ABSTRACT
In the history of Western responses to Islam, what is fascinating about Leibniz is that he exemplifi es a certain ideological overlap, a peculiar transition period between a theological repudiation of Islam (Muslims as enemies of Christ) and an early Enlightenment rejection of the Mohammedan (Muslims as enemies of reason and civilization). Sometimes Leibniz’s Mohammedan is the Erbfeind or hereditary enemy/eternal foe, sometimes he is elevated to the status of mere barbarian, whilst on rare occasions he is even grudgingly acknowledged to be the possessor of a natural (though still errant) theology. This oscillation between these three responses to Islam constitutes a second, more limited point of continuity with Luther: that is to say, his schizophrenia. Although Leibniz’s responses to the Muslim take a different direction from that of Luther’s-a movement from theology to politics, from the chapel to the court, from Christendom to a place called ‘Europa’—Islam creates the same problems of coherence for Leibniz as it did for Luther. This similarity is one of structure, not of content. Luther’s schizophrenic attitude to Islam stemmed from a problematic indebtedness to the Turk as a divine sign of chastisement and correction. Leibniz’s multiple approaches to Islam, however, do not spring from the awkward implications of an apocalyptic/esoteric eschatology, but rather from a much more basic inability to reconcile the three separate (albeit porous) identities his work presents us with: Leibniz the political thinker, Leibniz the Christian apologist and Leibniz the early Enlightenment seeker of origins.3 The rest of this chapter will try to show how the agreements, tensions and confl icts
between these three identities are refl ected in (at times, even initiated by) Leibniz’s various remarks on Islam and Islamic cultures.
