time God has decreed the destruction of the enemies of Islam and the breaking of the crosses by my hand. Moreover He decreed from eternity that I shall come from the West to the Land of Egypt for the purpose of destroying those who have acted tyrannically in it and to carry out the tasks which He set upon me. And no sensible man will doubt that all this is by virtue of God’s decree and will. Also tell your people that the many verses of the glorious Qur’an announce the occurrence of events which have occurred and indicate others which are to occur in the future…”
Napoleon used the Muslim apocalyptic vocabulary and tradition to convey his political motives. Ziad observes that the “use of the Qur’an and Sunna in the remaining proclamations serves to consolidate further the image of Napoleon as not only a follower of Muhammad, but a Mahdi destined to conquer that region.” Napoleon truly infused his declarations with “an unprecedented degree of Qur’anic allusion and auto-deification. No longer a mere exporter of the Enlightenment, Napoleon is now the arm of God…”
Napoleon formed a “Directory” comprised of French officials, Cairo elites and Muslim clergy. He patronized mosques and the madrassas, the centers of Qura’nic studies programs. He participated and presided over the Muslim festivals and Egyptian holidays and “even tried converting the French army to Islam legally without undergoing the Muslim practice of circumcision and imposing the wine-drinking prohibition… Marriages between Frenchmen and Muslims women were common, accompanied by formal conversion to Islam. Indeed, French general Jacques Manou, governor of Rosetta, married a notable Egyptian woman of the Sharif cast and changed his name to “Abdullah” (Servant of Allah).” Manuo was a senior French general. He married Zubayda in the spring of 1799. “The adoption of an almost Catholic discourse of piety in an Islamic guise by a French officer in Egypt could scarcely have been foreseen by the Jacobins on the Directory and in the legislature who urged the invasion.”
Such a widespread conversion of French officers to Islam was not a blot out of the blue. Many of them had already lost faith in Christianity. Just before the French Revolution Baron d‟Holbach could write about Jesus and his Christianity in the following words:
“A poor Jew, who pretended to be descended from the royal house of David, after being long unknown in his own country, emerges from obscurity, and goes forth to make proselytes. He succeeded amongst some of the most ignorant part of the populace. To them he preached his doctrines, and taught them that he was the son of God, the deliverer of his oppressed nation, and the Messiah announced by the prophets. His disciples, being either imposters or themselves deceived, rendered a clamorous testimony of his power, and declared that his mission had been proved by miracles without number. The only prodigy that he was incapable of effecting, was that of convincing the Jews, who, far from being touched by his beneficent and marvelous works, caused him to suffer an ignominious death. Thus the Son of God died in the sight of all Jerusalem; but his followers declare that he was secretly resuscitated three days after his death. Visible to them alone, and invisible to the nation which he came to enlighten and convert to his doctrine, Jesus, after his resurrection, say they, conversed some time with his disciples, and then ascended into heaven, where, having again become the equal to God the Father, he shares with him the adorations and homages of the sectaries of his law. These sectaries, by accumulating superstitions, inventing impostures, and fabricating dogmas and mysteries, have, little by little, heaped up a distorted and unconnected system of religion which is called Christianity, after the name of Christ its founder.”
The French Revolution ushered an era of de-Christianization of the French populace in general and the French elites in particular. From 1789 to the Concordat of 1801, the Catholic Church, its lands, properties, educational institutions, monasteries, churches, bishops and priests were all the victims of the revolutionaries. The Church which owned almost everything that was not owned by the monarchy in France was stripped of its lands, churches, schools, seminaries and all privileges. The crosses, bells, statues, plates and every sign of Christianity including its iconography were removed from the churches. On October 21, 1793, a law was passed that made all clergy and those who harbored them liable to death on sight. Religion, which in the pre modern old regime Europe meant Christianity with its multifarious branches and Churches, was itself the target. The famous Notre Dame Cathedral was turned into the temple of the goddess “Reason” on November 10, 1793.
