French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's Islam
Napoleon
Bonaparte was one of the greatest military genius in history. He
conquered much of Europe and became the emperor of France from 1804 to
1815. He centralized the French government, established the Bank of
France and introduced the Napoleon Code to reform the French law.
Finally his army was defeated by the allied forces and he was imprisoned
by the British on the remote Atlantic Ocean island of St. Helena. He
died there on May 5, 1821.
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
