Modern Western Critical Discourse on Seerah Sources

Abstract

Seerah of the Prophet falls mainly under Orientalist studies evolving from an early skeptical normative to revisionism, higher criticism, biblical literary criticism and Hagarism. This perpetual change of Western academic methodology seems to indicate their fragile and non-traditional academic approach. The Orientalists like Goldziher and Schacht have been able to transform skeptical theories considerably to the extent ‘revisionist’ theories have emerged. In this paper, a critical review of modern Western critique has been discussed while conjecturing about its lacunas at the same time.

Keywords

• seerah studies
• skepticism
• revisionism
• orientalism