Consequently, many French officers and soldiers by the time they put their foot on the Egyptian soil were already de-Christianized deists or atheists. Juan Cole explains that “Many French in the age of the Revolution had become deists, that is, they believed that God, if he existed at all, was a cosmic clockmaker who had set the universe in motion but did not any longer intervene in its affairs. Most deists did not consider themselves Christians any longer and looked down on Middle Eastern Christians as priest-ridden and backward.” They believed in a Supreme Being who imparted laws to the nature and let it run its course in conformity with those laws without intervention. This meant that Nature was rational and not irrational. Such a rational outlook at the cosmos was antithetical to the traditional Christian cosmology. The Christian God intervened and interfered in the cosmos at will and was supposedly persuaded by the Christian priests, his agents upon the earth. The deistic notions of divinity in reality were expressions of absolute anticlericalism, the hallmark of French society after the Revolution. Moreover, the deists of the eighteenth century imagined Muhammad as “earlier and more radical reformer than Luther.”
The French Jacobins like their deists comrades believed that “Mahometans” were “closer to “the standard of reason” than the Christians…” Therefore, it was not too difficult for Napoleon to ask his soldiers to convert to Islam. Some notable French thinkers, as discussed above, had already “tried to show how close Europeans could be to Islamic practice, without knowing it, as a way of critiquing religion.” They had already employed Islamic ideas to root out the priestcraft. Therefore, Napoleon was reaping the fruits of a long strand of French radical enlightenment where Islam and Muhammad were the known commodities.
Bonaparte’s personal deistic disposition and the overall French propensity towards hatred of organized Christianity and its irrational dogmas combined with simultaneous appreciation of Islamic rational monotheism and medieval Islamic civilization were truly at play in Egypt. The political expediency added to the already existent seeds of the French radical enlightenment and caused them to flourish in a congenial Muslim Egyptian environment. The French were not accepting a new religion. They were accepting a reformed version of their deeply held religious convictions, something already present in their religious outlook. There were some exceptions though. Some of them clearly disdained this supposed Islamization drama but kept quite so as not to offend their powerful and persuasive general, Ali Bonaparte. They went along with their admired general’s Islamization strategies.
Bonaparte dressed in Islamic attire, promoted Islamic art and sciences, and greatly emphasized the “affinity between the French egalitarian principles and Shari’a law. The political ideal of liberty, equality, and fraternity was fused with a hermitically tinged Islamic messianism, which, in a time of change and uncertainty, temporarily served as the de facto state idiom of France between 1798 and 1999.” Like Voltaire, Bayle and Encyclopedie, Napoleon praised the Muslim Abbasid Caliphs of eighth and ninth centuries for patronizing the arts, sciences and translation of Greek and Latin works to Arabic. He pinpointed Europe’s indebtedness to this Arab-Greco legacy. The Egyptian scholars, in their letter to the Sharif of Mecca and Madinah, wrote the following about Bonaparte.
“He has assured us that he recognizes the unity of God, that the French honor our Prophet, as well as the Qur’an, and that they regard the Muslim religion as the best religion. The French have proved their love for Islam in freeing the Muslim prisoners detained in Malta, in destroying churches and breaking crosses in the city of Venice, and in pursuing the pope, who commanded the Christians to kill the Muslims and who had represented that act as a religious duty.”
Napoleon’s public conversion to Islam was more significant for the Egyptians than any of his other policies. Napoleon’s conversion to Islam was highlighted by the known newspapers both in France and England. In England, the “Copies of Original Letters from the Army of General Bonaparte” was published in a total of eight editions to implicate “a Franco-Ottoman conspiracy to eradicate Christianity.” The publicity and importance given to Napoleon’s proclamation was geared towards “supplying indisputable evidence of French admiration of Islam”, and identifying a “Jacobin-Mahometan plot to undermine British national interests at home and abroad.”
