Voltaire's play Le Fanatisme ou Mahomet le Prophete, despite its title, represents Muhammad as a rational thinker and a romantic figure. In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire was strongly critical of the stereotypes surrounding Islam as a sensual religion, "I tell you again, ignorant imbeciles, whom other ignoramuses have made believe that the Mohammedan religion is voluptuous and sensual, there is not a word of truth in it; you have been deceived on this point as on so many others." He also charged that Christians have projected their own idolatrous practices on Muslims: "I conclude by noting that in the times we named the Middle Ages, we called the country of the Mohammedans heathendom. We qualified as idolaters, image-worshippers, a people who have a horror of images. We must admit once more that the Turks would be more pardonable to take us for idolaters when they see our altars loaded with images and statues."

XREF: Connects to broader Enlightenment-era European views of Islam and the common tendency to project one's own vices onto other cultures.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 366