Islamic Figures And Images In Dante's Inferno

History has given many points of view of civilized life and ideas of the past that teach lessons on our path to perfection. The conflicts and prejudices between the Muslim and Christian people are some key examples of points of view that were key to the development of our modern day civilized life. A key person of interest in our World’s most prominent literature is Dante. Famous for his beautifully crafted Divine Comedy, Dante has provided the basis for Italian literature even until this day. Throughout his Journey through the circles of Hell, Dante imagines many prominent figures in history who have been banished to Hell by God. None are more controversial than those of the Islamic faith because of his depictions of Muhammad. Throughout
Dante depicts Mosques within hell to be on fire saying that “The fire eternal that kindles them within makes them look red, as thou beholdest in this nether hell.” (Canto 8) This is a good inclination of Dante’s ideas about where the Islamic faith ranks in comparison to his own. By placing the Mosques in hell, Dante then characterizes the entire religion itself as blasphemous and against his own Christianity. Also, this proposes that his faith will bring destruction upon the Muslims because fire is thought to symbolically represent the force of destruction. This is Dante’s Jab at the faith itself because of him putting the central place of worship into the place of those who refused to follow the idea of a true
Their view illustrates their belief that followers of Islam have been misguided by the Prophet and were simply too gullible to follow their idea of the true religion. They believe Muhammad stole from the traditions of Christianity in order to create heresy and preach blasphemy to his people with a new take on their very own words. This idea of thievery is basic at most because even the Christians received much of their traditions from the Jews and even have extremely similar stories represented in the Old testament of the Bible. In fact, it is considered that Christianity is simply the next step up from the Torah. However, Islam is not regarded as the next step up from the Bible which could be a biased thought or simply truth. This contradiction places both faiths into a battle for the truth and a quest for religiously gaining more followers. However, some religious quests to convert followers are murderous and are irreligious at their very basis because of the lack of free will given to those who are forced to submit to either particular God. It is the view of some that both are hypocritical in their practice because of the lack of true religious desire by either party. The crusades were not supported truly by the words of the religion, but the way Saladin handled