The alliance between the Islamic Egypt and French republicanism was the source of English paranoia that resulted in a grand scale polemical works against Islam culminating in a new biography of Muhammad, the professed model of Napoleon Bonaparte. Humphrey Prideux’s famous biography “The Life of Mahomet, or the history of that Imposter, which was begun, carried on, and finally established him in Arabia… To which is added, an account of Egypt” was published in London in the year 1799. The books multiple editions over a short span of time, the enthusiastic support it generated both from the Church of England and English monarchy and its widespread distribution over the European continent in different languages reflect the levels of anxiety, alarm, suspicion and fears caused by a perceived alliance between the Islamic and French republicanisms.
This famous eighteenth century demeaning biography of Muhammad “speaks more to Bonaparte, the deist “imposter” of Egypt, than to Mahomet, the false prophet of Arabia. It is prepared throughout with political allusions to the Egyptian campaign, invoking an anti-Christian Jacobin-Mahometan plot.” H. Prideaux argued that “I have heard that in France there are no less than fifty thousand avowed atheists, divided into different clubs and societies throughout the extensive republic, which I believe as firmly as that there are fifty thousand devils around the throne of God; but supposing it were true, and by no means a piece of British manufacture, I do boldly assert that their united endeavors, though assisted by four hundred thousand libertines, atheists, and deists from England, will neither keep Mahometanism from the grave of oblivion, nor the HEALER OF THE NATIONS from universal triumph.”
Prideaux’s claims of hundreds of thousands of hidden “Mahometans” both in France and England highlight the extent of cross cultural pollination of Islamic ideas during the eighteenth century Europe. While scolding the Mahometan policies of Bonaparte, Prideaux also wanted to incite the British public against the radical enlighteners at home, like Henry Stubbe, John Toland, Blount, Tindal etc., who, like Bonaparte, subscribed to the Islamic republicanism. The egalitarian republicanism of the radical enlighteners both in France and England was depicted as the “corrupt political theology imported from the Muslim world.” The Christian Europe’s divine right monarchy and ecclesiastical authority were in a chaos due to Islamic ideas foreign to Christian Europe.
Napoleon’s supposed conversion to Islam had really caused a public paranoia about an Islamic conspiracy to overtake Europe. Napoleon was completely identified with Islam and Muhammad.
As noted above, many scholars have argued that Napoleon’s Muslim garb was a cynical attempt to serve his political agenda. He manipulated Egyptians’ religious sentiments to win their hearts and avoid their resistance. Juan Cole, on the other hand contends that “Although Bonaparte and his defender, Bourrienne, prefaced this account by saying that Bonaparte never converted, never went to mosque, and never prayed in the Muslim way, all of that is immaterial.
It is quite clear that he was attempting to find a way for French deists to be declared Muslims for purposes of statecraft. This strategy is of a piece with the one used in his initial Arabic proclamation, in which he maintained that the French army, being without any particular religion and rejecting Trinitarianism, was already “muslim” with a small “m.” Islam was less important to him, of course, than legitimacy. Without legitimacy, the French could not hope to hold Egypt in the long run, and being declared some sort of strange Muslim was the shortcut that appealed to Bonaparte.”
A systematic study of his ideas over the later years of his life substantiates the fact that he was a true admirer of Prophet Muhammad and his religion. Juan Cole admits that “Bonaparte’s admiration for the Prophet Muhammad, in contrast, was genuine.” Napoleon expressed the same positive sentiments about Muhammad and Qur’an while leaving Egypt after his failed attempt to control it. In 1799 on his way back to France he left specific instructions to French administrators in Egypt. He strongly urged them to respect the Qur’an and love the Prophet, "one must take great care to persuade the Muslims that we love the Qur'an and that we venerate the prophet. One thoughtless word or action can destroy the work of many years."
Napoleon showed the same respect towards the Prophet in the last years of his life while living in captivity on a tiny Island in the middle of Atlantic Ocean, Saint Helene, without any hope of political power or gain. One can easily see that in conformity with the French Enlightenment ideals Napoleon truly believed that Prophet Muhammad’s concept of God was genuinely sublime and that the Prophet was a model lawmaker. That is what he said in St. Helene: “Arabia was idolatrous when Muhammad, seven centuries after Jesus Christ, introduced the cult of the God of Abraham, Ishmael, Moses and Jesus Christ. The Arians and other sects that had troubled the tranquility of the Orient had raised questions concerning the nature of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Muhammad declared that there was one unique God who had neither father nor son; that the trinity implied idolatry. He wrote on the frontispiece of the Qur'an: "There is no other god than God."
