The Orientalist depiction of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessings of Allah be upon him): The Critical Discourse Analysis of “Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman” by Montgomery Watt.

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to highlight the Oriental ideological perspective about Islam. The prime concern of this paper is to foreground the underlying Orientalist discursive mechanism being employed to construct and project the Personality of the Holy Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (Peace be upon him). The data is collected through purposive sampling from the book ‘Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman’ by William Montgomery Watt. For data analysis, insights have been taken from Fairclough’s (1989) three dimensional model, which is opted as a research methodology. This study attempts to establish that the whole discourse developed in the book about the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) is in complete harmony with the earlier discourses developed by the writers like William Muir, D.S. Margoliouth, etc. The writer either puts the significant facts in the background with the help of modality or omits them. He develops assumptions on the basis of modality to propagate his ideological standpoint to profane the nature of the Holy Prophet’s (Peace be upon him) Prophethood. This study highlights the Islamic perspective about the Holy Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (Peace be upon him) thereby critically analyzing the implicit Orientalists’ ideological motives.