Rhetoric as a way of knowing

Islam represents one of the world's major rhetorical patterns, claiming nearly half a billion adherents from northern Africa to Indonesia. And yet, Islamic rhetoric has received relatively little scholarly attention in the West. Language differences and historical animosities dating back to the Crusades help explain this deficiency. Typifying the Judeo‐Christian view of Islam, Dante placed the Prophet Mohammed among the lower circles of Hell, with other “sowers of scandal and of schism.” Even as late as 1893, a Christian leader stood before an international conference of the world's religions and described the Middle East as “a desert of Mohammedan superstition and bigotry.”