ABSTRACT
Looking at the European media one might think that Islam has only been at the heart of European controversies for a few decades. Headscarves and halal meat in France, minarets in Switzerland, forced marriages in Denmark: all these conflicts have less to do with questioning Islam itself than with the exploiting of Islam in debates about national politics. In order to put these polemics surrounding the Prophet into historical perspective, the author examines the role he has been assigned in European controversies from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries. The author begins with the Middle Ages, when Muhammad was seen as a threat to Christian European authors, especially because he represented a rival religion and civilization that was both triumphant and attractive. In eighteenth-century controversies concerning the power of the Catholic Church, the figure of the Prophet was used to combat religious superstition, or, on the contrary, as a reformer who fought superstition and the power of clerics.
