How Enlightenment Hostility Toward Islam Informs Modern Political Rhetoric

 The Genealogy of a Trope

When a prominent political figure, such as the Speaker of the House, asserts that "Iranians lie all the time because it is part of the religion," the statement is often dismissed by defenders as a mere rhetorical gaffe or an isolated expression of geopolitical frustration. However, to treat it as such is to ignore its deep historical resonance. This assertion is neither new nor fringe. Rather, it is the latest iteration of a deeply entrenched intellectual tradition that systematically constructs Muslims as inherently deceitful, morally alien, and intellectually stagnant. The genealogy of this rhetoric traces directly back to the European Enlightenment, an era that, despite its professed commitment to universal reason, actively codified hostility toward Islam into the foundations of modern Western philosophy.

The Precursor: Framing the "Impostor"

Before the high Enlightenment, the groundwork for this discourse was laid by figures like the English churchman Humphrey Prideaux (1648–1724). His 1697 biography, The True Nature of Imposture Fully Displayed in the Life of Mahomet, was highly influential in shaping subsequent European thought. Prideaux argued that Islam was not a legitimate revelation, but a divine punishment sent by God via a "deceitful, power-hungry warlord" to penalize Eastern Christians for their spiritual laziness. This established the foundational trope of the Muslim prophet as an intentional fraud, providing a template for Enlightenment thinkers to secularize and systematize this hostility under the guise of rational inquiry.

The Semantic Hollowing of Islamic Virtue

As the Enlightenment progressed, philosophers moved beyond mere theological dismissal to attack the very moral and political capacity of Islamic societies. Montesquieu, in his seminal 1748 work The Spirit of the Laws, systematized the idea that the Western concept of "honor" could not fundamentally exist or mean the same thing within Islamic societies. He categorized these societies under the umbrella of "political despotism," arguing that fear, rather than honor or virtue, was their governing principle.

David Hume took this moral alienation a step further, targeting the semantic validity of Islamic ethics. In his 1757 essay "Of the Standard of Taste," Hume argued that when Muslims spoke of virtues like justice, equity, and charity, they did not mean them in the way "civilized" people did. Specifically targeting the Quran (which he referred to as "the Alcoran") and the Prophet Muhammad, Hume wrote:

"The admirers and followers of the Alcoran insist on the excellent moral precepts interspersed through that wild and absurd performance. But it is to be supposed, that the Arabic words, which correspond to the English, equity, justice, temperance, meekness, charity, were such as, from the constant use of that tongue, must always be taken in a good sense... But would we know, whether the pretended prophet had really attained a just sentiment of morals? Let us attend to his narration."

For Hume, Islamic moral language was a hollow mimicry, devoid of the genuine ethical substance possessed by the "civilized" West.

The Assault on Reason and Character

This rhetorical strategy was amplified by the leading intellectual lights of the era. Denis Diderot (1713–1784), editor-in-chief of the Encyclopédie, labeled Muhammad as "the greatest enemy that human reason has ever known," accusing him of being a false prophet who manipulated Abrahamic traditions to rule through ignorance.  Diderot dismissed the Quran as an "absurd, obscure, and dishonest book," arguing that the absolute obedience it demanded fundamentally blinded its followers to progress, science, and rationality.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) further racialized and philosophically dismissed the Muslim capacity for reason. In his anthropological and historical writings, Kant asserted that Muslims (specifically pointing to Arabs and Turks) lacked respect for the boundaries of knowledge, describing them as inherently too passionate, sensual, and irrational to develop true "autonomous thought." He characterized Islam as a "sublime" but ultimately counterfeit religion, driven by a false sense of superiority and the imagination of Muhammad rather than pure, rational moral duty.

The Trope of the Fanatic and Historical Stagnation

The literary and historical canon of the era cemented these ideas into enduring cultural tropes. Voltaire’s (1694–1778) 1741 play, Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète (Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet), depicted Muhammad as a deceitful, ruthless, and self-serving hypocrite who used religious fervor to manipulate followers, assassinate political rivals, and satisfy personal lusts. While Voltaire later softened his stance in his 1756 Essai sur les mœurs—praising Islamic monotheism and legal tolerance as a vehicle to criticize Christianity—his initial framing had already solidified the trope of the Prophet as an "impostor" in the Western literary imagination.

Finally, G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) systematized these cultural hierarchies into a grand historical narrative. In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Hegel argued that Islam was characterized by a "fanaticism" of abstract oneness.  He claimed that because Islam envisions God as an absolute, undifferentiated unity, it is inherently unstable and destructive. Hegel famously asserted that after its initial explosive expansion, the Islamic world quickly burned itself out and sank into "intellectual torpor" and stagnation, rendering it entirely irrelevant to the forward march of human "Spirit" and civilization.

The Modern Echo of an Ancient Prejudice: US Offoicials Make Elightened Ignorance into State Declarations

In a stunning display of Islamophobic rhetoric, House Speaker Mike Johnson recently claimed that lying is "part of their religion" for some Iranians, a statement that advocacy groups like CAIR immediately condemned as "dangerous and bigoted". This religious bigotry emerges conveniently as the illegal war on Iran has drained an estimated $113.3 billion from American coffers in just 108 days—costs amounting to at least $1,200 per household. While families struggle with soaring gas prices and food costs directly tied to military escalation, the Speaker's broad-brush demonization of Muslims serves a calculated purpose: deflecting accountability for policies that have devastated working-class Americans. By framing an entire faith tradition as inherently deceitful, Johnson not only perpetuates the kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric that is finding "a growing foothold in GOP messaging", but also distracts from the very real deception being perpetrated on the American people—the lie that endless war serves their interests when it has only served to enrich the military-industrial complex at their expense.

When modern political leaders claim that deception is "part of the religion" of Iranians or Muslims broadly, they are not engaging in original geopolitical analysis. They are unknowingly—or perhaps knowingly—reciting a script written by Prideaux, Hume, Diderot, Kant, and Hegel.

Recognizing this genealogy is not an exercise in mere academic pedantry; it is a crucial tool for deconstructing modern Islamophobic rhetoric. It reveals that such statements are not fringe anomalies or harmless political hyperbole. Instead, they are the contemporary echoes of a continuous, systemic tradition of epistemic violence that strips Muslims of moral and intellectual agency. To effectively challenge and dismantle this rhetoric today, we must first acknowledge and confront the Enlightenment-era foundations upon which it was built.

The Irony and Absurdity of Johnson's Claims Regarding the Religious Origins of Lying

The logical incoherence of this historical trope becomes glaringly apparent when we apply its own flawed premise to contemporary American politics. If, as the rhetoric of figures like Speaker Johnson implies, a propensity for deception is an inherent, religiously mandated trait of Muslims, then one must inevitably arrive at a rather ironic conclusion. Given that major, nonpartisan fact-checking organizations have exhaustively documented Donald Trump as the most prolific purveyor of falsehoods in modern presidential history, the internal logic of this bigotry would dictate that he must be a secret Muslim.

This reductio ad absurdum perfectly exposes the intellectual bankruptcy of the trope, a point underscored by the empirical data on presidential falsehoods. PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking organization, has published well over 1,000 specific fact-checks rating Trump’s claims as "False" or "Pants on Fire." Furthermore, the organization named Trump’s false or misleading claims its "Lie of the Year" for many years of his presidency cementing his relationship with the truth as a highly documented, defining feature of his political career.

Ultimately, the accusation that Islam sanctions lying was never a theological reality; it was always a political fabrication. When subjected to even the most basic scrutiny, the entire premise collapses under the weight of its own absurdity.