Muhammad spoke to people according to their background and turned the illiterate desert dwellers into builders of civilizations. “He addressed savage, poor peoples, who lacked everything and were very ignorant; had he spoken to their spirit, they would not have listened to him. In the midst of abundance in Greece, the spiritual pleasures of contemplation were a necessity; but in the midst of the deserts, where the Arab ceaselessly sighed for a spring of water, for the shade of a palm where he could take refuge from the rays of the burning tropical sun, it was necessary to promise to the chosen, as a reward, inexhaustible rivers of milk, sweet-smelling woods where they could relax in eternal shade, in the arms of divine houris with white skin and black eyes. The Bedouins were impassioned by the promise of such an enchanting abode; they exposed themselves to every danger to reach it; they became heroes.”
Muhammad’s lack of resources and greatness of accomplishments make him the super hero. His fifteen years of achievements surpass fifteen centuries accomplishment of the Jews and Christians. “Muhammad was a prince; he rallied his compatriots around him. In a few years, his Muslims conquered half the world. They plucked more souls from the false gods, knocked down more idols, razed more pagan temples in fifteen years, than the followers of Moses and Jesus Christ did in fifteen centuries. Muhammad was a great man. He would indeed have been a god, if the revolution that he had performed had not been prepared by the circumstances.”
General Baron Guidaud reports that Napoleon said, "Mohammed appeared at a moment when all men were anxious to be authorized to believe in but one God. It is possible that Arabia had before that been convulsed by civil wars, the only way to train men of courage. After Bender we find Mohammed a hero! A man can be only a man, but sometimes as a man he can accomplish great things. He is often like a spark among inflammable material. I do not think that Mohammed would at the present time succeed in Arabia. But in his own day his religion in ten years conquered half the known world, whilst it took three centuries for the religion of Christ firmly to establish itself.” Napoleon identified himself with Muhammad. "Mohammed's case was like mine. I found all the elements ready at hand to found an empire. Europe was weary of anarchy. Men wanted to make an end of it.”
Napoleon who was born and raised as a Catholic seems to have denounced his original faith and denied not only Jesus’ divinity but existence also. He is reported to have said: "I have dictated thirty pages on the world's three religions; and I have read the Bible. My own opinion is made up. I do not think Jesus Christ ever existed. I would believe in the Christian religion if it dated from the beginning of the world. That Socrates, Plato, the Mohammedan, and all the English should be damned is too absurd.” Napoleon substantiated his claims by historical perspectives. "Did Jesus ever exist, or did he not? I think no contemporary historian has ever mentioned him; not even Josephus. Nor do they mention the darkness that covered the earth at the time of his death." He claimed to have studied Josephus’ writings. Josephus was a Jewish historian of Jesus’ times. "I once found at Milan an original manuscript of the 'Wars of the Jews’ in which Jesus is not mentioned. The Pope pressed me to give him this manuscript.” Here Napoleon insinuated a papal conspiracy to hide all historical evidences that went against the historical narrative of the Church.
On the other hand, he also said that "The Christian religion offers much pomp to the eye, and gives its worshippers many brilliant spectacles. It affords something all the time to occupy the imagination.” This did not mean that Napoleon appreciated the Christian incarnation theology and confusing dogmas such as the Trinity. Napoleon believed that religion was necessary for law and order in a given society. “All religions since that of Jupiter inculcate morality.” He further stated that “Society needs a religion to establish and consolidate the relations of men with one another. It moves great forces; but is it good, or is it bad for a man to put himself entirely under the sway of a director? There are so many bad priests in the world." That is why he did not abolish any religion from any country which he conquered. It seems that he outwardly showed respect to almost every faith tradition including the Catholics but inwardly despised Christianity due to his deistic notions of the divinity. The same reasons made him respect the rational monotheism of Islam.
