NOVÝ PŘÍSTUP K ISLÁMU A JEHO PROROKOVI U KŘESŤANSKÝCH ORIENTALISTŮ W. M. WATTA A K. CRAGGA

There was a shift in Christian attitudes towards Islam from confrontation and mission to dialogue in the second half of important contributions to this shift. Watt analysed “the distorted image of Islam”, which arose in the medieval West, and confronted it with the historical facts, presented in his monographs on the life of Muhammad. Cragg also dealt with the character of the Prophet and carried out a search for points of contact between Islam and Christianity. Watt and Cragg tried to write in a way acceptable for both Christian and Muslim readers. They regarded Muhammad as a prophet, though not in the Islamic sense of that term. While Watt was attracted to relativism to a certain extent, Cragg sees an understanding of Islam as a way to a deeper realization of the uniqueness of the Christian belief in Christ.