He believed that an encounter with Islamic logical monotheism did leave an impression upon people including the fanatic Christians such as the Crusades. "The Crusaders came back worse Christians than they were when they left their homes. Intercourse with Mohammedans had made them less- Christian.” Napoleon entertained the same lofty ideas about Islam in the final years of his life. He said "The Mohammedan religion is the finest of all. In Egypt the sheiks greatly embarrassed me by asking what we meant when we said 'the Son- of God.' If we had three gods, we must be heathen." He was a staunch admirer of Islamic morality which he considered a prerequisite to the wellbeing of all societies. “A man may have no religion, but may yet have morality. He must have morality for the sake of society.”
The simple Islamic monotheism, its lack of burdensome ceremonies and strong emphasis upon morality were the keys to Napoleon’s admiration of Islam. "That is how men are imposed upon Jesus said he was the Son of God, and yet he was descended from David. I like the Mohammedan religion best. It has fewer incredible things in it than ours. The Turks call Christians idolaters." While denying the biblical miracles attributed to Moses, Napoleon confirmed the historical miracle of Muhammad, the stunning victories and sweeping social changes in a short span of ten or so years. "The Emperor dictated a note to me, to prove that the water struck out of a rock by Moses could not have quenched the thirst of two millions of Israelites."
John Tolan states that “Bonaparte's Muhammad is a model statesman and conqueror: he knows how to motivate his troops and, as a result, was a far more successful conqueror than was Napoleon, holed up on a windswept island in the South Atlantic. If he promised sensual delights to his faithful, it is because that is all they understood: this manipulation, far from being cause for scandal (as it had been for European writers since the twelfth century) provokes only the admiration of the former emperor.”
Napoleon was also impressed by certain aspects of the Islamic Shari’ah and intended to incorporate some of them into his “Napoleon Code”. John Tolan observes that Napoleon was “ready to excuse, even to praise, parts of Muslim law that had been objects of countless polemics, including polygamy.”
Napoleon argued that “Asia and Africa are inhabited by men of many colors: polygamy is the only efficient means of mixing them so that whites do not persecute the blacks, or blacks the whites. Polygamy has them born from the same mother or the same father; the black and the white, since they are brothers, sit together at the same table and see each other. Hence in the Orient no color pretends to be superior to another. But, to accomplish this, Muhammad thought that four wives were sufficient.... When we will wish, in our colonies, to give liberty to the blacks and to destroy color prejudice, the legislator will authorize polygamy.”
In conclusion, Muhammad, Islam and Islamic civilization had been part and parcel of the pre modern European social imaginary. In France Islam provided the images, stories and legends needed for a socio cultural change and break from the old traditional cosmology of the Christian faith. Islam was one of the principal mediums which were used to delineate the cultural transformation and transmission. Islamic republicanism helped usher the French non-authoritarian freedom and liberty that dismantled the old regime with exclusionist and oppressive Church policies. The coffee house and salon discussions lead to the French Revolution. But “Bonaparte had profoundly altered the arena in which these discussions were taking place. The arrival of some 32,000 French soldiers in Egypt in the summer of 1798 made the question of how to think about Islam more than a parlor game. The French were involved in the largest scale encounter of a Western European culture with a Middle Eastern Muslim one since the Crusades.”
The identification between Napoleon and Prophet Muhammad and the emphasis upon Muhammad the lawgiver perhaps played a role in Adolph A. Weinman’s visual expressions which decorate the main chamber of the U. S. Supreme Court. Weinman (December 11, 1870 – August 8, 1952), a German-born American sculptor, visualized the Prophet as one the great lawgivers of the world. He is one of the eighteen great conquerors, statesmen and lawgivers commemorated in a series that includes Moses, Confucius and Napoleon. Even though Muslims have a strong aversion to sculptured or pictured representations of the Prophet, they can still appreciate the impact of his legacy upon the legal and political traditions in the West.
Source: http://www.fiqhcouncil.org/node/65
